The Indians are exceedingly sagacious and observant, and by dint of minute attention, acquire many qualifications to which we are wholly strangers. They will traverse a trackless forest, hundreds of miles in extent, without deviating from the straight course, and will reach to a certainty the spot whither they intended to go on setting out: with equal skill they will cross one of the large lakes, and though out of sight of the shores for days, will to a certainty make the land at once, at the very place they desired. Some of the French missionaries have supposed that the Indians are guided by instinct, and have pretended that Indian children can find their way through a forest as easily as a person of maturer years; but this is a most absurd notion. It is unquestionably by a close attention to the growth of the trees, and position of the sun, that they find their way. On the northern side of a tree, there is generally the most moss, and the bark on that side in general differs from that on the opposite one. The branches towards the south are for the most part more luxuriant than those on the other sides of trees, and several other distinctions also subsist between the northern and southern sides, conspicuous to Indians, who are taught from their infancy to attend to them, which a common observer would perhaps never notice. Being accustomed from their childhood, likewise, to pay great attention to the position of the sun, they learn to make the most accurate allowance for its apparent motion from one part of the heavens to another, and in any part of the day they will point to the part of the heavens where it is, although the sky be obscured by clouds or mists. [Sidenote: ANECDOTE.]