therefore, an index, in two ways, of the want of eloquence among the people who employ it. In this view, the figurative elocution of the Indian, so far from affording evidence of oratorical power, if it proves anything, proves the opposite. It is the barrenness of his language, and not the luxuriance of his imagination, which enforces that mode of speech.[16] Imagination is the first element of oratory, simplicity its first condition. We have seen that the Indian is wholly destitute of the former; and the stilted, meretricious, and ornate style, of even his ordinary communications, entirely excludes the latter from our conception of his character.[17] For example: take the expressions "bury the hatchet," for "make peace," and "a cloudless sky," for "prosperity"--the latter being the nearest approximation to an abstract idea observed in Indian oratory. Upon examining these, and kindred forms of speech, we shall at once perceive that they are not the result of imagination, but are suggested by _material_ analogies. Peace, to the savage, is, at best, but a negative idea; and the _state_ of peacefulness, abstracted from the absence of war, finds no corresponding word in his language. Even friendship only means that relation, in which friends may be of _use_ to each other. As his dialects are all synthetic,[18] his ideas are all concrete. To say, "_I love_" without expressing _what_ or _whom_ I love, would be, so to speak, very bad Indian grammar. He can not even say "two" correctly, without applying the numeral to some object. The notion of absolute being, number, emotion, feeling, posture, or relation, is utterly foreign to his mode of thought and speech. So, also, of the "cloudless sky," used to express a state of prosperity. He does not mean, by the phrase, the serenity of mind which prosperity produces, nor any other abstract inflexion or suggestion of the figure. He is constantly exposed to the storms of heaven, in the chase, and on the war path; and, even in his best "lodge," he finds but little shelter from their fury. Clear weather is, therefore, grateful to him--bright sunshine associates itself, in his mind, with comfort, or (that supremest of Indian pleasures) undisturbed indolence. And the transition, though, as we have said, an approach to an abstract conception, is easy, even to the mind of a savage. His employment of such illustrations is rather an evidence of rudeness, than of eloquence--of barrenness, than of luxuriance of idea.[19]