Having considerable dealings in the fur trade, too, he went every winter to the capital for a short time, to adjust his commercial concerns, and often took his favourite niece along with him, who, being of an uncommonly quick growth and tall stature, soon attracted attention by her personal graces, as well as by the charms of her conversation. I have been told, and should conclude from a picture I have seen drawn when she was fifteen, that she was in her youth very handsome. Of this, few traces remained when I knew her; excessive corpulence having then overloaded her majestic person, and entirely changed the aspect of a countenance, once eminently graceful. In no place did female excellence of any kind more amply receive its due tribute of applause and admiration than here, for various reasons; first, cultivation and refinement were rare. Then, as it was not the common routine that women should necessarily have such and such accomplishments, pains were only taken on minds strong enough to bear improvement, without becoming conceited or pedantic; and lastly, as the spur of emulation was not invidiously applied, those who acquired a superior degree of knowledge, considered themselves as very fortunate in having a new source of enjoyment opened to them. But never having been made to understand that the chief motive of excelling was to dazzle or outshine others, they no more thought of despising their less fortunate companions, than of assuming pre-eminence for discovering a wild plum-tree or bee-hive in the woods, though, as in the former case, they would have regarded such a discovery as a benefit and a pleasure; their acquisitions, therefore, were never shaded by affectation. The women were all natives of the country, and few had more than a domestic education; but men, who possessed the advantages of early culture and usage of the world, daily arrived on the continent from different parts of Europe; so that if we may be indulged in the inelegant liberty of talking

commercially of female elegance, the supply was not equal to the demand. It may be easily supposed that Miss Schuyler met with due attention; who, even at this early age, was respected for the strength of her character, and the dignity and composure of her manners. Her mother, whom she delighted to recollect, was mild, pious, and amiable; her acknowledged worth was chastened by the utmost diffidence. Yet, accustomed to exercise a certain power over the minds of the natives, she had great influence in restraining their irregularities and swaying their opinions. From her knowledge of their language, and habit of conversing with them, some detached Indian families resided for a while in summer in the vicinity of houses occupied by the more wealthy and benevolent inhabitants. They generally built a slight wigwam under shelter of the orchard fence, on the shadiest side; and never were neighbours more harmless, peaceable, and obliging—I might truly add industrious, for in one way or other they were constantly occupied. The women and their children employed themselves in many ingenious handicrafts, which, since the introduction of European arts and manufactures, have greatly declined. Baking trays, wooden dishes, ladles and spoons, shovels and rakes, brooms of a peculiar manufacture, made by splitting a birch block into slender but tough filaments; baskets of all kinds and sizes, made of similar filaments, enriched with the most beautiful colours, which they alone knew how to extract from vegetable substances, and incorporate with the wood. They made also of the birch-bark, (which is here so strong and tenacious, that cradles and canoes are made of it,) many receptacles for holding fruit and other things, curiously adorned with embroidery-not inelegant, done with the sinews of deer, and leggins and moomesans, a very comfortable and highly ornamental substitute for shoes and stockings, then universally used in winter among the men of our own people. They had also a beautiful manufacture

of deer skin, softened to the consistence of the finest Chamois leather, and embroidered with beads of wampum, formed like bugles; these, with great art and industry, they formed out of shells, which had the appearance of fine, white porcelain, veined with purple. This embroidery showed both skill and taste, and was among themselves highly valued. They had belts, large embroidered garters, and many other ornaments, formed, first of deer sinews, divided to the size of coarse thread, and afterwards, when they obtained worsted thread from us, of that material, formed in a manner which I could never comprehend. It was neither knitted nor wrought in the manner of net, nor yet woven-but the texture was formed more like an officer's sash than any thing I can compare it to. While the women and children were thus employed, the men sometimes assisted them in the more laborious part of their business, but oftener occupied themselves in fishing on the rivers, and drying or preserving, by means of smoke, in sheds erected for the purpose, sturgeon and large eels, which they caught in great quantities, and of an extraordinary size, for winter provision.

Boys on the verge of manhood, and ambitious to be admitted into the hunting parties of the ensuing winter, exercised themselves in trying to improve their skill in archery, by shooting birds, squirrels, and raccoons. These petty huntings helped to support the little colony in the neighbourhood, which, however, derived its principal subsistence from an exchange of their manufactures with the neighbouring family, for milk, bread, and other articles of food.

The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief.

It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every respectable family not only treated with

humanity, but cherished with parental kindness, they always regarded them with contempt and dislike, as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. It was necessary then that all conversations should be held, and all business transacted with these females, by the mistress of the family. In the infancy of the settlement, the Indian language was familiar to the more intelligent inhabitants, who found it very useful, and were, no doubt, pleased with its nervous and emphatic idiom, and its lofty and sonorous cadence. It was, indeed, a noble and copious language, when one considers that it served as the vehicle of thought to a people, whose ideas and sphere of action we should consider as so very confined.

CHAP. XIII.

Progress of knowledge-Indian manners.

CONVERSING with those interesting and deeply reflecting natives, was, to thinking minds, no mean source of entertainment. Communication soon grew easier, for the Indians had a singular facility in acquiring other languages-the children, I well remember, from experimental knowledge, for I delighted to hover about the wigwam, and coverse with those of the Indians, and we very frequently mingled languages. But to return: whatever comfort or advantage a good and benevolent mind possesses, it is willing to extend to others. The mother of my friend, and other matrons, who, like her, experienced the consolations, the hopes, and the joys of christianity, wished those estimable natives to share in their pure enjoyments.

Of all others, these mild and practical Christians were the best fitted for making proselytes. Unlike professed missionaries, whose zeal is not always seconded by judgment, they did not begin by alarming the jealousy, with which all manner of people watch over their hereditary prejudices. Engaged in active life, they had daily opportunities of demonstrating the truth of their religion, by its influence upon their conduct. Equally unable and unwilling to enter into deep disquisitions or polemical arguments, their calm and unstudied explanations of the essential doctrines of christianity, were the natural results which arose out of their ordinary conversation. To make this better understood, I must endeavour to explain what I have observed in the unpolished society that occupies the wild and remote districts of different countries. Their conversation is not only more original, but, however odd the expression may appear, more philosophical than that of persons equally destitute of mental culture, in more populous districts. They derive their subjects of reflection and conversation, more from natural objects, which lead minds, possessing a certain degree of intelligence, more forward to trace effects to their causes. Nature, there, too, is seen arrayed in virgin beauty and simple majesty. Its various aspects are more grand and impressive; its voice is more distinctly heard, and sinks deeper into the heart. These people, more dependent on the simples of the fields and the wild fruits of the woods, better acquainted with the forms and instincts of the birds and beasts, their fellow denizens in the wilds, and more observant of every constellation and every change in the sky, from living so much in the open air, have a wider range of ideas than we are aware of. With us, art every where combats nature-opposes her plainest dictates, and too often conquers her. The poor, are so confined to the spot where their occupations lie-so engrossed by their struggles for daily bread, and so surrounded by the works of man, that