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According to Sir Richard the Mohawks appear to offer the most hopeful symptoms of improvement and aptitude for civilization of any of the tribes, specimens of which came under his observation. He waxes enthusiastic in behalf of the remnant of the celebrated and warlike tribe named.

"How different the Mohawks of the midland district, near Kingston, on the Napanee road! Here a chaplain is appointed to administer the rites. and services of the English Church. The people are happy and contented; many of them possess property of value; and it is not an uncommon thing to see a Mohawk driving along in his little wagon, with every appearance of comfort.

"I have reasons of a powerful nature to speak well of the Mohawks of the Indian woods. No sooner did the alarm of invasion from the United States, in 1837, sound through the province, than these moral and wellconducted people collected all their wagons, arms and ammunition, and drove to Kingston. They marched in with the Union-jack flying, and offered me their services to go into barracks and guard the approaches to the fortress and town.

"I kept them for some time, determined, however, not to employ them against the few misled people of the province who took up arms, and only to oppose them to the robbers and plunderers from the opposite shores, who were no better than so many pirates, without a shadow of excuse for the villanous breach of the law of nations. I well knew that the name of Indian was a terror to these vagabonds; and therefore retained the faithful Mohawks till Van Ransellaez, Wells, Bill Jonson, and the Lady of the Lake, the Trulla of French Creek, were frightened out of their temporary hold of Hickory Island. The Indians, they knew, would have shown them no mercy; and I verily believe that they thought twice before they acted once, as long as the Mohawks were in the neighbourhood.

"Even at the risk of being charged with egotism, I cannot help, when the militia of Upper Canada come across my mind, dwelling upon the reminiscences of them. These Indians were part of that militia, being regularly organized under a captain-leader and three chiefs; but they served, excepting the captain, who was a militia officer, without pay, scorning to receive it in the defence of their Great Mother and their beloved country. A fowling-piece or two, a few yards of ribbon, some silk handkerchiefs for their squaws, who were left at home, and a trifling quantity of tobacco, powder, and shot, sent them back to their woods as happy as possible.

"We held a parting council; and after many curious ceremonies, they enrolled me as a chief by the euphonous cognomen of Anadahesa, or he who summons the town. The first three syllables of this appellation are so very like Canada, that I begin to have some faith in the theory of those writers who assert that the country is so named from the Indians having always pointed to their villages, exclaiming, Canada! which may have meant the town par excellence."

Still it seems to be a matter of doubt with our author whether the Red men, either as individuals or tribes, are susceptible of com

plete or speedy regeneration. The probability seems to be that, like whatever else is wild, they are doomed to be exterminated by Here is a remarkable the advancing steps of the White race. example of inborn sympathies overcoming all superinduced influ

ences:

"I have seen the Red man in all his relative situations of warrior, I have seen him hunter, tiller of the ground, and preacher of the word. wholly wild, but never wholly civilized; for the best specimen of an Indian missionary I am acquainted with, in Upper Canada, forgot all his instruction, all his acquired feelings and habits, when he witnessed with me the war-dance of heathen and perfectly savage warriors. He had been carefully educated from a boy, spoke English perfectly, was modest, intelligent, and well-bred; guided his young family excellently, and did not intrude his professional habits and opinions when in society, nor And seemed to be in the least elevated by his superior acquisitions; yet he grinned with savage delight at this exhibition of untutored nature. when I asked him if it was not a blessing that the Indian had listened to the mild spirit of the White man's religion, and having proved himself capable of appreciating it, that he might be the means of imparting its doctrines to the savage natures before us, who displayed human frailty in the lowest state of degradation, he calmly replied, 'What you say, my friend, is true; but I never before saw my Red brother in the condition Ah! he is very brave! My of an absolute and acknowledged warrior.

father was as brave and as wild as he is; and often have I hid from his frown in the depths of the woods. Listen, the warrior is telling of his battles! I will interpret the brave man's speech to you.' And excited beyond the power of control by his native feelings, he went on translating the mighty deeds of a second Walk-in-the-water, or Young Wolf, or Snapping Turtle, or some other chief of equally euphonious and terrible He staid out a second edition of the war-story, and even of cognomen. the pipe-dance, which latter exhibition a European missionary would consider himself justly degraded by being present at; and I left him involved in rapid discourse with the heathen warriors."

These extracts convey an idea of the agreeable volumes before us; although, owing to the very discursive manner and the multitudinous matter of the author, it is not easy to give, in anything like a connected and naturally consecutive narrative, a complete notion of the work. The variety of places visited by him, the number of his excursions professional as well as for pleasure, the extent of his Canadian experience, the recentness of the information which he communicates, and the liberal enlightened spirit with which every thing is told, combine to put us in the best humour possible with the book. Whether ascending the St. Lawrence, visiting Quebec and Montreal,or the Thousand Isles, or describing the immense lakes of Ontario, Huron, &c., we have a happy blending of economical information, natural history, antiquities, scenic painting, and engineering statis

tics or speculation. Observe what the Lieut.-Colonel says with regard to the Welland canal:

:

"We must now," he says, "travel to the mouth of the river Welland, one of the openings into the canal of that name, which canal has, until now, been a mere job. The government have, however, observed with a quiet eye the proceedings of this job, and at last, under Lord Sydenham's administration, seem disposed to do something about it; and if it is ever made a good navigable steam-boat or ship canal, Canada will increase in wealth and population from the hour which opens its gates to the first vessel from Erie or Huron. The Americans are so sensible of this, that for years they have been planning and projecting a magnificent ship navigation, to connect Erie, Ontario, and the Erie canal. The plans of their topographical engineers for this stupendous work are beautifully executed, and would have been followed up, but that the monied concerns of the republic have been in rather a ticklish state of late years, and the defalcations of their public servants of such alarming extent, as to cause the executive to pause ere it enter upon so splendid a national undertaking. If the Welland canal be now seriously set about, and competent military engineers employed in its construction, the trade of the Far West must centre in Canada; and of its extent, what statistics can afford even a glimpse? For the Americans well know that even if their grand ship-canal were opened round the Falls, they have still a most serious disadvantage to contend against, in the ice of Lake Erie and that coming from Niagara; whereas the mouth of the Welland will always be open on the Canada shore, for weeks earlier than the mouth of any canal on the New York side of the river; and, as its exitus on Lake Ontario will be at a great distance from the exitus of the Niagara, it will never be embarrassed there by the spring ice. Travellers cross over the Welland river by a long wooden bridge in the village of Chippewa, famous for a battle in the last American war, and still more famous in 1837, as the head-quarters of the brave Canadian militia, who took up arms in the gloomy depth of that winter, to resist the friendly intentions of their opposite neighbours. If you proceed out of Welland in a Canadian steam-boat, you will pass into the river Niagara at rather a nervous place, where the river widens to an immense expanse, before it suddenly contracts again to form the rapids and cataract of Niagara. The first idea, to a stranger, on reaching this spot is-supposing the engine should get out of order, is the vessel to go down the Fall, which is boiling up at about two miles below? There is, however,

I believe, very little real danger, as it is the site of the traject, or common ferry between Chippewa and the New York shore at Fort Schlosser, at that celebrated spot where Captain Drew and his dauntless militia-sailors cut out the Caroline in the darkness of the night, and sent the pirate-vessel flaming down into the abyss below."

Sir Richard thinks that, should the Welland canal ever be completed by the government, the province of Upper Canada may become the seat of a future nation, with such internal resources, as that the neighbouring northern states of the American Union would

sink into comparative insignificance. "Surrounded and crossed by canals, lakes, rivers, her industry will command the West and its unfolded wealth. Imagining a belt embraced by the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, containing a population of millions, derived principally from Britain, the statist can easily divine the position they might maintain, and how prudent it must be to hold the dominion of England over this fertile empire as long as possible, closing the links of connexion by every act of kindness, and securing in the new world a future British power, unlike that which is advancing to completion in the United States." leaving these speculations, let us close with the results of certain surveys of the Canadian lakes:

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They have the following mean depths, elevations above the Atlantic, length and breadth and circumference :

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"It has been computed that the Canadian lakes contain 14,000 cubic miles of water, or more than half that on the whole earth. These deductions have been drawn from careful surveys; but the mean depths of the large lakes are assumed, as some of them have been sounded in places near their centre without finding bottom; and it is conjectured that Ontario has a bed of salt in its deepest part-which is very probable, as the surrounding country is of the salt-formation."

ART. III.-Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians. By GEORGE CATLIN. 2 vols. Published by the Author.

MR. CATLIN is a native of Wyoming, his parents having settled in the "fair" valley, after the Indian massacre; its horrors, chiefly as pictured by the poet, having also made such a deep impression on his mind, and awakened such an interest concerning the Red

people, that he never left off cherishing a desire to visit them. "The sad tale," he says, "of my native' valley' has been beautifully sung; and from the flight of Gertrude's' soul my young imagination closely traced the savage to his deep retreats, and gazed upon him in dreadful horror, until pity pleaded, and admiration worked a charm." Accordingly, though educated for the bar, the rod and the gun, the pencil and the brush, the rivers and forests, were far more enticing than your Justinians and Blackstones. He took to the painter's profession, and practised in Philadelphia, where a visit of certain Indian chiefs served to strengthen and rekindle his early enthusiasm with regard to that doomed race; for doomed undoubtedly it is to a speedy extinction. Take at once an eloquent general account of the author and the artist's feelings and experience with regard to the untamed Far West, and the tribes that roam over its prairies and dwell in its forests. It is, he tells us, "a vast country of green fields, where the men are all red-where meat is the staff of life-where no laws but those of honour are known-where the oak and the pine give way to the cotton-wood and peccan-where range the buffalo, the elk, mountain-sheep, and the fleet-bounding antelope-where the magpie and chattering paroquettes supply the place of the red-breast and the blue-bird-where wolves are white and bears grizzly-where pheasants are hens of the prairie, and frogs have horns-where the rivers are yellow, and white men are turned savages in looks. Through the whole of this strange land the dogs are all wolves-women all slaves-men all lords; where the sun and rats alone (of all the list of old acquaintances) could be recognized in this country of strange metamorphose."

Hear again the traveller and artist in this really new country. "I have," says Mr. Catlin, "for a long time been of opinion that the wilderness of our country afforded models equal to those from which the Grecian sculptors transferred to the marble such inimitable grace and beauty; and I am now more confirmed in this opinion since I have immersed myself in the midst of thousands and tens of thousands of these knights of the forests, whose whole lives are lives of chivalry, and whose daily feats, with their naked limbs, might vie with those of the Grecian youths in the beautiful rivalry of the Olympian games. No man's imagination, with all the aids of description that can be given to it, can ever picture the beauty and wildness of scenes that may be daily visited in this romantic country; of hundreds of these graceful youths, without a care to wrinkle, or a fear to disturb the full expression of pleasure and enjoyment that beams upon their faces-their long black hair mingling with their horses' tails floating in the wind, while they are flying over the carpeted prairie, and dealing death with their spears and arrows to a band of infuriated buffaloes; or their splendid procession in a war-parade, arrayed in all their gorgeous colours VOL. III. (1841.) No. III.

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