pure air, beholds splendid scenery, traverses unsullied water, and subsists on food which, generally speaking, forms not only his sustenance, but the manly amusement, as well as occupation, of his life.

In the course of the day we saw several Indian families cheerily paddling in their canoes towards the point to which we were proceeding. The weather was intensely hot; and, though our crew continued occasionally to sing to us, yet by the time of sunset they were very nearly exhausted.

During the night it again rained for seven or eight hours; however, as is always the case, the wetter our blankets became the better they excluded the storm.

As we were now within eight or ten miles of our destination, and had therefore to pay a little extra attention to our toilette, we did not start next morning until the sun had climbed many degrees into the clear blue sky; however, at about eight o'clock, we once again got into our canoes, and had proceeded about an hour, when our crew, whose faces, as they propelled us, were always towards the prow, pointed out to us a canoe ahead, which had been lying still, but which was now evidently paddling from us with unusual force, to announce our approach to the Indians, who from the most remote districts had, according to appointment, congregated to meet us.

In about half an hour, on rounding a point of land, we saw immediately before us the great Manitoulin Island; and, compared with the other uninhabited islands through which we had so long been wandering, it bore the appearance of a popu lous city; indeed, from the innumerable threads of white smoke which in all directions, curling through the bright green foliage, were seen slowly escaping into the pure blue air, this place of rendezvous was evidently swarming alive with inhabitants, who, as we approached, were seen hurrying from all points towards the shore; and, by the time we arrived within one hundred and fifty yards of the island, the beach for about half a mile was thronged with Indians of all tribes, dressed in their various costumes: some displayed a good deal of the red garment which nature had given to them; some were partially covered with the skins of wild animals they had slain; others were enveloped in the folds of an English white blanket, and some in cloth and cottons of the gaudiest colours.

The scene altogether was highly picturesque, and I stood up in the canoe to enjoy it, when all of a sudden, on a signal given by one of the principal chiefs, every Indian present levelled his rifle towards me; and from the centre to both extremities of the line there immediately irregularly rolled a feu-de-joie, which echoed and re-echoed among the wild uninhabited islands behind us.

As soon as I landed I was accosted by some of the principal chiefs; but, from that native good breeding which in every situation in which they can be placed invariably distinguishes the Indian tribes, I was neither hustled nor hunted by a crowd; on the contrary, during the three days I remained on the island, and after I was personally known to every individual upon it, I was enabled without any difficulty or inconvenience, or without a single person following or even stopping to stare at me, to wander completely by myself among all their wigwams.

Occasionally the head of the family would rise and salute me, but generally speaking, I received from the whole group what I valued infinitely more—a smile of happiness and contentment: and, when I beheld their healthy countenances and their robust active frames, I could not help feeling how astonished people in England would be if they could but behold, and study, a state of human existence in which every item in the long list of artificial luxuries which they have been taught to venerate is utterly unknown, and, if described, would be listened to with calm inoffensive indifference, or with a smile approaching very nearly to the confines of contempt; but the truth is, that between what we term the civilized portion of

mankind, and what we call "the savage," there is a moral gulf which neither party can cross, or, in other words, on the subject of happiness they have no ideas with us in common. For instance, if I could have suddenly transported one of the ruddy squaws before me to any of the principal bedrooms in Grosvenor Square, her first feeling on entering the apartment would have been that of suffocation from heat and impure air; but if, gently drawing aside the thick damask curtains of a fourpost bed, I had shown her its young aristocratic inmates fast asleep, protected from every breath of air by glass windows, wooden shutters, holland blinds, window-curtains, hot bed-clothes, and beautiful fringed night-caps,—as soon as her smiles had subsided, her simple heart would have yearned to return to the clean rocks and pure air of Lake Huron; and so it would have been if I could suddenly have transported any of the young men before me to the narrow contracted hunting-grounds of any of our English country gentlemen; indeed, an Indian would laugh outright at the very idea of rearing and feeding game for the sake of afterwards shooting it; and the whole system, of living, house fed, in gaiters, and drinking port-wine, would to his mind appear to be an inferior state of happiness to that which it had pleased "the Great Spirit" to allow him to enjoy.

During the whole evening, and again early the next morning, I was occupied in attending to claims on the consideration of the British Government which were urged by several of the tribes, and in making arrangements with some of our ministers of religion of various sects, who, at their own expense, and at much inconvenience, had come to the island.

At noon I proceeded to a point at which it had been arranged that I should hold a council with the chiefs of all the tribes, who, according to appointment, had congregated to meet me; and on my arrival there I found them all assembled, standing in groups, dressed in their finest costumes, with feathers waving on their heads, with their faces painted, half-painted, quarter-painted, or one eye painted, according to the customs of their respective tribes, while on the breast and arms of most of the oldest of them there shone resplendent the silver gorgets and armlets which in former years had been given to them by their ally-the British Sovereign.

After a few salutations it was proposed that our Council should commence; and accordingly, while I took possession of a chair which the Chief Superintendent of Indian affairs had been good enough to bring for me, the chiefs sat down opposite to me in about eighteen or twenty lines parallel to each other.

For a considerable time we indolently gazed at each other in dead silence. Passions of all sorts had time to subside; and the judgment, divested of its enemy, was thus enabled calmly to consider and prepare the subjects of the approaching discourse; and, as if still further to facilitate this arrangement, "the pipe of peace" was introduced, slowly lighted, slowly smoked by one chief after another, and then sedately handed to me to smoke it too. The whole assemblage having, in this simple manner, been solemnly linked together in a chain of friendship, and as it had been intimated to them by the Superintendent that I was ready to consider whatever observations any of them might desire to offer, one of the oldest chiefs arose; and, after standing for some seconds erect, yet in a position in which he was evidently perfectly at his case, he commenced his speech-translated to me by an interpreter at my side-by a slow, calm expression of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit for having safely conducted so many of his race to the point on which they been requested to assemble. He then, in very appropriate terms, expressed the feelings of attachment which had so long connected the red man with his Great Parent across the Salt Lake; and after this exordium, which in composition and mode of utterance would have done credit to any legislative assembly in the civilized world, he proceeded, with great calmness, by very beautiful metaphors, and by a

narration of facts it was impossible to deny, to explain to me how gradually andsince their acquaintance with their white brethren-how continuously the race of red men had melted, and were still melting, like snow before the sun. As I did not take notes of this speech, or of those of several other chiefs who afterwards addressed the Council, I could only very inaccurately repeat them. Besides which, a considerable portion of them related to details of no public importance: I will therefore, in general terms, only observe, that nothing can be more interesting, or offer to the civilized world a more useful lesson, than the manner in which the red aborigines of America, without ever interrupting each other, conduct their Councils.

The calm high-bred dignity of their demeanour-the scientific manner in which they progressively construct the framework of whatever subject they undertake to explain the sound arguments by which they connect as well as support it—and the beautiful wild flowers of eloquence with which, as they proceed, they adorn every portion of the moral architecture they are constructing, form altogether an exhibition of grave interest; and yet is it not astonishing to reflect that the orators in these Councils are men whose lips and gums are-while they are speakingblack from the wild berries on which they have been subsisting-who have never heard of education-never seen a town-but who, born in the secluded recesses of an almost interminable forest, have spent their lives in either following zigzaggedly the game on which they subsist through a labyrinth of trees, or in paddling their canoes across lakes, and among a congregation of such islands as I have described!

They hear more distinctly-see farther-smell clearer-can bear more fatiguecan subsist on less food—and have altogether fewer wants than their white brethren; and yet, while from morning till night we stand gazing at ourselves in the lookingglass of self-admiration, we consider the red Indians of America as "outside barbarians."

But I have quite forgotten to be the Hansard of my own speech at the Council, which was an attempt to explain to the tribes assembled the reasons which had induced their late "Great Father" to recommend some of them to sell their lands to the Provincial Government, and to remove to the innumerable islands in the waters before us. I assured them that their titles to their present hunting-grounds remained, and ever would remain, respected and undisputed; but that, inasmuch as their white brethren had an equal right to occupy and cultivate the forest that surrounded them, the consequence inevitably would be to cut off their supply of wild game, as I have already described. In short, I stated the case as fairly as I could, and, after a long debate, succeeded in prevailing upon the tribe to whom I had particularly been addressing myself to dispose of their lands on the terms I had proposed; and whether the bargain was for their weal or woe, it was, and so long as I live, will be, a great satisfaction to me to feel that it was openly discussed and agreed to in presence of every Indian tribe with whom Her Majesty is allied; for be it always kept in mind, that while the white inhabitants of our North American colonies are the Queen's subjects, the red Indian is by solemn treaty Her Majesty's ally.

[WE have given a specimen of Byron's rapid and vigorous prose; another from his Dramas; and we now extract a description from Don Juan,' which has the interest of being a picture of his own patrician seat-from which an unlucky destiny banished him, to live and die amongst strangers.]

To Norman Abbey whirled the noble pair,-
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion,-of a rich and rare
Mix'd Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferr'd a hill behind,
To shelter thelr devotion from the wind.
It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
Stood, like Caractacus, in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder stroke, And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters-as day awoke, The branching stag swept down with all his herd, To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird. Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take

In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wild fowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods sloped downward to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood.
Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,

Sparkling with foam, until, again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes-like an infant made
Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding
Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church of Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march, In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone,The gallant Cavaliers, who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign. But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd, The Virgin-Mother of the God-born child,

With her son in her blessed arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance, when all beside was spoil'd; She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition, weak or wild,
But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.
A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepen'd glorics once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like scraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.

But in the noontide of the morn, and when
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall :

Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour)
To this gray ruin, with a voice to charm

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower;
The cause I know not, nor can solve: but such
The fact I've heard it,-ouce perhaps too much.

Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,

Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint

Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:
The spring gush'd through grim mouths of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,
Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,

With more of the monastic than has been

Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween:

An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.

Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but, when combined,
Form'd a whole which, irregular in parts,