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constancy in supporting torture-their taciturnity, reserve and deliberation -The character of their eloquence and private conversation.Their treatment of their children.—Their military habits-Both prefer stratagem to force Their mode of forming and preserving friendship. -With both war is a season of rest nnd pleasure -Their contempt of cowardice, and their penalties against it-Their equality-Their disinterestedness-Their refusal to portion their daughters-Their respect for the laws and ancient manners-Their custom of destroying their deformed children. The general portrait will serve for the Virginia Indian. This enquiry drawn from authentic sources. Plan of Indian civilization adopted by United States. Its success. Complexion of Virginia Indian. The powers and qualities of his mind-his arithmetic-Few abstract ideas-Why? Their admirable address in managing treaties—Their eloquence-Their little knowledge of the useful arts. No written laws. Their absolute freedom.-Their appearance when preparing for battle.-Their war songs.--Their punishments.--Their mode of distinguishing the year--By months --by seasons--by hours.--Their notions of religion.--The great spirit or master breath.-Their idea of a future state. Their festivals. Their domestic relations. Their notions of marriage.--Influence of the women. Order and deportment of an Indian assembly. Who were the ancestors of this people--Various opinions on this head.

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HISTORY.

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by the ap

VIRGINIA presented to the first settlers an appearance calculated to impress them with feelings of grandeur and sublimity. Immense fo- Impres rests, which appeared to have continued undis sions excitturbed from the creation: The silence, which ed among reigned through those regions, and which is in- first settlers terrupted only by the rustling of the leaves, by pearance of the elk or buffaloe; or the waving of the branches the Chesaby the wind; unless when the death like stillness peake. is broken by the soul chilling tones of the war whoop and the harsh discords of the war song; the cautious and silent step of the Indian moving like a ghost present ideas of sublime and solitary grandeur.

No traces of cultivation appeared: The glebe had never been turned up. The earth in its separate strata remained as it had been assorted according to its specific gravities from the beginning of the world.

THE Bay of Chesapeake was particularly calculated to keep alive those impressions. Forests as far as the eye could see, covered the face of the country and descended to the very edge of the water. Several great rivers, whose distance from their sources was manifested by the depth and breadth of their channels, discharged their vast tributes into it in their sight; while tribes of Indians made signs to them from the shore or sailed round them in canoes.

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color and

THE dress, arms* and complexion of the natives. became new sources of wonder. Their skin was. of a copper colour, and the character of their Bythe dress face was fierce and barbarous: But their long arms of the black hair and the admirable proportion of their bodies were proofs of a radical difference between them and the inhabitants of Africa. They appeared to be a new species equally removed from the men of Europe, Asia and Africa.

natives.

THE climates too as well as the complexion By the pe- were different from those of countries lying in paculiarity of rallel latitudes. The air was much colder than in climate. the ancient continent. This remark will apply to every part of the new world. Heat alone is insufficient to determine the distance of any place in America from the equator although it is a tolerably safe and correct measure of latitude in the other quarters of the globe. The elevation, Reflections humidity and extent of the American continents; suggested the vast extent of the ocean, which washes its by the vari- coasts; the great height of its mountains and the ation of cli- direction of its predominant winds, must be taken

mate in

America.

into calculation. There are doubtless other circumstances: But those, which have been enu

*A cloak of buffaloe or beaver skin, bound with a leathern girdle, and stockings made of roe buck skins, was the whole of their dress before their intercourse with us; what they have added since gives great offence to their old men, who are ever lamenting the degeneracy of their manRayal's History of America, age-.

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The author of Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains supposes the difference in heat to be equal to 12 degrees, and that a place 30 degrees from the equator in the old comment is as warm as one distant only 18 from it in the new. Dr Mitchell after observations carried on during 30 years, contends that the difference is equal to 14 or 15 degrees of latitude. Rob. Am. Note 37.

merated have a manifest and decided influ- CHAP.

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So many circumstances, which do not exist How acelsewhere combine with heat in forming the cli- counted for. mates of this region that the old standard must be laid aside or corrected. The near approach of America to the pole; its immense extent; the superior height of its mountains covered with everlasting snow; its vast lakes and rivers; its almost continued forest; but above all the north west wind, which blowing from the north pole and passing over a hard frozen and elevated ground from which no caloric can escape to warm it, descends with all its rigour and severity on the regions of North America. These circumstances produce the striking difference between the climates of the old and new world.

THE same observations will apply to South America. There the east wind cooled in its passage across the Atlantic and passing to the west over immense swamps and forests which exclude the heat and often the light of the sun, mitigates the burning rigour of the torrid zone.*

This coldness of the climate which is felt all over North America appears to proceed principally and chiefly from the three following causes, besides others that conspire with them, particularly the nature of the soil.

I. America extends further north than any other part of the world and by that means is so much colder. Europe is surrounded by the warmer ocean which is always open, Asia by an icy sea (the Mare Glaciale) and America by a frozen continent which occasions the diversity of the climate in these three continents

II. That continent which is thus extensive in the northern parts, is one entire group of high mountains covered with snow or rather with ice throughout the whole year. These mountains rise in the most northern parts of the continent that have been discovered in Baffin's Bay and spread all

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OUR surprize at this variance between the cli mates of the old and new world will be lessened, when it is known by actual observation and experiment that the climate of Virginia has percep

over it to New England. Hence the coast of Labrador is the highest in the world and can be discerned at the distance of forty leagues; and in the western parts discovered by the Russians they tell us "the country had terrible high mountains covered with snow in the month of July." This was in latitude 58 degrees, and the country southward to that 40 degrees, is by the Spaniards called Sierras Nevedos, Snowy Mountain; so a ridge of mountains rise at Capé Tourmente by Quebec and running four or five hundred leagues, forming the greatest ridge of mountains in the uni verse which spread over all the northern parts of the continent. These are what we call the Northern Snowy Mountains.

III. All the countries that lie within the verge of these mountains or north of New England are continually involved in frosts, snows or thick fogs, and the colds that are felt in the south proceed from these frozen regions in the north by violent north west winds. These are the peculiar winds of that country and blow with a violence which no wind exceeds. It appears from many observations that they blow quite across the Atlantic ocean to Europe. The great lakes of Canada, which are inland seas tending north west for twelve or thirteen hundred miles, gives force and direction to these winds which blow from the frozen regions, and bring the climate of Hudson's Bay to the most southern parts of the continent when they blow for any considerable time.

Many imagine that these colds proceed from the snow lying in the woods, but that is the effect not the cause of the cold. They who attribute this to the woods do not distinguish between wet and cold, or the damps of wood-land frosts, which are very different things. These colds are so far from proceeding from the woods that one half of that continent which is the coldest and from which they proceed, has not a wood in it, and is so barren that it does not bare a tree or a bush. It is from this want of woods in the northern parts and the lakes that these furious wind's proceed which are very much abated by the woods. In the woods these cold winds may be endured, but in the open field they are iusufferable either to man or beast, and that

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