the forests, and the cotton plants, with their hanging pods, resembled white rose-trees. The breeze rocked the airy cradles with almost imperceptible motion; the mothers rose occasionally to see whether their children still slept, or whether they had been awakened by the birds. From the Indian village to the cataract was reckoned a distance of between three and four leagues; it took myself and my guide as many hours to reach it. When we approached within six miles of it, I could see a column of vapour indicating the spot of the fall. My heart beat with a joy mingled with terror as I entered the wood which concealed from my eyes one of the grandest sights ever offered by nature to man.

We alighted, and leading our horses by the bridle, passed through bushes and thicket, and reached the bank of the river Niagara, seven or eight hundred feet above the Fall. I continued to move forward, and the guide seized me by the arm, and stopped me at the very edge of the water, which flowed by with the rapidity of an arrow. It did not foam, but glided in one smooth mass to the very edge of the precipice. Its silence before its fall formed a striking contrast with the noise of the fall itself. Scripture often compares a nation to great waters; the Niagara above the Fall is the emblem of a dying nation, deprived of all power of voice by its agony, hurrying on to the abyss of eternity.

The guide continued to hold me back, for I felt myself drawn as it were towards the river, and urged by an involuntary impulse to throw myself into it. I looked now up along the shore, now down towards the island which rose suddenly amidst the vast plain of waters, dividing them as if they had been cleft in the sky.

After standing for about a quarter of an hour in a confused reverie of undefined admiration, I proceeded to the Fall. My ideas and impressions of it will be found in the "Essai sur les Revolutions" and in "Atala." Now, there are good roads leading to the cataract, inns on the American and English shores, mills and manufactories below the chasm; at the time I saw it none of these were in existence.

I had no utterance for the thoughts which agitated me at the sight of such sublime confusion.

In the desolate solitude of my early life, I was forced to invent personages to embellish it; I drew from the sources of my own mind ideal beings whom I found nowhere else-creatures of my own imagination. Thus, with the cataract of Niagara I have

associated recollections of Atala and René, like the expression of its solemnity and sadness. What is a cascade eternally falling over its precipice in the silent unimpressible presence of earth and sky, if human nature is not there with its destinies and its unhappiness? How joyless to plunge into this solitude of water and mountain, and to have no one to whom to pour out the feelings inspired by the magnificent spectacle! to have the waves, the rocks, the woods, and torrents for oneself alone! Give a companion to the soul, and the smiling verdure of the hills, the fresh breath of the wave, thrill it with delight; the daily journey, the sweet repose at its close, the gentle rocking on the waves, the soft sleep on the moss, draw forth its fullest depths of tenderness. My fancy placed Velléda on the Armorican strand, Cymodycée beneath the porticos of Athens, Blanca in the halls of the Alhambra. Alexander left cities as monuments in his track; I left dreams as the only trace of my footsteps.

I have seen the Alpine cascades with their chamois, the Pyrenean with their isarus; I did not go as far up the hill as its cataracts, which are now known to be only rapids; I do not speak of the variegated columns of Terni and Tivoli, elegant lines of ruins, or subjects for the poet's song-et præceps Anio ac Tiberni lucus— "the rapid Anio and the sacred grove of Tibur;" Niagara effaces them all. I was contemplating the cataract revealed to the Old World, not by insignificant travellers like myself, but by missionaries, who, seeking God in these solitudes, threw themselves on their knees at the sight of some wonder of nature, and received martyrdom while chaunting their hymn of admiration. Our priests greeted the natural wonders of America, and consecrated them with their blood; our soldiers have applauded at the ruins of Thebes, and presented arms in Andalusia; the whole genius of France lies in the double militia of her camps and her altars.

I had my bridle twisted round my arm; a rattlesnake moved in the thicket; and my horse, startled at the noise, reared and backed towards the Fall; I could not free my arm, and the horse becoming more and more unmanageable, dragged me after him; his fore-feet were already over the edge; hanging on the very verge of the abyss, he kept himself from falling solely by the muscular strength of his back; I gave myself up for lost; when suddenly the animal, astonished at his new danger, made a great effort and regained his footing by a quick turn. Had I lost my life amidst the Canadian woods, would my soul have carried with

it to the Supreme tribunal, the sacrifices, the good works, and virtues of the Fathers Jogues and Lallemand, or a burden of useless days and miserable chimeras?

This was not the only danger which I incurred at Niagara. A ladder of bind-weed enabled the natives to descend into the lower basin, but this was now broken. Wishing to see the cataract from below, I ventured, notwithstanding the representations of my guide, to descend the side of an almost conical rock. The water roared and boiled below me, but my head remained steady, and I succeeded in descending about forty feet; but here the bare perpendicular rock offered nothing to which I could cling; I remained hanging by one hand to the last tree-root, feeling my fingers relax their grasp with the weight of my body; few men have in the course of their lives passed two minutes such as those I now passed; at length my hand lost its hold, and I fell by extraordinary good fortune, I found myself on the ledge of a rock on which I was much more likely to have been dashed to pieces; I did not feel much hurt; I was within half a foot of the chasm, and yet had not fallen into it; but when the cold and damp began to chill me, I found that I had not escaped so easily as I imagined; my left arm was broken above the elbow. My guide, who was watching me from above, and to whom I made signals of distress, hastened in search of some Indians; they pulled me up with ropes by an otter-path, and carried me to their village. It was merely a simple fracture,-and two splints, a bandage, and a sling sufficed for my cure.

London, from April till September, 1822.

TWELVE DAYS IN A HUT-CHANGE OF MANNERS AMONG THE INDIANSBIRTH AND DEATH-MONTAIGNE-SONG OF THE SNAKE-SINGING OF A LITTLE INDIAN GIRL-THE ORIGINAL OF MILA.'

66

I REMAINED for twelve days under the care of my doctors, the Indians of Niagara, and while there, saw some other tribes on their way down from Détroit, and the districts to the south and east of Lake Erie. I made inquiries respecting their customs; and by means of small presents obtained representations and details of their ancient manners, now no longer in existence.

Yet at the commencement of the War of American Independence, the Indians still ate the prisoners, or rather those who were killed; an English captain, taking soup from an Indian pot with the large spoon, drew up a hand.

The events of birth and death among the Indians have retained more of their ancient associations and customs than any other; because these events are not changed by outward influences, like the life which lies between them; they are not matters of fashion passing with its breath. The oldest name beneath an Indian roof is still conferred on an infant as an honour, that of its grandmother for example, for names always descend in the maternal line. From that moment the child occupies the place of the woman whose name has been given to it; and in speaking to it, it is addressed by the degree of parentage revived by its name; thus an uncle may salute his nephew by the title of grandmother. This custom, ridiculous in appearance, is nevertheless touching; it brings those who are gone to life again; it reproduces the weakness of age in that of infancy; it connects the extremes of life, the beginning and the end of a family; it communicates a kind of immortality to the ancestors, and supposes them present amidst their posterity.

As regards the dead, it is easy to find motives for the attachment of the savage to sacred remains. Civilised nations have the ever-living spirit of literature and art to preserve the recollections of their country; they have cities, palaces, towers, columns, and obelisks; they have the trace of the plough in the fields already cultivated; names are carved in brass and marble, actions immortalised in chronicles.

The nations of these solitudes have nothing of all this; their names are not inscribed on the trees; their huts, built in a few hours, disappear in a few moments; their labour but grazes the earth, and does not even make a furrow. Their traditional songs perish with the last memory which retains them, with the last voice that repeats them. The tribes of the New World have then but one monument, the tomb. Take from the savage the bones of his fathers, and you take his history, his laws, and his gods; you take from the race, in future generations, the proofs of their existence, as of their non-existence. I wished to hear my hosts sing; a pretty little Indian girl named Mila, of about fourteen years old (the Indian women are only pretty when very young), sang very pleasingly. Was this not the couplet cited

by Montaigne ?"Stay, snake; stay, snake; and let my sister take the pattern of thy colours, to work a rich cord that I may give to my love; and thy beauty and disposition shall always be preferred to that of all other snakes."

London, from April to September, 1822.

REFLECTIONS-OLD CANADA-INDIAN POPULATION-DEMORALISATIONTRUE CIVILISATION PROMOTED BY RELIGION; FALSE CIVILISATION BY TRADE-BACKWOODSMEN-FACTORIES-HUNTING-MIXED RACES-CONTESTS BETWEEN TRADING COMPANIES-DEATH OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGES.

THE Canadians are no longer such as they have been described by Cartier, Champlain, Lahontan, Lescarbot, Laffiteau, Charlevoix, and the Lettres Edifiantes. The sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, were the times of fertile imagination and of simple manners; the admiration of the former reflected a virgin nature, and the candour of the latter reproduced the simplicity of the savage. Champlain, at the end of his first voyage to Canada, in 1603, relates, that "an island, lying to the south of the Bay of Chaleurs, is regarded as the abode of a dreadful monster, whom the savages call gougou." Canada had its giant as well as the Cape of Storms. Homer is the true father of all these fables. There are always and everywhere Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, ogres or giants.

The savage population of North America, exclusive of Mexico and the Esquimaux, does not at present amount to 400,000 souls, reckoning all the tribes on both sides of the Rocky Mountains; some travellers limit the number to 150,000. Demoralisation has kept pace among the Indians with the diminution of their tribes. Religious traditions are become confused; the instruction imparted by the Jesuits in Canada has become mixed up with ideas foreign to the native ideas of the indigenous races; through the mists of gross fables, there may still be traced some distorted images of Christian truths; the most of the Indians wear crosses in the manner of ornaments, and what the Catholic missionaries formerly bestowed as emblems of religious faith, are sold to them now by Protestant traders. Let me observe, to the honour of our