one thing is certain, even if such be the case, that, as a nation, the Mandans are extinct, having no longer an existence. There is yet a melancholy part of the tale to be told, relating to the ravages of this frightful disease in that country on the same occasion, as it spread to other contiguous tribes, to the Minatarrees, the Knisteneaux, the Blackfeet, the Chayennes, and Crows, among whom 25,000 perished in the course of four or five months, which most appalling facts I got from Major Pilcher, now Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, from Mr. M'Kenzie, and others."-Catlin's American Indians, vol. ii., p. 257. No. XLIII. "In man the coloring matter seems to be deposited in the dermoidal system by the roots or the bulbs of the hair,* and all sound observations prove that the skin varies in color from the action of external stimuli on individuals, and is not hereditary, in the whole race. The Eskimoes of Greenland, and the Laplanders, are tanned by the influence of the air, but their children are born white. We will not decide on the changes which Nature may produce in a space of time, exceeding all historical traditions. Reason stops short in these matters when no longer under the guidance of experience and analogy. The nations that have a white skin begin their cosmogony by white men; according to them, the negroes and all tawny people have been blackened or embrowned by the excessive heat of the sun. This theory, adopted by the Greeks, though not without contradiction (Onesicritus apud Strabon, lib. xv., p. 983), has been propagated even to our own times. Buffon has repeated, in prose, what Theodectes had expressed in verse two thousand years before, that the nations wear the livery of the climate they inhabit.' If history had been written by black nations, they would have maintained what even Europeans have recently advanced (Prich * According to the interesting researches of Mr. Gaultier, on the Organization of the Human Skin, p. 57. John Hunter observes, that in several animals, the coloration of the hair is independent of that of the skin. Blumenbach informs us how climate operates in modifying the color of the skin. He states that the proximate cause of the dark color of the integuments is an abundance of carbon, secreted by the skin with hydrogen, precipitated and fixed in the rete mucosum by the contact of the atmospheric oxygen.-De Variet., p. 124. If Voltaire is to be believed, no well-informed person formerly passed by Leyden without seeing a part of the black membrane (the reticulum mucosum) of a negro, dissected by the celebrated Ruysell. Their error is, however, now universally admitted. The "rete mucosum" has been discovered to be nothing but the latest layer of epidermis, the inner surface of which is being continually renewed as the exterior is worn away, just like the bark of a tree. There is no distinct coloring layer, it appears, either in the fair or the dark-skinned races, the peculiar hue of the latter depending upon the presence of coloring matter in the cells of the epidermis itself. Color, therefore, is not even skin deep, for it does not reach the true skin, being entirely confined to the epidermis or scarf skin. ard's Researches into the Physical History of Man, 1813), p. 233, 239, that man was originally black, or of a very tawny color, and that he has whitened in some races from the effect of civilization and progressive debilitation, as animals in a state of domestication pass from dark to lighter colors. I shall here cite the authority of Ulloa. This learned man has seen the Indians of Chili, of the Andes, of Peru, of the burning coasts of Panama, and those of Louisiana, situated under the northern temperate zone. He had the good fortune to live at a time when theories were less numerous, and, like me, he was struck at seeing the native under the line as much bronzed as brown, in the cold climate of the Cordilleras as in the plains. Where differences of color are observed, they depend on the race."-Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii., p. 298. No. XLIV. The The Indian and the negro races, both fated, as it seems, to yield the supremacy to the whites, present in every other particular a curious contrast to each other. The red man appears to have received from nature every quality which contributes to greatness, except-I have no other word for it-tamability; he has shown in many remarkable instances intellectual capacity, talents for government, eloquence, energy, and self-command. There is something noble and striking-something that commands respect and admiration, in the Indian character, irreconcilable though it be with advanced civilization and the operation of Christian influences. The negro, on the contrary, has precisely what the Indian wants; he is a domestic animal. Indian avoids his conqueror; the negro bows at his feet. The Indian loves the independence and privations of his solitude better than all the flesh-pots of Egypt; the negro, if left to himself, is helpless and miserable: he must have society and sensual pleasures; if he be allowed to eat and drink well, to dance, to sing, and to make love, he seems to have no further or higher aspirations, and to care nothing for the degradation of his race. With the single exception of Toussaint, I know no instance of a negro distinguishing himself in politics, or arms, or letters; and though I make every allowance for the difficulties and obstacles to his doing so which his situation imposes on him, I can not allow that these account for the fact that, notwithstanding the excellent education which many negroes receive, and the stimulus afforded by constant intercourse with whites, not one of them has yet, either here or in the West Indies, with the above-named exception, taken the lead among his countrymen, or made a name for himself. And this natural superiority of the Indian is, perhaps unconsciously, recognized and illustrated in a singular manner by the white man, in the different feelings which he exhibits upon the subject of amalgamation with the two races. Some of the best families in the United States are proud to trace their origin to Indian chiefs (e. g., the Randolphs of Virginia. boast that they came of the lineage of Powhatan); and I have myself met with half-breeds who were considered (and most justly) in every respect equal in estimation with full-blooded whites. It is needless to observe, that with respect to the negroes, the precise converse is the Cæteris paribus, we seem naturally to receive the red man as our equal."-Godley's Letters from America, vol. i., p. 153. case. No. XLV. "These islands were partly discovered by Behring in 1741, and the rest at several periods since his time. The most considerable of them amount to forty in number, and they may be justly considered as a branch of the Kamtskadale Mountains continued in the sea. The three small islands, known by the names of Attak, Shemya, and Semitshi, with a few others, were denominated by the Russians Aleutskie Ostrova, because a bold rock in the language of these parts is called 'Aleut.' In the sequel this name was extended to the whole chain, though a part of it is named the Andreanoffskoi, and the rest, lying further toward America, the Fox Islands. The survey of these islands, more anciently discovered by the Russians, and of the adjacent parts of the two continents, was made by Captain Cook in his third voyage, in 1778. If the Russians, then, can deservedly claim the priority of the discovery, no one can withhold from the adventurous and persevering Captain Cook the glory and the merit of having fixed the distance of the two continents and their respective extent, to the east for Asia, and to the west for North America."-Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Aleutian Islands. No. XLVI. "Almost every where in the New World we recognize a multiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb, an artificial industry to indicate beforehand, either by inflection of the personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb, or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its object and its subject, and to distinguish whether the object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender, simple, or in complex number. This multiplicity characterizes the rudest American languages. Astarloa reckons, in like manner, in the grammatical system of the Biscayan, 206 forms of the verb. Strange conformity in the structure of languages among races of men so different, and on spots so distant. "Those languages, the principal tendency of which is inflection, excite less the curiosity of the vulgar than those which seem formed by aggregation. In the first, the elements of which words are composed, and which are generally reduced to a few letters, are no longer distinguished. These elements, when isolated, exhibit no meaning; the whole is assimilated and mixed together. The American lan guages, on the contrary, are like complicated machines, the wheels of which are exposed. The artifice is visible-I mean the industrious mechanism of their construction. We seem to be present at their formation, and we should state them to be of very recent origin, if we did not recollect that the human mind follows imperturbably an impulse once given; that nations enlarge, improve, and repair the grammatical edifice of their language according to a plan already determined; finally, that there are countries where the languages of all the institutions and the arts have remained stereotyped, as it were, during the lapse of ages. The highest degree of intellectual development has been hitherto found among nations which belong to the Indian and Pelasgic branch. The languages, formed principally by aggregation, seem themselves to oppose obstacles to the improvement of the mind. They are, in fact, unfurnished with that rapid movement, that interior life, to which the inflection of the root is favorable, and which gives so many charms to works of the imagination. Let us not, however, forget that a people celebrated in the remotest antiquity, from whom the Greeks themselves borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the construction of which recalls involuntarily that of the language of America. What a scaffolding of little monosyllabic and dissyllabic forms is added to the verb and to the substantive in the Coptic language!”—Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii., p. 273. In his "Researches," Humboldt observes: "We find in the New Continent languages, some of which, as the Greenland, the Cora, the Tamanac, the Totonac, and the Quichua (Archiv. fuer Ethnographie, b. i., s. 345; Vaters, s. 206), display a richness of grammatical forms which we trace nowhere in the Old World, except at Congo, and among the Biscayans, who were the remains of the ancient Cantabrians. But, amid these marks of civilization (referring to the Aztec nation), and this progressive perfection of language, it is remarkable that no people of America had attained that analysis of sounds which leads to the most admirable, we might almost say the most miraculous of all inventions, an alphabet. We are led to think that the progressive perfection of symbolic signs, and the facility with which objects are painted, had prevented the introduction of letters. . . . not the case in Egypt." Chateaubriand says that the Jesuits have left important works relative to the language of the Canadian savage. Father Chaumont, who had lived fifty years among the Hurons, composed a grammar of their language. To Father Rasles, who spent ten years in an Abenakis village, we are indebted for valuable documents. A French and Iroquois dictionary-a new treasure for philologists-is finished. There is also a manuscript dictionary-Iroquois and English-but, unluckily, the first volume is lost. "Les trois langues, Huronne, Algonquine et Siou sont les langues mères du Canada. Ils ont tous les caractères des langues primitives, et il est certain qu'elles n'ont pas une origine commune. La seule prononciation suffisoit pour le pronom. Le Siou sifle en parlant, le Huron n'a point de lettre labiale, qu'il ne sçauroit prononcer, parle du gosier et aspire presque toutes les syllabes; l'Algonquin prononce avec plus de douceur, et parle plus naturellement. Je n'ai pu rien apprendre de particulier de la première de ces trois langues; mais nos anciens missionnaires ont beaucoup travaillé sur les deux autres, et sur les principales de leurs dialectes: voici ce que j'en ais oui dire aux plus habiles. "La langue Huronne est d'une abondance, d'une énergie, et d'une noblesse, qu'on ne trouve peut-être réunies dans aucune des plus belles, que nous connoissons, et ceux, à qui elle est propre, quoiqu'ils ne soient plus qu'une poignée d'hommes, ont encore dans l'âme une élévation, qui s'accorde bien mieux avec la majesté de leur langage, qu'avec le triste état, où ils sont réduits. Quelques uns ont cru y trouver des rapports avec l'Hébreu; d'autres en plus grand nombre ont prétendu qu'elle avoit la même origine que celle des Grecs; mais rien n'est plus frivole que les preuves, qu'ils en apportent. La langue Algonquine n'a pas autant de force, que la Huronne, mais elle a plus de douceur et d'élégance. Toutes deux ont une richesse d'expressions, une variété de tones, une propriété de termes, une régularité, qui étonnent: mais ce qui surprend encore davantage, c'est que parmi des Barbares qu'on ne voit point s'étudier à bien parler, et qui n'ont jamais eu l'usage de l'écriture, il ne s'introduit point un mauvais mot, un terme impropre, une construction vicieuse, et que les enfans mêmes en conservent, jusque dans le discours familier, toute la pureté. D'ailleurs, la manière dont ils animent tout se qu'ils disent, ne laisse aucun lieu de douter qui ne comprennent toute la valeur de leur expressions, et toute la beauté de leur langue. Dans le Huron tout se conjugue; un certain artifice, que je ne vous expliquerois pas bien, y fait distinguer des verbes, les noms, les pronoms, les adverbes, &c. Les verbes simples ont une double conjugaison, l'une absoluë, l'autre réciproque. Les troisièmes personnes ont les deux genres, car il n'y en a que deux dans ces langues; à sçavoir, le genre noble, et le genre ignoble. Pour ce qui est des nombres et des tems, on y trouve les mêmes différences que dans le Grec. Par exemple, pour raconter un voyage, on s'exprime autrement si on la fait par terre, ou si on l'a fait par eau. Les verbes actifs se multiplient autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses, qui tombent sous leur action; comme le verbe, qui signifie Manger, varie autant de fois, qu'il y a de choses comestibles. L'action s'exprime autrement à l'égard d'une chose inanimée : ainsi voir un homme, et voir une pierre, ce sont deux verbes. Se servir d'une chose, qui appartient à celui qui s'en sert, ou à celui à qui on parle, ce sont autant de verbes différens. "Il y a quelque chose de tout cela dans la langue Algonquine, mais la manière n'en est pas la même, et je ne suis nullement en état de vous en instruire. Cependant, madame, si du peu, que je viens de vous dire, il s'ensuit que la richesse et la variété de ces langues les rendent extrêmement difficiles à apprendre, la disette et la stérilité où elles sont tombées ne causent pas un moindre embarras. Car, comme les peuples, quand nous avons commencé à les fréquenter, ignoroient presque tout ce dont ils n'avoient pas l'usage, ou qui ne tomboit pas |