cut from large skins, and do not encumber the free motion of the limbs. The female savage takes care to hold the children, thus bundled up, that their heads lie much higher than their feet, and to preserve the fœces from injuring their health, or making them offensive, they adjust the rind or shell of a birch-tree, into the form of a gutter. Children are less encumbered in South America, where they use no manner of body clothes, but lay them quite naked on the ground, or in a hammock, till they are able to go alone, the result of which is that deformity is unknown, and a hardness of constitution grows with their years.-Nations differ in respect to what constitutes the beauty of infants. Negro savages bruise the noses of their children to flatten them, and widen their nostrils; others bruise the tip of the nose only, and make holes in their cheeks; the Mississippians force the child's head into the shape of a mitre, and the Chinese cripple the feet of their infants. The complexion of the Indians is generally olive or copper-colour, their hair black. As marriage among the American Indians is a more unconfined state than with us, it follows that they carry their inhumanity to such a length as to destroy the fruits produced by the commerce between men and women. Their feelings are different to those of the Europeans; they are under no concern about marrying beneath themselves, but unite when and in

what manner they please. They consider their children as benefits, not, as they too frequently are in Europe, burdens. Experience convinces us that they who are burdened by the fewest cares. are the most careful of their families, and that such as confine their happiness to few casualties, meet with numberless charms in that medium with which nature is always satisfied.

The children are early taught the use of the bow and the arrow, and a kind of club; to hunt on foot or on wild horses, and endure privations of rest and food. This is all the education they receive; and, with the exception of the Peruvians and Mexicans, their knowledge is only connected with their immediate necessities, and those natural principles which the young and the aged, the child and the parent, feel in common every where.

Lescarbot has observed that the method of naming children is not unlike that of the Europeans. In New France the eldest son goes by his father's name, with a diminutive particle at the end. The second son is named as the father pleases, but the third has the name of the second, with a diminutive termination ;-as in Italian (and other languages) fanciullo is a child, and fanciullino, a little child. Doubtless names must have originated from some actual qualities of excellence or deficiency. The Brasilians, Mexicans, and Peruvians, name their children from caprice or some

appropriate feeling, and this is clearly explained in Lewis and Clarke's travels, where an Indian name of twelve or twenty letters is translated into a sentence of several words, expressive of some quality of or event which had happened to the party.Among the Indian tribes of the Ottoes and Mahas, &c. they met with the following names of war: riors, besides Great Blue Eyes, Little Thief, and Big Horse, there were Karkapaha (or Crow's head,) and Nenasawa (or Black Cat,) Missouris ; and Sananona (or Iron Eyes,) Neswaunja (or Big Ox,) Stageaunja (or Big Blue Eyes,) and Wasashaco (or Brave Man,) all Ottoes. These two tribes speak very nearly the same language. The Indians have no knowledge of letters, but hieroglyphics were in use among the Peruvians and Mexicans when invaded by Cortes and Pizarro.

Respecting their dress, Americans, as well as Europeans, use ear-rings, bracelets, and necklaces; as well as pendants from the nose and lips; which are worn by both sexes. The Brasilians bore a hole through the lower lip of their young children, passing lengthwise a bone as white as ivory by way of ornament, or fixing a jasper or other stone in a hole made in their cheeks. Shells, glass baubles, bits of copper, or quill-shaped pieces of metal, strung together, form ornaments round the ancles, wrists, or body. The decorations of the head are frontlets of feathers of various colors,

paint of the most glaring hues are daubed over their persons, and a female Indian is as proud of her figure, after it has undergone the embellishment of her toilette, as the French mademoiselle when equipped for conquest.

The principle which gives rise to love is as innate in the Indian as the European, and the difference is only in the manner of revealing itself. The Canadian savage, who lies down at the feet of his mistress's bed till such time as she consents to blow out the match he presents to her, is not more singular than the beau who leers and sighs at his mistress to obtain possession of her, and the old Iroquois dances as gracefully with the match in his hand in the presence of a young girl of his own country, as the old gentleman among us caresses the blooming maid of sixteen. We must not suppose, because we appropriate to the natives of the vast American continent the term of savages, that they are void of natural and proper sentiments. It is an established rule that the parents' consent must be obtained before the young woman can be wedded, and it is required also that the lover should be sufficiently industrious to maintain his family. But the articles of household furniture consisting chiefly of a hammock and some beaver-skins, an establishment is soon formed, and the children are early taught to hunt and fish for their subsistence.

The Indians never marry within the three degrees of consanguinity; the son and the mother, the father with the daughter, and the brother with the sister; all contracts are verbal, and jointures are unknown. An American dates his wife's fidelity from the day of their marriage, but the unmarried girls are free agents.

We shall conclude these remarks with the submission that the Indian women pay their husbands. As they confine themselves religiously to their domestic concerns, they give themselves less airs than many of the European wives. Such modern ladies of fashion among us who have seen the splendid part of the world, cannot reconcile themselves to this principle of domestic submission, and think such a state is only suited to the wife of a Topinambou, or a Hottentot.

M. Du Lac has observed, that it would be too long and too deficient in interest, to enter into a minute detail of the amours, &c. of each nation. He only relates the customs generally observed by the chiefs, who are scrupulously attentive to follow the customs of their ancestors. "When a

young man wishes to marry the daughter of a chief, he applies either to his father or some of his relations, who goes and entreats the father of the girl to consent. A definitive answer is never given until all her relations have been consulted. They examine how many brave men and expert hunters