um. Thus, as I travel on, I am disgusted, or I am enchanted; I despair or I exult by turns; and these inconsistent and apparently contradictory emotions and impressions I set down as they arise, leaving you to reconcile them as well as you can, and make out the result for yourself.

It is seldom that in this country the mind is ever carried backward by associations or recollections of any kind. Horace Walpole said of Italy, that it was "a land in which the memory saw more than the eye," and in Canada hope must play the part of me. mory. It is all the difference between seed-time and harvest. We are rich in anticipation, but poor in possession-more poor in memorials. Some vague and general traditions, of no interest whatever to the ignorant settlers, do indeed exist, of horrid conflicts between the Hurons and the Iroquois, all along these shores, in the time and before the time of the French dominion; of the enterprise and daring of the early fur traders; above all, of the unrequited labours and sacrifices of the missionaries, whether Jesuits or Moravians, or Methodists, some of whom perished in tortures; others devoted themselves to the most hor. rible privations-each for what he believed to be the cause of truth, and for the diffusion of the light of salvation; none near to applaud the fortitude with which they died, or to gain hope and courage from their example. During the last war between Great Britain and the United States*-that war, in its commencement dishonourable to the Americans, in its conclusion shameful to the British, and in its pro

• In 1813.

gress disgraceful and demoralising to both;-that war, which began and was continued in the worst passions of our nature, cupidity and vengeance ;which brought no advantage to any one human be. ing-not even the foolish noise and empty glory which wait oftentimes on human conflicts; a war scarce heard of in Europe, even by the mother coun. try, who paid its cost in millions, and in the blood of some of her best subjects; a war obscure, fratrici. dal, and barbarous, which has left behind no effect but a mutual exasperation and distress along the frontiers of both nations; and a hatred which, like hatred between near kinsmen, is more bitter and ir. reconcilable than any hostility between the merce. nary armies of rival nations; for here, not only the two governments quarrelled, but the people, their institutions, feelings, opinions, prejudices, local and personal interests, were brought into collision ;during this vile, profitless, and unnatural war, a bat. tle was fought near Chatham, called by some the battle of the Thames, and by others the battle of the Moravian towns, in which the Americans, under General Harrison, beat General Proctor with consi. derable loss. But it is chiefly worthy of notice, as the last scene of the life of Tecumseh, a Shawanee chief, of whom it is possible you may not have heard, but who is the historical hero of these wild regions. Some American writers call him the "Indian Napoleon; both began their plans of policy and con. quest about the same time, and both about the same time terminated their career, the one by captivity, the other by death. But the genius of the Indian

warrior and his exploits were limited to a narrow field along the confines of civilization, and their record is necessarily imperfect. It is clear that he had entertained the daring and really magnificent plan formerly embraced by Pontiac-that of uniting all the Indian tribes and nations in a league against the whites. That he became the ally of the British was not from friendship to us, but hatred to the Americans, whom it was his first object to repel from any further encroachments on the rights and territories of the Red men-in vain! The attempts of a noble and a fated race, to oppose, or even to delay for a time, the rolling westward of the great tide of civilization, are like efforts to dam up the rapids of Niagara. The moral world has its laws, fixed as those of physical nature. The hunter must make way before the agriculturist, and the Indian must learn to take the bit between his teeth, and set his hand to the ploughshare, or perish. As yet I am inclined to think that the idea of the Indians becoming what we call a civilized people, seems quite hopeless; those who entertain such benevolent anticipations should come here, and behold the effect which three centuries of contact with the whites have produced on the nature and habits of the Indian. The benevolent theorists in England should come and see with their own eyes that there is a bar to the civilization of the Indians, and the increase or even preservation of their numbers, which no power can overleap. Their own principle, that "the Great Spirit did indeed create both the red man and the white man, but created them essentially different in

nature and manners," is not perhaps far from the truth.

There is a large settlement of Moravian Indians located above Chatham, on the river Thames. They are a tribe of Delawares, and have been for a number of years congregated under the care of Moravian Missionaries, and living on the lands reserved for them by the British Government; a fertile and beautiful region, comprehending about one hundred thousand acres of the richest soil of the province. Part of this district has been purchased from them by the present Lieutenant-governor; a measure for which he has been severely censured, for the tribe were by no means unanimous in consenting to part with their possessions. About one hundred and fifty refused to agree, but they were in the minority, and twentyfive thousand acres of rich land have been ceded to the government, and are already lotted out in town. ships.*

The Moravian missionary from whom I had these particulars, seemed an honest, common-place man, pious, conscientious, but very simple, and very ignorant on every subject but that of his mission. He told me further, that the Moravians had resided among these Delawares from generation to genera. tion, since the first establishment of the mission in

The terms are 1501. a year for ever-a sum which the governor truly calls "trifling." The "for ever," is like to be of short duration, for the tribe will soon be lost beyond the Missouri, or extinct, or amalgamated: these pensions also are seldom paid in dollars, but in goods, on which there is always a profit.

the Southern States, in 1735; from that period to 1772, seven hundred and twenty Indians had been baptized. The War of the Revolution, in all its results, had fallen heavily on them; they had been driven northwards from one settlement to another, from the banks of the Delaware to that of the Ohiofrom the Ohio beyond the lakes-and now they were driven from this last refuge. His assistant, Brother Volger, was about to emigrate west with the one hundred and fifty families who objected to the sale of their lands. They were going to join a remnant of their nation beyond the Missouri; and he added, that he himself would probably soon follow with the rest, for he did not expect that they would be able to retain the residue of their lands; no doubt they would be required for the use of the white settlers, and if government urged on the purchase, they had no means of resisting. He admitted that only a small portion of the tribe under his care and tuition could be called Christians; there were about two hundred and thirty baptized out of seven hundred, principally women and children, and yet the mission had been established and supported for more than a century. Their only chance, he said, was with the children; and on my putting the question to him in a direct form, he replied decidedly, that he considered the civilization and conversion of the Indians, to any great extent, a hopeless task.

He admitted the reasonableness and the truth of those motives and facts, which had induced the Lieu. tenant-governor to purchase so large a portion of the Delaware hunting-grounds: that they lay in the