ing different forms of nature and society. Every boat, that has descended from Pittsburgh, or the Missouri, to New Orleans, could publish a journal of no inconsiderable interest. The descent, if in autumn, has probably occupied fifty days. Until the boatmen had passed the mouth of the Ohio, they must have been in some sense amphibious animals, continually getting into the water, to work their boat off from shoals and sandbars. The remainder of the descent was amidst all the dangers of sawyers, sandbars, snags, storms, points of islands, wreck heaps, difficulty and danger of landing, and a great many anomalous trials and dangers. The whole voyage is a scene of anxiety, exposure and labor.

It follows, that the habits of the whole people of the West must as necessarily receive a peculiar bent and impulse, as those of Marblehead, Cape Cod, and Nantucket, in Massachusetts. The influence of these causes is already visibly impressed upon the manners and thoughts of the people. They are the manners of people accustomed, on going on board a steam boat, to see it fitted up with a glaring of splendor and display, perhaps not always in the best taste, but peculiarly calculated to captivate and dazzle the youthful eye. They come to this crowded scene of gaiety and splendor, this little moving city, from the solitude of forests and prairies, and remote dwellings. They find themselves amidst a mass of people, male and female, dressed as much as their means will allow. There are cards and wine, and novels, and young and gay people, and all conceivable artificial excitements, to stir up the youthful appetite for hilarity. When we consider what temptations these long and necessarily intimate associations present to minds, often not much regulated by religious discipline, or example, to undue gaiety, gallantry, intoxication and gambling, it is as surprizing, as it is honorable to the character of the West, that these voyages are generally terminated in so much quietness, morality and friendship.

It is true, the gay, the young, dashing and reckless spirits of the community are thus brought in contact, to act, and re-act upon each other and society. But there are always some graver spirits on the steam boats, whose presence inspires a certain degree of awe and restraint. A keen sense of the necessity of strong and unvarying regulations has created rigid rules, at least upon the better of them, for regulating the temporary intercourse on board the steam boats; and on the whole, there is an air of much more decorum and quietness, than could be inferred from knowing the circumstances of these temporary associations.

In tracing the result of these effects, we discover, that the idea of distance is very different in the head of a west country man from the same idea, as entertained by the inhabitant of Lancaster in Pennsylvania, or Worcester in Massachusetts. The conversation of the former indicates, that his train of thinking is modelled by

images drawn from great distances on long rivers, from extensive trips on steam boats, long absence from home, and familiarity with exposure, and the habit of looking danger and death in the face. Were it not foreign to the objects of this article, a thousand amusing examples could be given. The vocabulary of figures drawn from boats and steam boats, the phrases, metaphors, allusions, that grow out of the peculiar modes of life of this people, are at once amusing, singular and copious. The stump speech of a western aspirant for the favors of the people has a very appropriate garnish from this vocabulary, and compared with that of an Atlantic demagogue, would finely illustrate his peculiar modes of thinking.

The point most to our purpose in these remarks is, to enquire what influence this, and other great operating causes have upon the character, manners and morals of the people? It must be admitted, that while these frequent trips up and down the rivers, and more than all to New Orleans, give to the young people, and those who impart authority, impulse and tone to fashion and opinion, an air of society, ease and confidence; the young are apt at the same time to imbibe from the contagion of example, habits of extravagance, dissipation, and a rooted attachment to a wander ing life.

SKETCHES OF THE CHARACTER

OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SAVAGES.

As a race they have countenances that are generally unjoyous, stern and ruminating. It is with them either gloomy taciturnity, or bacchanalian revel. When you hear Indians laughing, you may generally infer, that they are intoxicated. An Indian seldom jests; generally speaks low and under his breath. Loquacity is with him an indication of being a trifling character, and of deeds inversely less, as his words are more. The young men, and even the boys, have a sullen, moody and unjoyous countenance, and seem to have little of that elastic gaiety, with which the benevolence of Providence has endowed the first days of the existence of most other beings. From this general remark, we ought, perhaps, to except the squaw, who shows some analogy of feeling to the white female. She has quicker sensibilities, is more easily excited, and when out of sight of her husband, or her parents, to whom these things are matters of espionage, and after reprehension, she laughs, converses, shows off her charms, and seems to feel the consciousness of pleasurable existence.

The males evidently have not the quick sensibilities, the acute perceptions of most other races. They do not easily sympathize with

what is enjoyment, or suffering about them. None, but an overwhelming excitement, can arouse them. They seem callous to all the passions, but rage. The instances, that have been given in such glowing colors, of their females having felt and displayed the passion of love towards individuals of the whites with such devoted constancy, have existed, no doubt. But it has never been our lot to witness any thing of the kind, and we must suppose, that the cases related, if true, were anomalies from the general character. We have once, or twice, seen fathers in their cabins caressing their children, and even these caresses were of their customary moody and stern character, and as though they were ashamed to do it. All their emotions seem to be deeply concentered in the inner man. Every one has remarked how little surprize they express, for whatever is new, strange, or striking. Their continual converse with woods, rocks and sterile deserts, with the roar of winds and storms, the solitude and gloom of the wilderness, their apparent exile from social nature, their alternations of satiety and hunger, their dark thoughts of revenge, and their deep purposes of bloody retaliation, their continual exposure to danger, their uncertain existence, their constant struggle with the wild elements to maintain it, the little hold which their affections seem to have upon life, the dark and interminable forests, through which they track their listless way,-these circumstances seem to have impressed a steady and unalterable gloom upon their countenances. If there be here and there a young man among them, who feels the freshness and vivacity of youthful existence, and shows any thing of the gaiety and volatility of other animals in the spring time of life, though otherwise born to distinction, he is denounced, as a trifling being, and the silent and sullen young savage will naturally take place of him. They seem to be born with an instinctive determination, to be independent, if possible, of nature and society, and to concentrate within themselves an existence, which at any moment they seem willing to lay down.

Their impassible fortitude, and endurance of suffering, their contempt of pain and death, invest their character with a kind of moral grandeur. Some part of this, we doubt not, is the result of their training, discipline, and exercise of self-control. But it is to be doubted, whether some part of this vaunted stoicism be not the result of a more than ordinary degree of physical insensibility. It has been said, but with how much truth we do not pretend to say, that in undergoing amputation, and other surgical operations, their nerves do not shrink, or show the same tendency to spasms with those of the whites. When the savage, to explain his insensibility to cold, called upon the white man to recollect, how little his own face was affected by it, in consequence of constant exposure to it, the savage added, my body is all face.' This increasing insensibility, transmitted from generation to generation, becomes finally

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inwrought with the whole web of animal nature, and the body of the savage at last approximates the insensibility of the hoof of horses. It is palpable, that there are great differences of this kind in the temperament of the whites. Considering the necessary condition of savage existence, this temperament is the highest boon of Providence. Of course, no ordinary or gentle stimulus excites them to action, or arouses their slumbering passions. The horrors of their dreadful warfare, the infernal rage of their battles, the demoniac fury of gratified revenge, the alternations of hope and despair in their gambling, to which they are addicted even beyond the gambling whites that surround them, the brutal exhiliration of drunkenness, these are the things, that awaken them to a strong and pleasurable consciousness of existence. Our excitements, our motives to joy or sorrow, what makes us smile, or weep, are things, that they either do not feel at all, or hold in proud disdain. When they feel excitements sufficient to arouse the imprisoned energies of their long and sullen meditations, it is like Eolus uncaging the whirlwinds. The tomahawk flies with unpitying and unsparing fury, and the writhing of their victims inspires a horrible joy. This is a dark picture, but is it not too true? The very fidelity of the picture ought to arouse benevolent exertion, to ameliorate their character and condition. Surely it is preposterous to admire, as some pretend to do, the savage character in the abstract. Let Christianity make every effort to convey her pity, her mercy and immortal hopes, to their rugged bosoms. Pastorals, that sing savage independence and generosity, and gratitude and happiness, in the green woods, may be Arcadian enough to those, who never saw savages in their wigwams, or never felt the apprehension of their nocturnal and hostile yell from the depth of the forest about their dwelling. But they grate on the ear of the people of the West. Let us never undervalue the comfort and security of municipal and social life, nor the sensibilities, charities and endearments of a Christian home. Let our great effort be to tame and domesticate them. The happiness of savages steeled against feeling, at war with nature, the elements, and each other, can have no existence, except in the visionary dreamings of those, who have never contemplated their actual condition.

It is curious to remark, that different as are their religions, their discipline and their standards of opinion, in most respects, from ours, in the main they have much the same notion of a great, respectable and good man, that we have. A man of no account among the whites, when domesticated among them, would be equally trifling in their estimation. If we mark the universal passion for military display among our own race, and observe what place is assigned by common feeling, as well as history, to military prowess, we shall hardly consider it a striking difference from our nature, that bravery and contempt of death, and reckless daring,

command the first place in their homage. But apart from these views, the same traits of character, that entitle a man to the appellation of virtuous and good, and that ensure respect among us, have much the same bearing upon the estimation of the Indians. In conversing with them, we are struck with surprize, to observe how widely and deeply the obligations of truth, constancy, honor, generosity and forbearance are felt and understood among them.

Foreign writers have said, and the sentiment has been echoed by philosophers of our own country, that they were less subject to animal propensities, than the whites. It has been considered a physical proof of this, that they are seldom observed to have a beard. It is well known, that a young Indian warrior is a most accomplished dandy, most scrupulously observant of the fashion, and spends as much time in ornamenting his person, as a Parisian. We have occasionally seen a savage, who had the courage to be singular, and who had a beard, that would not do dishonor to an Oriental. One of the most troublesome employments of a young savage is, to pull out the starting crop with tweezers. Exhausting journies, a diet often meagre from necessity, exposure, and the indulgence of passions of a deeper character, as ambition, vindictiveness, and the appetite for war, would, probably, weaken, if not extinguish in whites, passions, which are fostered by indolence, plenty and repose. But when savages are placed in positions favorable to the developement of animal propensities, we have seen no indications, that they are feebler, or less intense in them, than in whites. When we look upon the naked elements, upon which in some sense their children are cast, when we consider how unfavorable is their condition for rearing children, we are astonished at seeing so many in their cabins. Of the squaws of mature age, that we have seen, a very great proportion had their babe, either swinging in its bark cradle, suspended between two trees, or if the mother was travelling, hung to her back by a bark cage, not unlike the shell of a tortoise. Its copper-colored and flattened nose is seen peeping from this cage, like that of the terrapin from its shell; and even the infant seems to feel, that wailing is to no purpose, and a person must be a sojourner in an Indian wigwam, to learn, that one of their children can cry.

It is to be lamented, that the intercourse of the whites among them has taught a very different doctrine, from that of their being destitute of animal propensities. Numberless fatal cases of jealousy are recorded of their young warriors, in reference to the relations of the whites with their females, while among them. The manners of our people in such cases have too often been an outrage upon decency and humanity.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]