"The women every where possess, in the nighest degree, the domestic virtues, and all others; they have more sweetness, more goodness, at least as much courage, but more sensibility, than the men. Good wives, and good mothers, their husbands and their children engage their whole attention; and their household affairs occupy all their time and all their cares; destined by the manners of their country to this domestic life, their education in other respects is too much neglected. They are amiable by their qualities and their natural disposition, but there are very few among them who are so from any acquired accomplishments. What they esteem to be virtue in wives is the virtue of the whole sex; and if in the United States malice may throw out her suspicion upon twenty, there are certainly not above ten of them who can be accused justly, and all the rest treat these with great rigour. I have heard some husbands complain, that the urgency of their wives makes this irreproachable virtue cost them dear. But where in the world is there a place where evil is not found by the side of good?

"The young women here enjoy a liberty, which to French manners would appear disorderly; they go out alone, walk with young men, and depart from them with the rest of the company in large assemblies; in short, they enjoy the same degree of liberty which married women do in France, and which married women here do not take. But they are far from abusing it: they endeavour to please, and the unmarried women desire to obtain husbands, and they know that they shall not succeed if their conduct becomes suspected. Sometimes they are abused by the men who deceive them, but

then they add not to the misfortune of having engaged their hearts to a cruel man the regret of deserving it, which might give them remorse. When they have obtained a husband, they love him, because he is their husband, and because they have not an idea that they can do otherwise; they revere custom by a kind of state religion, which never varies.

ness.

"I do not know whether there be many badly-managed families in America; but none appear so, though indeed they do not bear the image of the most desireable happiIn the inferior classes of society, where the manners of the women are as exempt from reproach as. in the more elevated classess, it is said that those of the young women are more easy. Yet according to all which I have been able to collect, it is the illusion of a marriage, which they believe to be decided, which engages them to give further liberties than they otherwise would do without this false hope. The fault therefore lies entirely in the men, who deceive the young women; unless it can be just to accuse those of libertinage who have not the prudence to guard themselves against it.

"There formerly was a custom in New England, and particularly in Connecticut, which various American travellers, in their accounts, attribute to vicious manners; but who, I confess, ought to accuse me of dulness, because it always appeared to me, on the contrary, to be the effect of the purest manners, and the most innocent intentions. A traveller arrived at the house of a friend, and the beds of the family were engaged. He was put to bed with the family-with the boys, if there were any, and with the girls, if there were no boys. It may be conceived, that it is easier for Eu

ropeaus

ropeans to compose pleasant tales, and to draw merry inferences from this custom, than to examine it in its native simplicity, and the beneficence of its intention.

"Hospitality among this new people was one of the virtues the most regarded as a duty, and the most religiously observed. Their houses were few and small. A traveller to whom an entrance into one of these had been denied at the end of the day, was not able to find another lodging near; their hospitable manners could not suffer him to be refused; and the idea of disorder did not enter the head of the parents, or that of their daughters, and the guest was admitted into the hospitable roof; and it was not remarked that he arrived inconveniently. The part of the clothing which was not thrown off, was rather a homage paid to the difference of sexes than a necessary means of security; and the next day the traveller departed, to find on the next evening another hospitable lodging. This custom, known by the name of bondelage, ceased, in proportion as houses became larger, the roads more frequented, and taverns established; but the day when the idea of modesty entered to make this reform, the manuers had lost their innocence.

"I have heard it said by men who had been admitted to this species of hospitality, and whose manners were certainly not very scrupulous, that the slightest attempt which they had ever made to abuse this reception had been received with violent repulses, and had caused them sometimes to be turned out of bed, and sometimes even out of the house; and no one ever told me that he had ever succeeded in attempting to take advantage of this custom; but their delicacy had not

prevented them from desiring it, and would not have hindered them from avowing it.

"There probably may have been examples to the contrary; but they could only be reckoned as excep tions, and too few to have authorised writing travellers to have played so much upon this custom, which, when it is considered at what period it took place, and with what intention it was established, is a credit to the manners of the country, and to the times in which it was practised. Be this as it may, the custom has ceased long ago, so that there is no more truth in the account of those writers who represent it to exist at present, than there is of justness and goodness in their judgment when they attack the morality of it, or pervert the intention.

"But the custom which exists still, and which may shock the manners of an European, is that of being admitted to sleep upon mattresses and upon blankets in the same chambers where the husband and wife sleep in their bed, and the children of the family, boys and girls in theirs. This custom is also to be attributed to the scarceness of houses, and their smallness, which is generally reduced to one chamber, which renders this practice necessary in those parts of the United States which are thinly inhabited. I have more than once found myself in such a lodging, when I have been travelling alone, or with companions of my journey, and when I have met with travellers to whom I was a stranger. The chambers are very small; and men often sleep near the bed of young and handsome girls, whose simplicity is not sufficiently alarmed to make any change in their customary nightdress. If the stranger so lodged has his sleep so retarded or broken

by

by the ideas suggested by a situation to which he is so little accustomed, it is neither the fault nor intention of his good and kind hosts.

"As to the large towns, and particularly commercial ones, the means of libertinism there are perhaps more numerous than in Europe, and I hear say that a great many husbands make use of these means. As in Europe, poverty and vanity of dress are the determining motive which lead the women into the paths of prostitution ;-so it is in the great towns of America: and among the married women, those whom the long absence and inattention of their husbands leave without sure means of subsistence, particularly the wives of seafaring men, are, if not absolutely the only ones, the most frequently accused of this illicit practice.

"I ought to add farther, that the condition of the girls who are kept in the houses set apart for prostitution, is viewed by the lower orders of the American people with weaker prepossessions than in Europe, and is looked upon merely in the same manner as every other trade: there are many examples of this description of women, who leave those situations, place themselves as servants, or are married, and make faithful domestics and honest wives. The municipal police connives at this kind of houses; but if the neighbours complain of any exterior scandal, they are instantly shut, and the inhabitants carried to the house of correction.

"The Americans marry young, especially in the country: the occasion which the young men, who generally establish themselves very early either in some new lands or in some trade, have for a wife to assist them in their labours, conduces to

these early marriages as much as the purity of manners.

"In the villages marriages are less frequent and not so hasty, especially since the introduction of luxury, renders an acquired fortune more necessary; and the young men hardly feel the necessity of loving, with the project of marriage, till they have already satisfied, or are in the way of satisfying, the more imperious necessity of gaining mo ney. But however good the marriages may be, the wife who dies is readily replaced by another.-In the country she is, as in Europe, a necessary friend to the management of domestic affairs-she is the soul of the family. In town she is so too.. She is an indispensable resource for domestic affairs, while her husband is engaged in his own affairs, as every one is in America; she is an assiduous companion, and a society ever ready to be found in the country where they are no other but that of the family, and where the children soon quit their paternal abode.

"To the sketch which I have just given of the manners of the people of the United States, I could add some features more, but which would augment but little the knowledge which I have tried to give of them collectively, or of them ensemble: besides, I am pressed to finish this article, which appears too long already.

"An European coming into the new world, and bringing with him the need of the usage of the politer attentions of that which he has quit. ted; he, above all, who brings with him the need of what we call in France the charms of society, which we know so well how to appreciate, of which we know how to participate, and which affords us so

many

a man will not find himself satisfied in America, and his recollections will be continually sprinkling his life with melancholy. He cannot, if his heart has an occasion for a friend, hope to find there the sweetness of a constant and avowed friendship. The inhabitants of the United States have been hitherto too much engaged in their respective occupations for the enticements of polished society, to be able to withdraw their attention from them; they have not leisure to consecrate to friendship.

"Such an European ought to have for a long time forgotten Europe, in order to live quite happy

lose the remembrance of it, or take with him there the dearest objects of his affection, he will lead in America a happy and tranquil life. He will there enjoy the blessing of liberty in the greatest extent which it is possible to desire in any polished country. He will see himself with an active people, easy in their circumstances, and happy. Every day will bring him to observe a new progress of this new country. He will see it every day take a step towards that strength and greatness to which it is called: towards that real independence which is for a nation the result of having the means of satisfying itself."

"TH

HE Indians, as I have already remarked, are for the most part very slightly made, and from a survey of their persons one would imagine that they were much better qualified for any pursuits that required great agility than great bodily strength. This has been the general opinion of most of those who have written on this subject. I am induced, however, from what I have myself been witness to, and from what I have collected from others, to think that the Indians are much more remarkable for their muscular strength than for their agility. At different military posts on the frontiers, where this subject has been agitated, races, for the sake of experiment, have frequently

been made between soldiers and Indians, and, provided the distance was not great, the Indians have almost always been beaten; but in a long race, where strength of muscle was required, they have without excep tion been victorious: in leaping also the Indians have been infallibly beaten by such of the soldiers as possessed common activity: but the strength of the Indians is most con spicuous in the carrying of burdens on their backs; they esteem it no thing to walk thirty miles a day for several days together under a load of eight stone, and they will walk an entire day under a load without taking any refreshment. In carrying burdens they make use of a sort of frame, somewhat similar to what

is commonly used by a glazier to carry glass; this is fastened by cords, or strips of tough bark or leather, round their shoulders, and, when the load is fixed upon the broad ledge at the bottom of the frame, two bands are thrown round the whole, one of which is brought across the forehead, and the other across the breast, and thus the load is supported. The length of way an Indian will travel in the course of the day, when unencumbered with a load, is astonishing. A young Wyandot, who, when peace was about to be made between the Indians and General Wayne, was employed to carry a message from his nation to the American officer, travelled but little short of eighty miles on foot in one day; and I was informed by one of the general's aides-du-camp, who saw him when he arrived at camp, that he did not appear in the least degree fatigued.

"Le P. Charlevoix observes, that the Indians seem to him to possess many personal advantages over us; their senses, in particular, he thinks much finer than ours; their sight is, indeed, quick and penetrating, and it does not fail them till they are far advanced in years, notwithstanding that their eyes are exposed so many months each winter to the dazzling whiteness of the snow, and to the sharp irritating smoke of wood fires. Disorders in the eyes are almost wholly unknown to them; nor is the slightest blemish ever seen in their eyes, excepting it be a result from some accident. Their hearing is very acute, and their sense ef smelling so nice, that they can tell when they are approaching a fire long before it is in sight.

"The Indians have most retentive memories; they will preserve. to their deaths a recollection of any 1799.

place they have once passed through; they never forget a face that they have attentively observed but for a few seconds; at the end of many years they will repeat every sentence of the speeches that have been delivered by different individuals in a public assembly; and has any speech been made in the council house of the nation, particularly deserving of remembrance, it will be handed down with the utmost accuracy from one generation to another, though perfectly ignorant of the use of hieroglyphics and letters; the only memorials of which they avail themselves are small pieces of wood, such as I told you were brought by them to Captain E--, preparatory to the delivery of the presents, and belts of wampum; the former are only used on trifling occasions, the latter never but on very grand and solemn ones. Whenever a conference, or a talk, as they term it, is about to be held with any neighbouring tribe, or whenever any treaty of national compact is about to be made, one of these belts, differing in some respect from every other that has been made before, is immediately constructed; each person in the assembly holds this belt in his hand whilst he delivers his speech, and when he has ended, he presents it to the next person that rises; by which ceremony each individual is reminded, that it behoves him to be cautious in his discourse, as all he says will be faithfully recorded by the belt. The talk being over, the belt is deposited in the hands of the principal chief.

"On the ratification of a treaty, very broad splendid belts are reciprocally given by the contracting parties, which are deposited amongst the other belts belonging to the nation.

G

At