in evidence of Christian claims to the country, and they are here yet, unaltered in all the essential points of character, opinions, and institutions—a moral phenomenon in the creation of God. If we have no broken columns nor dilapidated walls to carry us back to the infancy of time, few crumbling monuments to teach us lessons of humility, we have a living memorial, more solemn than these; it has been around us and among us; but it is receding from us-whether to plant itselt in the solitude of the prairies and forests, in the vast regions of the West, and there to flourish or to die, is known only to Him, who controls the destiny of the red man, as well as of the white. Let us indulge the hope that the prospects of the aboriginal race are brightening; that their removal and reestablishment in the trans-Mississippi world will elevate their hopes, stimulate their exertions, improve their condition, and gradually prepare them for the full blessings of Christianity and civilization. But whether they are destined to rise from their ruins, or to disappear, they still present one of the most interesting topics of speculation, which can engage the attention of the rational inquirer-one of the most singular chapters in the whole philosophy of human nature. Much has, indeed, been written about them-much, no doubt, that is true, but a great deal that is false, and still more having a ten-. dency to make false impressions. This is not the time nor the place to enter into an investigation of the causes, which have operated to give us so much of the romance, so little of the reality of Indian life. Some of these, however, are upon the surface, and may be glanced at. Our nomadic tribes are borderers, keeping upon the circle of civilization, and receding as this advances. They speak peculiar languages, radically different in their syntax and structure, from those of the nations of Christendom. They are brought into contact, by their business and intercourse, with persons having neither the inclination nor the information necessary to pursue investigations into the moral habits, history, and condition of this

primitive race. They are, withal, suspicious, neither seeking nor yielding confidence with facility, incapable of abstract speculations, or of aiding in them, credulous, and too often insensible to the obligations of veracity. The difficulty of penetrating the recesses of such a people is obvious, increased as these are by the incompetency of the usual medium of communication. Under such untoward circumstances, what has already been done, instead of discouraging, should stimulate us. Our military posts furnish excellent places of observation, where the best materials for Indian history can be collected; and the graduates of the Military Academy, who are sent there, could not devote their leisure to a pursuit more interesting in itself, nor richer in the rewards it offers. Their education gives them the proper qualifications, and the whole philosophy of the Indian condition is open to their investigation. A proper series of inquiries, prepared with a view to a common operation, and transmitted to these aboriginal observatories, would furnish a most interesting subject of inquiry; and, if prosecuted with zeal, would lead to the collection of a mass of materials far more valuable than has been heretofore procured. The traditionary legends of the Indians are passing away. All that is not arrested within a few years will be beyond the reach of recovery. Although their tales of former ages cannot be viewed as authentic materials for history, yet, they may dimly shadow out events, which have left no other memorials; and they are valuable as the monuments of a rude people, illustrating their peculiar opinions.

The era of the discovery of the American continent was a remarkable one in the history of human society. The decay of the Roman empire was attended by circumstances too well known to require enumeration. As the star of her ascendency declined, knowledge declined with it, and a long night of ignorance rested upon the human intellect. This period of mental darkness furnishes a subject of profound investigation; and its phenomena present a problem, whose complete

solution is yet reserved for some acute and fortunate historian. After the lapse, however, of centuries, the dawn of a brighter day began to appear. Soon the invention of printing and of the mariner's compass, the revival of the arts and sciences, the progress of society, and the spirit of maritime discovery combined to give new energy to the human intellect, and new vigor to the exertions of communities and individuals. It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that the Genoese navigator boldly passed the boundaries, which till then had repelled all efforts to penetrate beyond them, and opened, to the enterprise of one continent, a new and boundless theatre for exertion in another. Few events in the history of man can compare with this discovery. We are yet in the infancy of our career, and already the march of events has hurried on with an accelerated progress, which no sagacity could have forseen, and which no power can check. The impress of civilization is upon the whole continent, from Labrador to Cape Horn. Thirteen independent communities have asserted the right of self-government and have assumed their stations among the nations of the world. The Alleghany and the Andes have been ascended, the Mississippi and the Oronoko have been navigated, the prairies and the pampas have been traversed and explored. Such a field of enterprise and exertion, under circumstances so favorable to the development of the human powers, has never been offered to the industry and emulation of man.

It is a curious and interesting topic of speculation, and one worthy of the attention of the philosophical historian, to trace the causes, which have produced such a marked difference in the character and progress of the colonies, founded by the different European nations upon this continent; more particularly in those, which owe their origin to Spain and England; as the decendants of these countries have almost divided between them the entire hemisphere. At the period of the discovery, Spain was one of the most prosperous nations on the

globe. In literature, in arts, in arms, she was at the head of the great European confederacy. Upon land, she was powerful and victorious, and soon after, she held in captivity the King of France for many years. Upon the ocean, her armada rode in triumph, and if England was saved from invasion, she owed her safety, less to her own prowess, than to that elemental war, which human might cannot withstand. We have seen, in our own times, another armada, marching to conquest with a power never, perhaps, united into one body since the days of Xerxes; we have seen it wrecked in the frozen regions of the north, scattered, broken, destroyed, by the storms of an arctic winter. If such lessons are melancholy, they are instructive instructive to rulers and people. They inculcate humanity and moderation. They show how Providence frustrates the hopes and efforts of the warrior. And while they exhibit the energy and success of defence under apparently unequal circumstances, they tend to check the pride of conquest, and to render the fate of nations more stable.

Spain prosecuted her maritime adventures with great spirit and success. The colonists she sent out were numerous, powerful, well equipped, having little to fear from the aboriginal inhabitants, and were planted in the most favored regions of the globe. Her early efforts were directed against a half-civilized people; and her armed hordes, infuriated with the passion for gold, descended upon this unfortunate race with the violence and the destructive effects of a whirlwind. The contest, if contest it could be called, was soon over, and when opposition ceased, oppression began. Thenceforth, a just system of policy and a course of gradual improvement, would have rendered these western empires enduring monuments of Spanish wisdom. What they have been, and are, is known to the world.

The progress and result of the colonization system of England presents a far different picture. Her efforts were directed to a less genial glimate, to a less fertile soil. Her

bands of emigrants were not armed soldiers, prepared to overcome and seize regions in the possession of a people, who had made considerable advances in cultivation and improvement. The principles of religious liberty sent to these shores the founders of a large and interesting section of the republic. And who, that looks back upon their desperate efforts, upon their quiet resignation, upon their abandonment of all the comforts of life, can withhold the tribute of admiration for their generous devotion, and for that high and holy enthusiasm, which enabled them to dare and do all that history has recorded of their trials and sufferings and exertions. Never was bark freighted with a more precious load than the Mayflower, which bore the little band destined to lay the foundation of a mighty community in the deep forests of the western world; which bore them to their home, to be made such by their toils, their anxieties, their hopes, by the triumphant consolation that the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, was theirs, without the persecution of ruler, priest, or people, and to be made such by their graves. They stepped upon the monumental rock of Plymouth, the door to them of a new world, in the depth of winter, and wholly unprepared for its rigor. To depict their sufferings were a useless task. History has recorded these in imperishable terms. They passed through them, one after another, with the fortitude of Christians, and the exertions of men, and found rest in death.

Characters are sometimes best described by a single sketch presenting that ruling passion

"Where alone

"The wild are constant and the cunning known."

Such a sketch is furnished by the debarkation of the Puritans upon the coast of New England, and by the descent of Cortez upon the Mexican shore. When the English colonists left the old world, their last act was to implore the Divine blessing upon their enterprise, and when they reached the new,