they can secure and guard whatever they wish to preserve.

After making some provision for his dress and habitation, a savage will perceive the necessity of preparing proper arms with which to assault or repel an enemy. This, accordingly, has early exercised the ingenuity and invention of all rude nations. The first offensive weapons were doubtless such as chance presented, and the first attempts to improve upon these were extremely awkward and simple. Clubs and lances armed with flints and bones are weapons known to the rudest nations. But for the purpose of annoying their enemies while at a distance, the bow and arrow is the most easy invention. This weapon is familiar to the inhabitants of every quarter of the globe. Some of the tribes in America were so destitute of art and ingenuity that they had not attained to the discovery of this simple invention, and seem to have been unacqainted with the use of any missive weapon. The sling was little known to the people of North America, but in several of the provinces of Chili, and those of Patagonia, they fastened stones about the size of a fist to each end of a leathern thong eight feet in length, and, swinging these round their heads, threw them with such dexterity that they seldom missed the object at which they aimed.

Among people whose food and habitations are perfectly simple, their domestic utensils are few and rude. Some of the southern tribes had discovered the art of forming vessels of earthen ware, and baking them in the sun so that they could endure the fire. In North America, they hollowed a piece of hard wood into the form of a kettle, and filling it with water, brought it to boil by putting

red-hot stones in it*. These vessels they used in preparing part of their provisions, and this may be considered as a step towards refinement and luxury: for in the rudest state, men were not acquainted with any method of dressing their victuals but by roasting them on the fire; and among several tribes in America this is the only species of cookery yet known. But the master-piece of art among the savages of America is in the construction of their canoes. An Esquimaux shut up in his boat of whale-bone, covered with the skin of seals, can brave that stormy ocean on which the barrenness of his country compels him to depend for the chief part of his subsistence. The people of Canada venture upon their rivers and lakes in boats made of the bark of trees, and so light that two men can carry them wherever shallows or cataracts obstruct the navigation. In these frail vessels they undertake and accomplish long voyages.

But in every attempt towards industry among the Americans, one striking quality in their character is conspicuous. They apply to work without ardour, carry it on with little activity, and, like children, are easily diverted from it. Their operations advance under the hand with such slowness, that an eye-witness compares it to the impercepti ble progress of vegetation. They will suffer one part of a roof to decay and perish, before they complete the other. This slowness of the Americans may be severally imputed to the little value put

* See Goldsmith's Geography, p. 431, 1st edition. To this work we can with pleasure refer our youthful readers for accurate and entertaining descriptions of the manners, customs, and distresses of all nations in the known world, illustrated with a multitude of engravings and maps.

upon their time, to the awkward and defective nature of their tools, and to their cold and phlegmatic temper: it is almost impossible to rouse them from that habitual indolence in which they are sunk; nothing but war and hunting can excite in them a single vigorous effort.

VII. We next come to the consideration of their religious rites and tenets, which have been imperfectly understood, and in general represented with little fidelity. There are two fundamental doctrines upon which the whole system of natural religion is established. These respect the being of God and the immortality of the soul. In the early and most rude periods of savage life, dispositions of this nature are entirely unknown. When the intellectual powers are just beginning to unfold, their feeble exertions are directed towards a few objects of primary necessity and use. Several tribes of America have no idea whatever of a supreme Being, and no rites of religious worship; they pass their days, like the animals around them, without knowledge or veneration of any superior power. It is, however, only in the most uncultivated state of nature that men are totally insensible to impressions of an invisible power. The human mind, to which the principles of religion are peculiarly adapted, soon opens to the reception of ideas which are destined to be the source of consolation amidst the calamities of life. Among some of the American tribes may be discerned apprehensions of some invisible and powerful beings. These seem to be suggested rather by the dread of impending evils, than to flow from gratitude for blessings received. While Nature holds on her course with uniform and undisturbed regularity, men enjoy the benefits resulting from it without inquiring concerning

its cause. But every deviation from this regular course rouses and astonishes them: they search for the reasons of it with eager curiosity. Dejected with calamities which oppress him, and exposed to dangers which he cannot repel, the savage no longer relies upon himself; he feels his own impotence, and sees no prospect of being extricated but by the interposition of some unseen arm. Hence, in all unenlightened nations, the first rites which bear any resemblance to acts of religion have for their object to avert evils which men suffer or dread.

Among other tribes who have made great progress in improvement, may be discerned some feeble pointing towards more just and adequate conceptions of the power which presides in nature. They seem to perceive that there must be some universal cause to whom all things are indebted for their being, whom they denominate the Great Spirit. But their ideas are faint and confused; and the word spirit has a meaning with them very different from that which we assign to it. They believe their gods to be of human form, though of a nature more excellent than man, whose protection they implore when threatened with danger or oppressed with calamity. The sun was the chief object of worship among the Natchez. In their temples, which were constructed with magnificence, and decorated with various ornaments, they preserved a perpetual fire, as the purest emblem of their divinity. Ministers were appointed to watch and feed the sacred flame. To this great luminary they paid their daily devotions, and instituted in his honour stated returning festivals. This is, perhaps, the most refined species of superstition known in America, and one of the most

natural, as well as most seducing. The sun is the apparent source of the joy, fertility, and life, diffused through nature; and while the human mind contemplates and admires his universal and animating energy, its admiration is apt to stop short at what is visible, without reaching to the unseen cause; and pays that adoration to the beneficial work of God which is due only to him who formed it.

Among the people of Bogota the sun and moon were the chief objects of veneration. Their system of religion was more complete, though less pure, than that of the Natchez. They had temples, altars, priests, sacrifices, and that long train of ceremonies which superstition introduces wherever she has fully established her dominion over the minds of men. But the rites of their worship were cruel and bloody.

With respect to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the sentiments of the Americans were more united. It may be traced from one extremity of America to the other; in some regions more faint and obscure, in others more perfectly developed, but no where unknown. The most uncivilized of its savage tribes do not apprehend death as the extinction of being. All entertain

hopes of a future and more happy state, where they shall be for ever exempt from the calamities which embitter human life in its present condition. The highest place in this state they assign to the skilful hunter and successful warrior: and as they imagine that departed spirits begin their career anew in the world whither they are gone, that their friends may not enter upon it defenceless and unprovided, they bury, together with the bodies of the dead, their bow, their arVOL. XXIV. L.