It reflects equal honour upon our society and the honourable assembly of our province, to acknowledge, that we have always found the latter willing to encourage by their patronage, and reward by their liberality, all our schemes for promoting useful knowledge. What may we not expect from this harmony between the sciences and government! Methinks I see canals cut, rivers once impassable rendered navigable, bridges erected, and roads improved, to facilitate the exportation of grain. I see the banks of our rivers vying in fruitfulness with the banks of the river of Egypt. I behold our farmers nobles; our merchants princes. But I forbear—imagination cannot swell with the subject.
I beg leave to conclude, by deriving an argument from our connection with the legislature, to remind my auditors of the duty they owe to the society. Patriotism and literature are here connected together; and a man cannot neglect the one, without being destitute of the other. Nature and our ancestors have completed their works among us; and have left us nothing to do, but to enlarge and perpetuate our own happiness.
Footnotes:
[1] This Inquiry was the subject of an Anniversary Oration. The style of an oration is therefore preserved in many parts of it.
[2] Many of the facts contained in the Natural History of Medicine among the Indians in this Inquiry, are taken from La Hontan and Charlevoix's histories of Canada; but the most material of them are taken from persons who had lived or travelled among the Indians. The author acknowledges himself indebted in a particular manner to Mr. Edward Hand, surgeon in the 18th regiment, afterwards brigadier-general in the army of the United States, who, during several years' residence at Fort Pitt, directed his inquiries into their customs, diseases, and remedies, with a success that does equal honour to his ingenuity and diligence.
[3] Natural History of Guiana.
[4] Cæsar, in his history of the Gallic war, gives the same account of the ancient Germans. His words are “Qui diutissimi impuberes permanserunt, maximam inter suos ferunt laudem: hoc ali staturam, ali vires, nervasque confirmari putant.” Lib. vi. xxi.
[5] Theory of Moral Sentiments.
[6] Since the intercourse of the white people with the Indians, we find some of them deformed in their limbs. This deformity, upon inquiry, appears to be produced by those accidents, quarrels, &c. which have been introduced among them by spiritous liquors.
[7] Indian children are not exempted from worms. It is common with the Indians, when a fever in their children is ascribed by the white people to worms (from their being discharged occasionally in their stools), to say, “the fever makes the worms come, and not the worms the fever.”