"The mountain on which Quebec is built, and the hills along the River St. Lawrence, consist of it for some miles together on both sides of Quebec. About a yard from the surface this stone is quite compact, and without any cracks, so that one can not perceive that it is a slate, its particles being imperceptible. It lies in strata, which vary from three or four inches to twenty thick and upward. In the mountains on which Quebec is built the strata do not lie horizontal, but dipping, so as to be nearly perpendicular, the upper ones pointing northwest and the lower ones southeast. From hence it is, the corners of these strata always strike out at the corners into the streets, and cut the shoes in pieces. I have likewise seen some strata inclining to the northward, but rather perpendicular, as the former. The strata are divided by narrow cracks, which are commonly filled by fibrous white gypsum, which can sometimes be got loose with a knife, if the larger stratum of slate above it is broken in pieces; and in that case it has the appearance of a thin white leaf. The large cracks are almost filled up with transparent quartz crystals of different sizes. One part of the mountain contains great quantities of these crystals, from which the corner of the mountain which lies to S.S.E. of the palace has got the name of Pointe de Diamante, or Diamond Point."—Kalm, in Pinkerton, vol. xiii., p. 678.
No. LXX.
"The Cherokees are planters and farmers, tradespeople and mechanics. They have corn-fields and orchards, looms and work-shops, schools and churches, and orderly institutions. In 1824, when the population of the Cherokees was 15,560 persons, it included 1277 negroes; they had 18 schools, 36 grist-mills, 13 saw-mills, 762 looms, 2486 spinning-wheels, 172 wagons, 2923 plows, 7683 horses, 22,531 black cattle, 46,732 swine, 2546 sheep, 430 goats, 62 blacksmiths' shops, &c., with several public roads, and fences, and turnpikes. The natives carry on a considerable trade with the adjoining states, and some of them export cotton to New Orleans. A printing-press has been established for several years, and a newspaper, written partly in the English and partly in the Cherokee language, has been successfully carried on. This paper, called the Cherokee Phœnix, is written entirely by a Cherokee, a young man under thirty. The missionaries among them declare that the converts generally are very attentive to preaching, and very exemplary in their conduct. Public worship, conducted by native members of the church, is held in three or four places remote from the station. The pupils are making great progress at the schools. Many of them are leaving the schools with an education sufficient for life. New Echota is the seat of government of the Cherokees. The provisions of the Constitution are placed under six heads, divided into sections. The trial by jury is in full operation. The right of suffrage is universal; every free male citizen who has attained the age of eighteen years is entitled to vote at public elections."—Stuart's Three Years in North America, vol. ii., p. 143.
"The Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws certainly hold out a promise of the gradual attainment of civilization.... The recent invention of written characters by a full-blood Cherokee,[236] consisting of eighty-four signs expressing all the dominant sounds of that language, and the great number of half words among them, are both favorable to this change of life. The best proof that they are advancing from their savage state to a higher grade is, that their numbers increase, while almost all other tribes spread over the American continent far and near are known to diminish in numbers so rapidly that common observation alone would enable any one to predict their utter extinction before the lapse of many years."—Latrobe, Rambler in America, vol. i., p. 163.
The Stockbridge Indians (so called from Stockbridge, Massachusetts) are, upon the whole, considered to have made greater attainments in the useful arts of civilized life, and also in the Christian religion, than any other tribe of the aborigines. They heard the preaching of Brainard and Edwards, and have enjoyed Christian privileges and education with little interruption for more than ninety years. The Stockbridge Indians, and the Oneidas, under the celebrated Oneida half-blood Mr. Williams, were the principal of those unfortunate New York Indians who were persuaded, on the faith of solemn treaties, to leave their homes in New York and form new settlements among the wild Indian tribes beyond the Mississippi. One of the visitors to these new settlements, after the Indians had been a few years established there, thus describes the improvements they had effected in this remote wilderness: "On the east bank of Fox River they had in the course of some half dozen years reared a flourishing settlement; built houses and barns in the usual style of the white settlements under similar circumstances; cleaved away portions of the forest, and reduced their farms to an interesting state of improvement; organized and brought into solitary operation a political and civil economy; established schools, and in 1830 were building a very decent Christian church; had erected mills and machinery; exhibiting, in a word, a most interesting phasis of civilization, along with the purest morals under the simplest manners."—Colton's Tour among the Northwest Indians, vol. i., p. 203. This American writer is justly indignant at the cruel and dishonest policy of the American government in driving these unfortunate wanderers away from the new home solemnly promised them into the wild and dreary regions of the Far West, as soon as the settlement at Fox River was ascertained to possess sufficient natural advantages to entitle it to form a part of the Union.
FOOTNOTES:
[236] "It is remarkable that a red Indian should have been able to accomplish that which no civilized societies have accomplished during thousands of years. He had already attained to manhood when he invented an alphabet of his own language, having no knowledge of any other. The idea of writing Cherokee struck him on hearing several whites boasting of their superiority over the Indians, and adding that they could do many things which the red man never dared attempt, particularly in committing to paper a conversation, so as to make it understood by all, even in the most distant parts. He determined to try if it was not possible. At first he saw no other chance of executing his project than to make a sign or figure for every sound, which he partly learned by heart himself, partly gave to his own family to learn and remember; but, after working at it a whole twelvemonth, he found that the number of signs already amounted to several thousands, and that it was impossible to retain them in the memory. He now began to divide the words into parts, and then discovered that the same syllables might be applied to a variety of words. Exulting in this discovery, he continued his exertions with unremitting zeal, and directed his attention particularly to the sounds, and thus discovered at last all the syllables in the language. After working upon this plan for a month, he had diminished the number of sounds to eighty-four, of which the language at present consists. He first wrote them on sand, afterward cut out the signs in wood, and finished by printing them such as they now are in the Cherokee Phœnix."—Arfwedson's United States and Canada.
Articles of Capitulation demanded by M. de Ramsay, the king's lieutenant, commanding the high and low towns of Quebec, chief of the Military Order of St. Louis, to his excellency the general of the troops of his Britannic majesty.
"The capitulation demanded on the part of the enemy, and granted by their excellencies, Admiral Saunders and General Townshend, &c., &c., is in manner and form as hereafter expressed: