It was about the falls of the Ohio, or a little above, that I first saw the gay and noisy paroquet, or little parrot of the west; a gregarious bird, whose showy green and yellow plumage makes it quite an object to be noticed and remembered in a passage on the lower Ohio. One of these birds, which had been wounded, was picked up out of the river, a few miles below the falls. It was evident, from the occurrence of this species, and other features in the natural history of the country, that we were now making a rapid southing. The red-bud, the papaw, the buckeye, and the cucumber tree, had all introduced themselves to notice, among the forest species, below Pittsburgh; although they are all, I think, actually known to extend a little north of that latitude; and we now soon had added to the catalogue, the pecan and cypress, and the cane, with the constant attendant of the latter, the green briar. I had no opportunity to examine the pecan, until we reached the mouth of the Wabash and Shawneetown, where I went on a shooting excursion with a young Kentuckian, who gave me the first practical exhibition of bringing down single pigeons and other small game with the rifle, by generally striking the head or neck only. I had heard of this kind of shooting before, and witnessed some capital still shots, but here was a demonstration of it, in brush and brier—catching a sight as best one could. The ball used on these occasions was about the size of a large buckshot.

Shawneetown is a word which brings to mind one of the North American tribes, who, between 1632 and the present time, figure as one of the frontier actors in our history. They have, in this time, with the ubiquity of one of their own genii, skipped over half America. They were once, certainly dwellers on the Savannah, if not, at a still earlier day, on the Suanee, in Florida; then fled north, a part coming down the Kentucky river, and a part fleeing to the Delaware, and thence west. They are now on the Konga, west of the Missouri. So much for the association of names. History never remembers any thing which she can possibly forget, and I found at least, one high-feeling personage here, who did not like the manner in which I associated the modern town with reminiscences of the savages. “Why, sir,” said he, as we walked the deck of the ark, floating down the Ohio, and getting nearer the place every moment, “we have a bank there, and a court house; it is the seat of justice for Gallatin county;—and a printing press is about to be established;—it is a very thriving place, and it bids fair to remain second to none below the Wabash.” “All this, truly,” I responded, willing to reprove pride in an easy way, “is a great improvement on the wigwam and the council-fire, and wampum coin-beads.” It is sometimes better to smile than argue, and I found it so on the present occasion. I did not wish to tread on the toes of rising greatness, or pour upon a love of home and locality, honorable and praise-worthy in my fellow traveller, the chilling influence of cold historical facts. My allusions were the mere effect of the association of ideas, resulting from names. If the residents of Shawneetown do not like to be associated with the native race, who would not have exchanged a good bow and arrows for all the court houses in Christendom, they should bestow upon the place some epithet which may sever the tie.

LANGUAGES OF MEXICO.

Humboldt observes that there are twenty languages in Mexico and New Spain, of which fourteen have grammars and dictionaries tolerably complete. The latter are——

1.Mexican, or Aztec.9.Matlazing
2.Otomite.10.Huastec
3.Tarasc.11.Mixed
4.Zapotec.12.Caquiquel
5.Mistec.13.Tarauma
6.Mia, or Yucatan.14.Tepehuan
7.Zotonac.15.Tepehuan
8.Popolouc.

The languages of New Zealand, Tonga and Malay, have no declension of nouns, nor conjugation of verbs. The purposes of declension are answered by particles and prepositions. The distinctions of person, tense, and mode, are expressed by adverbs, pronouns, and other parts of speech. This rigidity of the verb and noun is absolute under every order of arrangement, in which the words can be placed, and their meaning is not helped out, by either prefixes or suffixes, as it is in the dialects of the Algonquin and other North American languages.

NO. IV.

After stopping a day or more at Shawneetown, and reconnoitering its vicinity, I proceeded to the mouth of the Cumberland, and from thence, after many days detention at that point waiting for a boat, to the mouth of the Ohio. I found this to be a highly interesting section of the river, from its great expanse and its fine water prospects. The picturesque calcareous cliffs on the west banks, display a novel and attractive line of river scenery. The Ohio had, from its commencement, well sustained the propriety of its ancient appellation of the Beautiful River; but it here assumed something more than beautiful—it was majestic. Let it be borne in mind that this stream, in the course of some seven or eight hundred miles flow from Pittsburg to Shawneetown, had been swelled on the right and left hand by the Scioto, the Muskingum, the Kentucky, the Miami, Green River, Wabash, and other rivers of scarcely inferior size. It is still further augmented, from the left bank, with those noble tributaries, the Cumberland and Tennessee, which bring in the gathered drain of the middle ranges of the Alleghanies. It is below Shawneetown, too, that the cliffs of the Cave-in-Rock-Coast present themselves on the west shore—with their associations of the early robber-era which has been commemorated by the pen of fiction of Charles Brockden Brown. These cliffs are cavernous, and assume varied forms. They rise in bold elevations, which bear the general name of the Knobs, but which are well worthy of the name of mountains. Distinct from the interest they have by casting their castle-like shadows, at sunset, in the pure broad stream, they constitute a kind of Derbyshire in their fine purple spars, and crystalized galena and other mineralogical attractions. I was told that a German of the name of Storch, who pretended to occult knowledge, had, years before, led money and mineral diggers about these Knobs, and that he was the discoverer of the fine fluates of lime found here.