Moncacht-apé, after giving me an account of his travels, spent four or five days visiting among the Natches, and then returned to take leave of me, when I made him a present of several wares of no great value, among which was a concave mirror, about two inches and a half diameter, which had cost me about three half-pence. As this magnified the face to four or five times the natural size, he was wonderfully delighted with it, and would not have exchanged it for the best mirror in France. After expressing his regret at parting with me, he returned highly satisfied to his own nation.
Moncacht-apé’s account of the junction of America with the eastern parts of Asia, seems confirmed by the following remarkable fact. “Some years ago the skeletons of two large elephants and two small ones were discovered in a marsh near the Ohio; and as they were not much consumed, it is supposed that the elephants came from Asia not many years before. If we also consider the form of government, and the manner of living among the northern nations of America, there will appear a great resemblance betwixt them and the Tartars in the north-east part of Asia.”
Indians who have never seen the ebbing and flowing of the tide are wonderfully struck with this phenomenon. Many of the inhabitants of Quebec must still remember that the great deputation of Indian chiefs, from the interior, and from the Mississippi, which came to Quebec during the administration of Sir George Prevost, and had in their company the sister of Tecumseh, were often to be seen sitting in a row upon a wharf in the Lower Town of Quebec, contemplating in silence, and evidently under the deepest impression of awe, the rising and falling of the waters of the St. Lawrence.
The white men here described correspond in every particular with the Chinese, who, there is reason to believe, held commercial intercourse with the south of Africa long before Vasco de Gama discovered and doubled the Cape of Good Hope. The Chinese are rather smaller than we are, and have the palest complexion indigenous to Asia. Their muskets are match-locks, and heavier than ours; their powder is inferior in quality.
The stinking wood mentioned by the Indian chief is probably fustic, yielding a yellow dye, which is the prevailing colour of the garments of the superior classes in China.
| [2] | The narrative of these proceedings must be received with due allowance, as there is considerable discrepancy between the different historians. The statements of Hakluyt are here generally followed. |
| [3] | The first child born in Quebec of French parents was the son of Abraham Martin and Margaret L'Angelois: it was christened Eustache on the 24th of October, 1621. |