Basil. Ay, you will have enough of them, Austin, if you go abroad. You will never be able to learn them, do what you will. Give it up, Austin; give it up at once.
Though Brian and Basil were very hard on Austin on their way home, about the long names of the Indians, and the impossibility of his ever being able to learn them by heart, Austin defended himself stoutly. “Very likely,” said he, “after all, they call these long names very short, just as we do; Nat for Nathaniel, Kit for Christopher, and Elic for Alexander.”
Wigwams.
CHAPTER IV.
It was not long before Austin, Brian, and Basil were again listening to the interesting accounts given by their friend, the hunter; and it would have been a difficult point to decide whether the listeners or the narrator derived most pleasure from their occupation. Austin began without delay to speak of the aborigines of North America.
“We want to know,” said he, “a little more about what these people were, and when they were first found out.”
Hunter. When America was first discovered, the inhabitants, though for the most part partaking of one general character, were not without variety. The greater part, as I told you, were, both in hot and cold latitudes, red men with black hair, and without beards. They, perhaps, might have been divided into four parts: the Mexicans and Peruvians, who were, to a considerable extent, civilized; the Caribs, who inhabited the fertile soil and luxuriant clime of the West Indies; the Esquimaux, who were then just the same people as they are now, living in the same manner by fishing; and the Red Men, or North American Indians.
Austin. Then the Esquimaux are not Red Indians.
Hunter. No; they are more like the people who live in Lapland, and in the North of Asia; and for this reason, and because the distance across Behring’s Straits is so short, it is thought they came from Asia, and are a part of the same people. The red men are, however, different; and as we agreed that I should tell you about the present race of them, perhaps I may as well proceed.