The street was chiefly occupied by a number of Indians of the Seneca tribe, dressed in a costume part native and part European: these holiday-keepers lounged lazily about in all the delight of utter intoxication, the men invariably in groups by themselves, and the ladies of the tribe trapesing after them at a long interval with stoical indifference.
Nothing can be more subversive of the poetry one's early recollections connect with this race, than a first rencontre with the outcasts by whom it is represented on these frontiers, who daily degenerate where all else seems to thrive, and who perish in the midst of an abundance, which, for all but them, increases with each year.
I am not sure whether it would not be more humane to deal upon the natives as summarily as with their forests; for the fall of the former before the advance of civilization is not, though slower, less certain.
They may at present be likened to girdled trees, about whose vigorous trunk the axe of the woodman is but lightly drawn, yet whose fall is assured past remedy; the springs of health and life are stopped, upon their fading leaves the sun rises and heaven's dews descend in vain; for a little while they continue to wave their naked crests in the gale, and hold forth their gaunt limbs as if life were in them, objects exciting at once commiseration and disgust; until, crumbled into decay, the unseemly skeletons lie prostrate athwart the roots of their once fellows, who were stricken down in their bloom, and so perished by a quicker and more merciful sentence.
NIAGARA.
I felt interested with Buffalo, and had promised myself much pleasure from a visit to the country occupied by a branch of the Seneca tribe in its neighbourhood; but Niagara was now within a few hours,—the great object of the journey was almost in sight. I was for ever fancying that I heard the sound of the "Thunder-water"[12] booming on the breeze; so, with a restlessness and anxiety not to be suppressed, I got into the coach on the day after my arrival at the capital of the lakes, and was in a short time set down on the bank of the swift river Niagara, at the ferry, which is some four miles from Buffalo.
We found the little rapids about the shore occupied by fishers of all ages, who required but a small share of the patience which is deemed so essential a qualification to the followers of this melancholy sport, for they were pulling the simple wretches out as fast as the lines could be baited and offered.