We have a national gallery of portraits of distinguished Americans, in four volumes octavo, and what is more singular, a biography containing the lives of over one hundred of the principal Indian chiefs. Logan[528], the Virginian chief, uttered these words before Lord Dunmore[529]:
"Colonel Cresap[530], the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature that called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many.... Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."
Without loving nature, the Americans have applied themselves to the study of natural history. Townsend[531] set out from Philadelphia and traversed on foot the regions separating the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean, jotting down numerous observations in his journal. Thomas Say[532], who travelled in Florida and in the Rocky Mountains, has published a work on American entomology. Wilson[533], a weaver who became an author, has left some rather finished pictures.
American literature.
To turn to literature proper, although it does not amount to much, there are, nevertheless, a few writers to be mentioned among the novelists and poets. Brown[534], the son of a Quaker, is the author of Wieland, which is the source and model of the novels of the new school. Unlike his fellow-countrymen:
"I prefer," said Brown, "roaming in the forests to thrashing corn."
Wieland, the hero of the novel, is a Puritan whom Heaven has commanded to kill his wife:
"'I have brought thee hither,' says he to her, 'to fulfil a divine command. I am appointed thy destroyer, and destroy thee I must.'
"Saying this, I seized her wrists. She shrieked aloud, and endeavoured to free herself from my grasp....