Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt:... threats. Being assured that they were highly exasperated, and resolved on vengeance, he replied, with a countenance and manner that expressed his feelings more forcibly than language, "It is well, let them come--let them attack--let them destroy us--it is well--we are but passing clouds," and added, pointing to the sun, "Where is the man, like yonder sun, who never dies?" Let us not be suspected of representing these people in too favourable a light. They share, of course, the passions and vices that usually prevail in the savage state. Implacable hatred and thirst for revenge, engendered by real or supposed injuries, too often excite them to deeds at which humanity shudders. We have known in their intercourse with foreigners instances of unprovoked outrage and violence. But we have more frequently met with ex parte accounts of their treachery and ferocity where circumstances have been known to us that gave a very different colouring to their conduct. They are a people more "sinned against" than "sinning." We should rejoice if the dark shades of their character could be dispelled by the mild influence of Christianity, without endangering that independence which is the ground-work of every virtue they possess; but our knowledge of their habits and feelings give us little hope of its accomplishment, and our fears that any change encouraging white people to settle among them would lead to their destruction leave us no wish that it should be attempted. The march of civilization seems the signal for their disappearance, and there is something mournful in the reflection that at no distant period this race of men, which physiologists reckon as one of the distinct varieties of mankind, will exist only in the pages...