Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 7).djvu/315

 which serves for a cradle; a bit of skin, which serves to wrap the new-born babe in; some moss to lie on; and a string to lash the whole together. Thus secured, the bantling is carried about on its mother's back, or allowed to sprawl on the ground, in all weathers and all seasons.

Tacitus found fault with the Roman ladies of his day for giving their children to Grecian women to nurse, and thus depriving the infant of maternal tenderness. What would the historian have thought had he seen an infant of the savage race, as practised in these parts, tied naked on a hard board, and allowed to tumble and roll about as it best could? and yet this very race, or portion of the human family, is as perfect in form, as healthy and vigorous, as any people on the face of the earth.

In traveling, the distance of places is always calculated according to time. If on horseback, a day's ride is estimated at about seventy of our miles; if on foot, at half that distance. This mode of calculating distances is, however, very erroneous, and not to be depended upon by the whites, as the natives seldom {330} take into consideration either the good or bad state of the roads. But interruptions which are grievous obstacles to us are nothing in their way; for where a rabbit can pass, an Indian horse will pass, and where a horse can pass, the savage, who sticks on his back like a crab, passes over hill and dale, rock and ravine, at full speed; so that good roads or bad roads, rugged or smooth, all is alike to him.

Nor is the fair sex less dexterous in managing the horse; a woman with one child on her back and another in her arms will course the fleetest steed over the most rugged and perilous country. In conversation they seem to