Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/438

406 extract from which presents, I fear, too true a picture of savage life. "We are not aware of any authentic instance of a tribe of savage fishen or hunters becoming settled and agricultural, even by any pressure from without, much less from their own unaided efforts. So far from adopting civilized habits, the experience of America and New Holland has shewn that the savage hovers on the advancing frontier of civilization, till he finally disappears along with the game which afforded him support. There appears to be something in the unsettled life of a hunter which produces a change in the bodily organisation, gradualiy unfitting the individual, and perhaps ultimately the race, from being brought under the influence of a sedentary life. Those Europeans who have lived among the Indians of America for some years can seldom be reconciled to a steady and uniform course of life; and in Indians themselves the tendency becomes hereditary and almost incurable. Hence even the Indian child, when brought up in a populous city, and educated in the arts and religion of civilized men, often betrays his dislike to a settled life, and endeavours by all means to rejoin his wild countrymen of the woods."

For six days beyond Carlton we travelled amongst the buffaloes, which covered the open