Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/341

 HE Notes on Virginia were written in Virginia, in the years 1781 and 1782, in anſwer to certain queries propoſed to me by Mons. de Marbois, then ſecretary of the French legation in the United States; and a manuſcript copy was delivered to him. A few copies, with ſome additions, were afterwards, in 1784, printed in Paris, and given to particular friends. In ſpeaking of the animals of America, the theory of M. de Buffon, the Abbe Raynal, and others, preſented itſelf to conſideration. They have ſuppoſed that there is ſomething in the ſoil, climate and other circumſtances of America, which occaſions animal nature to degenerate not excepting even the man, native or adoptive, phyſical or moral. This theory, ſo unfounded and degrading to one third of the globe, was called to the bar of fact reaſon. Among other proofs adduced in contradiction of this hypotheſis, the ſpeech of Logan an Indian chief, delivered to Lord Dunmore in 1774, was produced, as a ſpecimen of the talents of the aboriginals of this country, and particularly of their eloquence; and it was believed that Europe had never produced any thing ſuperior to this morſel of eloquence. In order to make it intelligible to the reader, the tranſaction, on which it was founded, was dated, as it had been generally related in America at the time, and as I had heard it myſelf, in the circle of Lord Dunmore, and the officers who accompanied him: and the ſpeech itſelf was given as it had, ten years before the printing of that book, circulated in the newſpapers through all the then colonies, through the magazines of