Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/30

22 Native cry! cry! cry! Good native stops God sky, no sick, no hungering."

The frequent occurrence of all the liquid letters in the few words given above will strike every reader. Their language, which is all but lost, was peculiarly soft; and except when excited by anger or surprise, was spoken in something of a singing tone, producing a strange but pleasing effect on the sense of the European.

Three or four months after his appointment to the charge of the asylum, he volunteered to visit the wild tribes in their native haunts, and to use his best efforts to conciliate them. He says, "I have proposed to the natives that they accompany me on the expedition, to which they appear extremely anxious. They are well suited to such a purpose. Their aptitude to descry objects is astonishing, so much so that where my vision has required a glass, they can distinguish.  Their presence would gain the confidence of the other tribes. They tell me how they would proceed. That upon observing the natives they would go to them and would tell them that I was very good,—that they had plenty of bread, potatoes, clothes, and huts to live in. &c."

In his many missions to the tribes, he had always several of his trained blacks with him, and often no others; and strangely enough he never, except once, approached their bivouacs with arms of any kind; and though he generally carried some with him, he always made it a point to leave them at his encampment whenever (after discovering them) he went forward to meet them. This procedure, seemingly so dangerous to himself, and novel to them, appears to have had generally an excellent effect, though there were instances of the contrary—namely, in cases where the wrath of the resentful savage was so inextinguishable and deeply rooted that he refused all intercourse, and would meet him and his party on no other terms than those of mortal strife. In one instance, the natives pursued him most perseveringly for hours, determined to kill him and all his followers; and the escape of the unarmed party was almost more than miraculous. In his flight he had to pass through the densest of forests, with the blacks almost at his heels; and to cross a large and rapid river, bank high with water, caused by recent rains; and though he could not swim a stroke, one of faithful followers, whom he always calls his sable friends, got him through every difficulty, and he reached his camp in safety. This repulse daunted him not in the least degree, for after a very brief rest, he went after them again, and after another parley with them of some duration, in which all his persuasive powers were called forth, two of them swam the river and joined him, and two others came in the same