NORTH



AMERICAN



INDI)A \ S.



of truth. Some of the miore prominent of them may be
here succinctly stated. Indians who have never seen
the ebbing and flowing of the tide, are wonderfully struck
with this phenomenon. Many of the inhabitants of
Quebec must still remember, that the great deputation
of the Indian chiefs from the Mississippi, who came to
Quebec during the administration of Sir George Pro-
vost and had in their company the sister of Tecumseh,
were often to be seen sitting in a row upon a wharf in
the lower town of Quebec, contemplating in silence, and
evidently under the deepest impression of awe, the rising
and falling of the waters of the St. Lawrence.
  "The white men here described correspond in every



partic
lieve,
Africc
and d
rathei
plexic
locks,



ular with the (Jhinese, Wh10, there is reason to L
held commercial intercourse with the south
t a long time before Vasco de Garna discover
oubled the Cape of Good Hope. The Chinese a
* smaller than we are, and have the palest cot
)n indigenous to Asia. Their muskets are matc
and heavier than ours, their powder is inferior



)e-
of
2d
re

h-
in



q uality.
  " rphe stinking wood mentioned by the Indian chief
is probably fustic, yielding a yellow dye, which is the
prevailing colour of the garmiients of the superior classes
in China. None of these things could have been known
to the Itndian chief, and the general tone and character
of M. Dlu Pratz's work excludes the idea of his having
fabricated the story."
  The learned Winterbothamn who wrote the historv of



*1 ~ ~ --- -       7 _---



North America, confirms us also in the opinion that
America was entered from Asia by Karnschatka.
  "In the strait," says he, wxhich separates America
from Asia, many islands are found, which probably were
the mountains belonging to that tract of land, which we
suppose to have been swallowed up by earthquakes;
which is made more probable by the multitude of vol-
canoes which we know of in the Peninsula of Kamschat-



ka.



It is imagined, however,,



that the



sinking



of that



211