Cherokee, came for the first time into the school on the day on which I visited it, and I taught him the alphabet three or four times over, using some devices to impress the letters more strongly on his memory, in one of which I was assisted by a beautiful and sprightly little girl who told me she was the Black warrior's daughter, and named, Polly Blackwood. This was to place the letters ocu together, the pronunciation of which in the Cherokee tongue signifies good, which I made him understand was, applicable to him. The little girl who spoke English tolerably, in a playful manner, with a look full of arch simplicity, told me her mother seldom applied it to her, but much oftener a word, of which I have now forgotten the Indian, that signified bad. At night the boy distinctly remembered seven letters of the alphabet.

A little girl by the name of Jenny Reece had been six weeks in the school, and could spell very well in words of three letters, and yet had never, in conversation, been heard to utter a word of English. It is remarkable of the Indians that when they commence expressing their ideas and wants in English, they in a time surprisingly short, speak very distinctly: But they cannot be persuaded to speak until conscious of their ability to do it well, afraid I suppose of drawing upon themselves, ridicule, and indeed their first essays are calculated to excite a smile in many, when the ardour of their anxiety to be understood, prompts them to premature efforts. Like the Greeks and Romans, they placed the object before the agent. I heard this from a boy anxious to go to the store on mail day. "Store go to who? want some go me." It was predicted from their usual progress, that this boy would speak correctly in a month.

The mention of Jenny Reece brings her father's name and merit before me, and I hope to be pardoned for a passing notice of him, though apparently very remotely, if at all in connexion with the school. This man, Charly Recce was a very distinguished warriour and one of the three Indians, who at the battle of the Horse Shoe, swam the river in sight of the contending armies, under showers of arrows and bullets, and brought over the canoes which contributed so essentially to the dislodgement and defeat of the Creek Indians. Gen. Jackson mentioned him most honourably in his despatches and general orders, and President Madison wrote him a letter and presented him with a superbly mounted rifle, with suitable inscriptions. This, once his boast, is his

pride no longer. I had some conversation with him and he spoke of his military exploits with evident reluctance: this once ferocious warriour is now a humble and devout professor of the religion of Jesus. The wild hunter, who could not endure the restraints of home and but one wife, is now the industrious and prosperous farmer and the respectable head of a happy family. This man's example, the happiness he has conferred on a wife and amiable children, is surely enough to overturn infidelity in the heart of obstinacy itself, and make the most heedless anxious to promote the diffusion of principles capable of such happy influ ence. I belong to no or church sect, but I have seen too much of the benign effects of religion to withhold from it this testimonial in its favour. I am convinced of the very great and essential importance of its principles and doctrines to civilization. The Chinese can make pots and the Turks carpets, but they are barbarians, and neither science nor manners will ever obtain there, until the domestic fireside becomes the place where confidence can repose itself, where the best and holiest affections of our nature can find their solace, and where the infant mind will be formed under the influence of precept and examples. Polygamy is at eternal and irreconcileable war with civilization.

I had almost forgotten to say, that there is one certainly, and I believe two schools in the nation, supported and patronized exclusively by the Indians. I visited one of the patrons. He complained much of the moral character of the master, and said he had seen him drunk, even on the Sabbath, and threatened to dismiss him. This teacher, a native of Europe, had the common stipend of country schoolmasters allowed him, was permitted to cultivate as much ground as he pleased, and had a good number of scholars; but the Indians were scandalized at his irregularities, and I expect, if they failed to civilize him, they would, as they threatened, discharge him. I neither saw the teacher nor his school.

It would swell this article beyond the limits prescribed to it were I to speak of the character and manners of the Indians, and it would besides, be foreign to the object for which I commenced it I will therefore only say in a few words, that I found them every where kind and obliging in their deportment and correct in their conduct; that in their houses, and I entered not a few, I observed a general appearance of order and neatness that indicated comfort. The women seemed very industrious in various

domestic employments, and the men much more so in their agricultural pursuits than in any Indian nation I had ever visited. Many of them had considerable plantations, and two, at whose houses I was, owned several negroes and employed white men as overseers; and all had horses and cattle, and many of them carts and wagons. Every thing manifested the progrss of civilization and the practicability of its soon attaining the ordinary degrees of perfection.

Possibly this brief expositio uof facts and circumstances, new to many, will excite in the benevolent a desire to strengthen the hands of those employed in this work of instruction, and of giving them the means of more extended and general usefulness. The education of the Cherokees will only be limited by the ability to found and support schools. I have no correspondence with the board of missions, but presume donations to their treasurer in Boston, Jeremiah Evarts, will be acceptable. It is equally likely that the Moravian Society of Salem N. C. would not refuse benefactions, though they have never asked contributions. The good they have done has been their own and it has been done without ostentation. I was told that plain ready made clothing for boys, particularly hunting shirts and trowsers, was much wanted. Dr. Strong of Knoxville, A. J. Huntington of Augusta, S. C. Danning of Savannah, and the superintendant of Indian affairs at Washington city will remit any thing to the Mission-house at Chickamauguh, that is committed to their care. I add this paragraph at the suggestion of a traveller, now confined in this city by sickness, who observed to us yesterday, that the good deeds of many fell short of their beneficent wishes from not knowing how and where to dispense their liberalities.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

ART. VI.-Letters from the West.-No. I.

CAN you tell me, my dear N. why I left you in sadness, though I would fain have chased away the cloud that hung upon my brow? If you can, you will explain a feeling which I have often experienced, but never could exactly define. I have never left a spot where I had sojourned long enough to form acquaintances, without a heavy heart; and yet there is something in that same heart, which makes me delight to be ever roving from scene to scene, Can it be fondness for the spot which has already been enjoyed to satiety, where every thing has become monotonous, and where the

palled senses must feed upon the food they have grown tired of? Can it be regret when pleasure allures in the perspective, and when any dear object which is left behind, will be regained, and glow with new charms after a temporary absence? These are questions which you may answer if you please, for I assure you I shall not take the trouble to investigate them; it is enough for me to leave my friends without heaviness, and to return to them with delight, without intruding on philosophic ground, to analyze the light and shade of those conflicting emotions of which the experience is sufficiently pleasureable.

Now while you are answering my questions I will reply to yours. You ask me, in the very spirit of Goldsmith's Hermit, what allures me " to tempt the dangerous gloom," and to risk my neck-aye, and my complexion too-among the tangled forests, and sun-burnt prairies of the west? I might reply, in my usual style, by a quotation from my favourite author:

We may roam through this world like a child at a feast,
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest,

And when pleasure begins to grow dull in the East,
We may order our wings and be off to the West;

or I might simply say with the churlish Shylock, "it is my humour." But as I would have you to know, that I am not so much of a knight errant as to seek for giants for the mere pleasure of overcoming them, nor so sentimental as to hie me to purling streams, and spreading shades, to cool my blood and warm my fancy, I will discuss my reasons in sober prose.

My desire of exploring the western country has not been altogether the effect of that wandering disposition, to which my friends have been good enough to attribute it. It is true-too true, perhaps that a roving fancy, indulged and confirmed into habit, by the unsettled manner of my early life, has had much weight in forming my determination'; but it is equally true, that this is a national trait, entailed in common upon most of my countrymen, for there are few of us who regard time or space, when profit or amusement allures to distant regions. But I found my strongest inducement in the deep interest that we all feel in those young states which have sprung up in the wilderness, and expanding with unexampled rapidity, are fast becoming the rivals of their elder sisters in the east.

It might be questioned whether I have reached the years of

discretion; and yet, young as I am, I can remember the time when Pittsburgh was considered as one of the out-posts of civilized America; and I shall never forget the intense interest, and unmingled admiration, which I felt while a boy, in gazing at the brawny limbs and sun-burnt features of a Kentuckian, as he passed through the streets of Philadelphia. The rough hardy air of the stranger the jaded paces of his nag-the blanket, bear-skin, and saddle-bags-nay, the very oil-cloth on his hat, and the dirk that peeped from among his vestments, are still in my eye;-they bespoke him to be of distant regions, to have been reared among dangers, and to be familiar with fatigues. He strode among us with the step of an Achilles, glancing with a good-natured superciliousness at the fragile butterflies of fashion, that glittered in the sunbeams around him. I thought I could see in that man, one of the progenitors of an unconquerable race; his face presented the traces of a spirit quick to resent-he had the will to dare, and the power to execute-there was a something in his look which bespoke a disdain of control-and there was an absence of constraint in all his movements, which indicated an habitual independence of thought and action. Such was the stock from which a new people were to spring-but the oak has blossomed and borne fruit. Science and refinement, engrafted upon the rude stem, have flourished, and have mingled their verdure and their sweets among its hardy branches. That "lone way-faring man" is not now the only representative of his country; the West has already sent us the statesman, on whose accents listening thousands have hung enraptured, the gentleman whose politeness pleases, and the maiden whose loveliness delights us.

In the times to which I have alluded, a journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, was a most serious affair; and he who would adventure further, took with him arms, and guides, and provisions, and "all appliances and means to boot," necessary for subsistence and defence. What was then the goal is now the starting place Pittsburgh is the threshhold by which we pass into the great states of the West; and Kentucky, but lately a western. frontier, is now one of the eastern boundaries of the western country.

The shores of the Mississippi, and its tributary streams, have. presented to the world a singular and almost enchanting picture one which future ages will contemplate with wonder and delight.