wn conjectures, take the following extract from, a letter of father
Noel de Joinville, of a pretty antient date.

"I have remarked in this country so great an aversion in the
convert-savages to the English, caused by difference of religion, that
these scarce dare inhabit any part of Acadia but what is under their own
guns. These savages are so zealous for the Roman Catholick church, that
they always look with horror upon, and consider as enemies those who are
not within the pale of it. This may serve to prove, that if there had
been _priests_ provided in time, to work at the conversion of the
savages of New-England, before the English had penetrated into the
interior of the county as far as they have done, it would not have been
possible for them to appropriate to themselves such an extent of country
as, at this day, makes of New-England alone the most magnificent colony
on the face of the earth." [This pompous epithet might have yet been
more just, if the improvement of that colony had been enough the care of
the state, to have been pushed all the lengths of which it was so
susceptible. Few Englishmen will, probably, on reflexion deny, that if
but a third of those sums ingulphed by the ungrateful or slippery powers
on the continent, upon interests certainly more foreign to England than
those of her own colonies, or lavished in a yet more destructive way,
that of corrupting its subjects in elections: if the third, I say, of
those immense sums, had been applied to the benefit of the plantations,
to the fortifying, encouraging, and extending them, there would, by this
time, have hardly been a Frenchman's name to be heard of in
North-America especially.]

But with this good father's leave, he attributes more influence to
religion, though as the priests manage it, it certainly has a very
considerable one, than in fact belongs to it. Were it not for other
concurring circumstances that indispose the savages against the English,
religion alone would not operate, at least so violently, that effect.
Every one knows, that the savages are at best but slightly tinctured
with it, and have little or no attachment to it, but as they find their
advantage in the benefits of presents and protection, it procures to
them from the French government. In short, it is chiefly to the conduct
of this English themselves, we are beholden for this favorable aid of
the savages. If the English at first, instead of seeking to exterminate
or oppress t