es and the brightest lights of the age were
enlisted in it. The celebrated Madame de Maintenon became the patroness,
forbidding, however, the Society to speculate upon her affairs; the
illustrious Duke de Rohan became the president; the Czar Peter an
honorary member; and the Society was otherwise royally and nobly
officered and befriended. So numerous were the applications to be
received as members, that it was found necessary to establish the rule,
since adopted by certain colleges, of conferring diplomas upon all who
asked for them. It is stated, that there was as loud a call upon the
time and attention of the publishing committee, no fewer than seven
hundred papers of theories and speculations, all essentially varying,
having been presented at the second weekly meeting.

It will be seen from the date that it was a very important era in
speculative philosophy. Father Hennepin had just returned from Canada,
and published his _Discovery of a Large Country_, the greater part of
which had remained unknown till then, and has not been seen since. Other
French missionaries were daily arriving from New France, as the French
possessions in America were denominated, and spreading tales, partly
true, partly-false, of the wonderful things they had seen. The questions
so very important and so essential to be solved, whether the ancient
inhabitants of North America, the race which is supposed to be extinct,
were of Malay origin, and came from Australasia, or from the islands of
the Pacific Ocean, and whether the surviving race are descended from the
Tartars, the Scandinavians, the Jews, or the Welsh, began to be agitated
about this time, though they were not debated with the profound
shrewdness and sagacity which Adair, Barton, Boudinot, and other
enlightened men, have since evinced on the subject.

With a view to remove the difficulty, and solve the problem, if it were
solvable, it was determined by this learned Society to dispatch
forthwith to America a man, whose mind should be well stored with
science, literature, and philosophy, whose constitution and habits of
body should be equal to the hardships he must necessarily undergo, and
who should be of a temper to despise the dangers he must of course
encounter, in prolonged travels among scattered tribes of wild and
barbarous Indians. It was almost impossible, the Society knew, to find a
person fitted in every respect for the mission. In an age of theories,
it is no easy matter t