the woods.
Nothing can be conceived more appalling that the miseries which he
describes. He tells us of tribes without a chief, families without
a nation to call their own, men in a state of isolation, wrecks of
powerful tribes wandering at random amid the ice and snow and desolate
solitudes of Canada. Hunger and cold pursue them; every day their life
is in jeopardy. Amongst these men, manners have lost their empire,
traditions are without power. They become more and more savage. Tanner
shared in all these miseries; he was aware of his European origin; he
was not kept away from the whites by force; on the contrary, he came
every year to trade with them, entered their dwellings, and witnessed
their enjoyments; he knew that whenever he chose to return to civilized
life he was perfectly able to do so--and he remained thirty years in the
deserts. When he came into civilized society he declared that the rude
existence which he described, had a secret charm for him which he
was unable to define: he returned to it again and again: at length he
abandoned it with poignant regret; and when he was at length fixed among
the whites, several of his children refused to share his tranquil and
easy situation. I saw Tanner myself at the lower end of Lake Superior;
he seemed to me to be more like a savage than a civilized being. His
book is written without either taste or order; but he gives, even
unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions, the
vices, and, above all, of the destitution in which he lived.]

When the Indians undertake to imitate their European neighbors, and to
till the earth like the settlers, they are immediately exposed to a
very formidable competition. The white man is skilled in the craft of
agriculture; the Indian is a rough beginner in an art with which he is
unacquainted. The former reaps abundant crops without difficulty, the
latter meets with a thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the
earth.

The European is placed amongst a population whose wants he knows and
partakes. The savage is isolated in the midst of a hostile people, with
whose manners, language, and laws he is imperfectly acquainted, but
without whose assistance he cannot live. He can only procure the
materials of comfort by bartering his commodities against the goods
of the European, for the assistance of his countrymen is wholly
insufficient to supply his wants. When the Indian wishes to sell the
produce of his labor, he