ssary door, it was
said, "It must have been by the son of Se-quo-yah."

In his mature years, at Brainerd, although approaching seventy, the
nerve or fire of the old man was not dead. Some narrow-minded
ecclesiastics, because Gist would not go through the routine of a
Christian profession after the fashion they prescribed, have not
scrupled to intimate that he was a pagan, and grieved that the Bible
was printed in the language he gave. This arose simply from not
comprehending him. They persisted in considering him an ignorant
savage, while he comprehended himself and measured them.

In his old days a new and deeper ambition seized him. He was not in the
habit of asking advice or assistance in his projects. In his journey to
the West, as well as to Washington, he had an opportunity of examining
different languages, of which, as far as lay in his power, he carefully
availed himself. His health had been somewhat affected by rheumatism,
one of the few inheritances he got from the old fur peddler of
Ebenezer; but the strong spirit was slow to break.

He formed a theory of certain relations in the language of the Indian
tribes, and conceived the idea of writing a book on the points of
similarity and divergence. Books were, to a great extent, closed to
him; but as of old, when he began his career as a blacksmith by making
his bellows, so he now fell back on his own resources. This brave
Indian philosopher of ours was not the man to be stopped by obstacles.
He procured some articles for the Indian trade he had learned in his
boyhood, and putting these and his provisions and camping equipage in
an ox-cart, he took a Cherokee boy with him as driver and companion,
and started out among the wild Indians of the plain and mountain, on a
philological crusade such as the world never saw.

One of the most remarkable features of his experience was the uniform
peace and kindness with which his brethren of the prairie received him.
They furnished him means, too, to prosecute his inquiries in each tribe
or clan. That they should be more sullen and reticent to white men is
not wonderful when we reflect that they have a suspicion that all these
pretended inquirers in science or religion have a lurking eye to real
estate. Several journeys were made. The task was so vast it might have
discouraged him. He started on his longest and his last journey. There
was among the Cherokees a tradition that part of their nation was
somewhere in New Mexic