end teachers taking the fish and sending them off secretly to
various settlements in Virginia and Maryland, and making thereby
large sums of money. The Indians worked on for several months without
receiving any compensation, and the missionaries were getting richer and
richer,--when by some means the red men discovered the trick, and routed
the holy men from their neighborhood. Many years afterward the Catholics
made an effort to establish a mission with this same tribe. The
priest who first addressed them took as his text, "Ho, every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters,"--and went on in figurative style to
describe the waters of life. When the sermon was ended, the Indians held
a council to consider what they had just heard, and finally sent three
of their number to the missionaries, who said, "White men, you speak in
fine words of the waters of life; but before we decide on what we have
heard, we wish to know _whether any shad swim in those waters_."

It is very certain that Christianity, as illustrated by the Virginians,
did not make a good impression on these savages. They were always
willing to compare their own religion with that of the whites, and
generally regarded the contrast as in their favor. One of them said to
Colonel Barnett, the commissioner to run the boundary-line of lands
ceded by the Indians, "As to religion, you go to your churches, sing
loud, pray loud, and make great noise. The red people meet once a year
at the feast of New Corn, extinguish all their fires and kindle up a
new one, the smoke of which ascends to the Great Spirit as a grateful
incense and sacrifice. Now what better is your religion than ours?" One
of the chiefs, it is said, received an Episcopal divine who wished to
indoctrinate him into the mystery of the Trinity. The Indian, who was
a "model of deportment," heard his argument; and then, when he was
through, began in turn to indoctrinate the divine in _his_ faith,
speaking of the Great Spirit, whose voice was the thunder, whose eye was
the sun. The clergyman interrupted him rather rudely, saying, "But
that is not true,--that is all heathen trash!" The chief turned to his
companions and said gravely, "This is the most impolite man I have ever
met; he has just declared that he has three gods, and now will not let
me have one!"

The valley of Virginia, its El Dorado in every sense, had a different
settlement, and by a different people. They were, for the most part,
Germans, of