Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

famililies have literally gone, and many more going to day and to morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you; but it is so true, that Arthur of White's told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic.* Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and staid late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman's voice cried, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!” But I have done with this ridiculous panic: two pages were too much to talk of it.

[blocks in formation]

Dick

I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day. This frantic terror prevails so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country. Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day.

"On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) a true and exact list of all the nobility and gentry who have left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another earthquake."

Several women have made earthquake gowns, that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose: she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Caroline Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back—I

* "I remember," says Addison, in the two hundred and fortieth Tatler, when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were very good against an earthquake!"

suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.*

I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of absurdities that were committed after the earthquake. I could have filled more paper with such relations, if I had not feared tiring you. We have swarmed with sermons, essays, relations, poems, and exhortations on that subject. One Stukely, a parson, has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity-but that is the fashionable cause, and every thing is resolved into electrical appearances, as formerly every thing was accounted for by Descartes's vortices and Sir Isaac's gravitation; but they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake systematically, to assure you that still it was nothing less than a judgment. Dr. Barton, the rector of St. Andrews, was the only sensible, or at least honest, divine, upon the occasion. When some women would have had him pray to them in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused himself on having a great cold. "And besides," said he, "you may go to St. James's Church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes." Turner, a great chinaman, at the corner of next street, had a jar cracked by the shock: he originally asked ten guineas for the pair; he now asks twenty, "because it is the only jar in Europe that had been cracked by an earthquake."

144.-THE SAVAGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1784.

DR. FRANKLIN.

SAVAGES We call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility. They think the same of theirs.

Perhaps if we could examine the manners of different nations

* "Incredible numbers of people left their houses, and walked in the fields or lay in boats all night: many persons of fashion in the neighboring villages sat in their coaches till daybreak; others went to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged.”—Gentleman's Magazine.

[ocr errors]

with impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some remains of rudeness.

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counsellors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. Hence, they generally study oratory; the best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. The employments of men and women are accounted natural and honorable; having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college, with a fund for educating youth; and that, if the Six Nations would send half a dozen of their young lads to that college, the government would take care they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition on the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it as of a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following; when their speaker began by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginian government in making them that offer. "For we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men with you would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know, that different nations have different conceptions of things, and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the

Bame with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy; spoke our language imperfectly; were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, or counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it; and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them."

Having frequent occasions to hold public counsels, they have acquired great order and decency in conducting them. The old men sit in the foremost ranks, the warriors in the next, and the women and children in the hindermost. The business of the women is to take exact notice of what passes, imprint it in their memories, (for they have no writing,) and communicate it to their children. They are the records of the council, and they preserve traditions of the stipulations in treaties one hundred years back, which, when we compare with our writings, we always find exact. He that would speak, rises: the rest observe a profound silence. When he has finished, and sits down, they leave him five or six minutes to recollect, that if he has omitted any thing he intended to say, or has any thing to add, he may rise again and deliver it. To interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How different this is from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a day passes without some confusion that makes the Speaker hoarse in calling to order! and how different from the mode of conversation in the polite companies of Europe, where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to finish it!

The politeness of these savages in conversation is, indeed, carried to excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of what is asserted in their presence. By this means

they indeed avoid disputes; but then it becomes difficult to know their minds, or what impression you make upon them. The missionaries who have attempted to convert them to Christianity all complain of this as one of the greatest difficulties of their mission. The Indians hear with patience the truths of the Gospel explained to them, and give their usual tokens of assent or approbation; you would think they were convinced. No such matter-it is mere civility.

When any of them come into our towns, our people are apt to crowd round them, gaze upon them, and incommode them where 'they desire to be private; this they esteem great rudeness, and the effect of want of instruction in the rules of civility and good manners. "We have," say they, "as much curiosity as you, and when you come into our towns we wish for opportunities of looking at you; but for this purpose we hide ourselves behind bushes where you are to pass, and never intrude ourselves into your company."

Their manner of entering one another's villages has likewise its rules. It is reckoned uncivil in travelling for strangers to enter a village abruptly, without giving notice of their approach. Therefore, as soon as they arrive within hearing, they stop and halloo, remaining there till invited to enter. Two old men usually come out to them, and lead them in. There is, in every village, a vacant dwelling called the stranger's house. Here they are placed while the old men go round from hut to hut, acquainting the inhabitants that strangers are arrived, who are probably hungry and weary, and every one sends them what they can spare of victuals, and skins to repose on. When the strangers are refreshed, pipes and tobacco are brought; and then, not before, conversation begins, with inquiries who they are, whither bound, what news, &c.; and it usually ends with offers of service, if the strangers have occasion for guides, or any necessaries for continuing their journey; and nothing is exacted for the entertainment.

The same hospitality, esteemed among them as a principal virtue, is practised by private persons, of which Conrad Weiser, our interpreter, gave me the following instance. He had been naturalized among the Six Nations, and spoke well the Mohock language. In going through the Indian country, to carry a message

[blocks in formation]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »