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demons who are said to haunt and guard such places. At length a mighty hole is dug and perhaps several cart-loads of earth thrown ;-ut; but, alas! no keg or iron pot is found. No seaman's chest crammed with Spanish pistoles or weighty pieces of eight! They conclude that through some mistake in the procedure, some rash word spoken, or some rule of art neglected, the guardian spirit had power to sink it deeper into the earth and convey it iut of their reach. Yet when a man is once infatuated he is so far from being discouraged by ill success that he is rather animated to double his industry, and will try again and again in a hundred different places, in hopes at last of meeting with some lucky hit that shall at once sufficiently reward him for all his expenses of time and labor.

This odd humor of digging for money, through a belief that much has been hid by pirates formerly frequenting the river, has for several years been mighty prevalent among us; insomuch that you can hardly walk half a mile out of the town on any side without observing several pits dug with that design, and perhaps some lately opened. Men, otherwise of very good sense, have been drawn into this practice through an overweening desire of sudden wealth and an easy credulity of what they so earnestly wished might be true; while the rational and most certain methods of acquiring riches by industry and frugality are neglected or forgotten. There seems to be some peculiar charm in the conceit of finding money; and if the sands of Schuylkill were so much mixed with small grains of gold that a man might in a day's time, with care and application, get together to the value of half a crown, I make no question but we should find several people employed there that can with ease earn five shillings a day at their proper trades.

Many are the idle stories told of the private success or some people, by which others are encouraged to proceed ; and the astrologers, with whom the country swarms at this time, are either in the belief of these things themselves or find their advantage o

in persuading others to believe them; for they are often con suited about the critical times for digging, the methods of laying the spirit, and the like whimseys, which renden them very necessary to and very much caressed by the poor, deluded money-hunters.

There is certainly something very bewitching in the pursuit after mines of gold and silver and other valuable metals, and many have been ruined by it. A sea-captain of my acquaintance used to blame the English for envying Spain their mines of silver, and too much despising or overlooking the advantages of their own industry and manufactures. "For my part," says he, "I esteem the Banks of Newfoundland to be a more valuable possession than the mountains of Potosi; and when I have been there on the fishing account have looked upon every cod pulled up into the vessel as a certain quantity of silver ore, which only required carrying to the next Spanish port to be coined into pieces of eight; not to mention the national profit of fitting out and employing such a number of ships and seamen."

Let honest Peter Buckram, who has long without success been a searcher after hidden money, reflect on this and be reclaimed from that unaccountable folly. Let him consider that every stitch he takes when he is on his shopboard is picking up part of a grain of gold that will in a few days' time amount to a pistole; and let Faber think the same of every nail he drives or every stroke with his plane. Such thoughts may make them industrious, and, in consequence, in time they may be wealthy. But how absurd it is to neglect a certain profit for such a ridiculous whimsey; to spend whole days at the George in company with an idle pretender to astrology, contriving schemes to discover what was never hidden, and forgetful how carelessly business is managed at home in their absence; to leave their wives and a warm bed at midnight (no matter if it rain, bail, snow, or blow a hurricane, provided that be the critical boor) and fatigue themselves with the violent exercise of digging for wnat they shall never find, and perhaps getting a cold that may cost their lives, or at least disordering themselves so as to be fit for no business besides for some days after. Surely this ia nothing less than the most egregious folly and madness.

I shall conclude with the words of my discreet friend Agricola, of Chester County, when he gave his son a good plantation. "My son," said he, "I give thee now a valuable parcel of land; I assure thee I have found a considerable quantity of gold by digging there; thee mayest do the same; but thee must carefully observe this, never to dig more than plow-deep."

REMARKS CONCERNING THE SAVAGES OP
NORTH AMERICA

Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.

ferhaps if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness, or none so polite as not to have some remains of rudeness.

The Indian men, when young, are hunters aud warriors; when old, counselors; for all their government is by the counsel or advice of the sages. There is no force, there are no prisons, 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. These 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 lit compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and tin learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivoloui and useless. An instance of this occurred at the treaty of Lan caster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government ot Virginia and the Sis 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 Indian youth; and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations would send down half a dozen of their sons to that college, the government would take care that 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 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 Virginia 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 while 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 same 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, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly; were therefore neither Bt for hunters, warriors, nor counselors — they were therefore 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 councils, 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 hindmost. 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 the tradition of the stipulations in treaties a 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 anything he intended to say or has anything 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 calling to order; and how different from the mode of conversation in many 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 Chris

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