Sunday 8th.  Quintilian says, “We palliate our sloth by the specious pretext of difficulty.”  Nothing, in fact, is too difficult to accomplish, which we set about, with a proper consideration of those difficulties, and pursue with perseverance.  The Indian language cannot be acquired so easily as the Greek or Hebrew, but it can be mastered by perseverance.  Our Indian policy cannot be understood without looking at the Indian history.  The taking of Fort Niagara was the first decisive blow at French power.  Less than three months afterwards, that is, on the 18th of October of that year, General Wolf took Quebec.  Goldsmith wrote some stanzas on this event, eulogizing the heroism of the exploit.  England’s consolation for the loss of Wolf is found in his heroic example, which the poet refers to in his closing line,

     “Since from thy tomb a thousand heroes rise.”

11th.  Names are the pegs of history.  Velasco, it is said, on visiting the gulf which receives the St. Lawrence, and finding the country cold and inhospitable, cried out aca nada—­“there is nothing here.”  This is said to be the origin of the word Canada.  Nothing could be more improbable:  Did the Indians of Canada hear him, and, if so, did they understand or respect the language of a foreigner hovering on their coast?  We must look to the Iroquois for the origin of this word.  Jacques Cartier, in 1534, evidently mistook the Indian word Canada, signifying a town, for the whole country.  The Indians have no geographical terms for districts.  They name a hill, a river, or a fall, but do not deal in generics.  Some a priori reasoning seems constrained, where the facts are granted, as this:  All animals at Nova Zembla, it is said, are carnivorous, because there is no grass.

12th.  Snow covers everything.  We are shut out from the civilized world, and thrown entirely on our own resources.  I doubt, if we were in Siberia, or Kamschatka, if we could be so completely isolated.

13th.  Ellis, in one of his northern voyages, asserts the opinion that the northern lights kindle and disperse the vapors requisite to the formation of lightning.  Hence there is no thunder in high northern latitudes.  We admit the fact, but doubt the reasoning.  Vapor is but water in a gaseous state.  It is a fine medium for the exhibition of electricity, and we cannot say that electricity exists without it.

14th.  When Lucas Fox sailed to discover the north-west passage to India, in 1631, he carried a letter from Charles the First to the Emperor of Japan.  Such was public information, in Europe, twenty-two years after the discovery of the River Hudson, and the settlement of New England, eleven years later.