and considerable baggage destroyed, and a large number of horses and mules captured.  On their return, however, a few Comanches stole silently into the droves of horses, while feeding at night, and recaptured the whole except ninety-three horses, which the shrewd Castro, with ten of his warriors, had driven far in advance of the main company, and which he subsequently brought in safety to Lagrange.  Only two of the citizens of Texas were injured on this expedition.”

“General Burlison, at the head of about seventy men, recently encountered a large body of Indians on the Brushy, and, after one or two skirmishes, finding the enemy numerous, retreated to a ravine in order to engage them with more advantage; but the Indians, fearing to attack him in his new position, drew off and retreated into a neighboring thicket.  Being unable to pursue them, he returned to Bastrop.  It is reported that he has lost three men in this engagement; the loss of the Indians is not known; it, however, must have been considerable, as most of the men under Burlison were excellent marksmen, and had often been engaged in Indian warfare.”

March 4th.  The N.  Y. Evening Post says, that a gentleman from Tallahassee, just arrived at Washington, states that murders by the Indians are of everyday occurrence in that vicinity, and that between the 17th and 21st Feb. fifteen persons had been killed.

5th.  Finished the perusal of William Wood’s “New England’s Prospects,” a work of 98 12mo pages, printed at London, 1634.  This was fourteen years after the first landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth, and the same year that John Eliot came over.  Its chief claim to notice is its antiquity.  “Some have thought,” he says, “that they (the Indians) might be descendants of the Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues.  Their language is hard to learn, few of the English being able to speak any of it, or capable of the right pronunciation, which is the chief grace of their tongue.  They pronounce much after the diphthongs, excluding B and L, which, in our English tongue, they pronounce with much difficulty, as most of the Dutch do T and H, calling a lobster, a nobstan.”

The examples of a vocabulary he gives show them to be Algonquins, and not “Skroellings,” or Esquimaux, as they are represented to have been by the Scandinavians (vide Ant.  Amer.), who visited the present area of Massachusetts in the tenth century.

The close alliance of their language with the existing Chippewa and Ottawa of the north, is shown by the following specimens:—­

New England Tribes. Chippewa of Lake Superior.
1634.                    1839.
Woman,         Squa,                    E-qua.
Water,         Nip-pe,                  Ne-be.
A raccoon,     Au-supp,                 A se-bun.
Daughter,      Tawonis,                 O-dau-nis.
A duck,        Sea-sceep,               She-sheeb.
Summer,        Se-quan,                 Se-gwun.
Red            Squi,                    Mis-qui.
A house,       Wig-wam,                 Weeg-wam.

He divides the tribes into:—­