In such toil as this, the corporal was found to be very serviceable; but neither of the Indians declined to lend their assistance, in work of this manly character.  By this time, moreover, Gershom had come round, and was an able-bodied, vigorous assistant, once more.  If the corporal was the master of any alcohol, he judiciously kept it a secret; for not a drop passed any one’s lips during the whole of that toilsome journey.

Although the difficult places in the river were sufficiently numerous, most of the reaches were places having steady, but not swift currents toward the lake.  In these reaches the paddles, and those not very vigorously applied, enabled the travellers to advance as fast as was desirable; and such tranquil waters were a sort of resting-places to those who managed the canoes.  It was while ascending these easy channels, that conversation most occurred; each speaker yielding, as was natural, to the impulses of the thoughts uppermost in his mind.  The missionary talked much of the Jews; and, as the canoes came near each other, he entered at large, with their different occupants, into the reasons he had for believing that the red men of America were the lost tribes of Israel.  “The very use of the word ‘tribes,’” would this simple-minded, and not very profound expounder of the word of God, say, “is one proof of the truth of what I tell you.  Now, no one thinks of dividing the white men of America into ‘tribes.’  Who ever heard of the ‘tribe’ of New England, or of the ‘tribe’ of Virginia, or of the ‘tribe’ of the Middle States? [Footnote:  The reader is not to infer any exaggeration in this picture.  There is no end to the ignorance and folly of sects and parties, when religious or political zeal runs high.  The writer well remembers to have heard a Universalist, of more zeal than learning, adduce, as an argument in favor of his doctrine, the twenty-fifth chapter and forty-sixth verse of St. Matthew, where we are told that the wicked “shall go away into ever-lasting punishment; but the righteous into Vis eternal”; by drawing a distinction between the adjectives, and this so much the more, because the Old Testament speaks of “everlasting hills,” and “everlasting valleys “; thus proving, from the Bible, a substantial difference between “everlasting” and “eternal.”  Now, every Sophomore knows that the word used in Matthew is the same in both cases, being “aionion,” or “existing forever.”] Even among the blacks, there are no tribes.  There is a very remarkable passage in the sixty-eighth Psalm, that has greatly struck me, since my mind has turned to this subject; ‘God shall wound the head his enemies.’ saith the Psalmist, ’and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness.’  Here is a very obvious allusion to a well-known, and what we think, a barbarous practice of the red men; but, rely on it, friends, nothing that is permitted on earth is permitted in vain.  The attentive reader of the inspired book, by gleaning