I am enabled to perform the rest by water; and when once afloat, I care not whether it be two or three hundred miles.  I propose to send all our provisions, furniture, and clothes to my wife’s father, who approves of the scheme, and to reserve nothing but a few necessary articles of covering; trusting to the furs of the chase for our future apparel.  Were we imprudently to encumber ourselves too much with baggage, we should never reach to the waters of—–­, which is the most dangerous as well as the most difficult part of our journey; and yet but a trifle in point of distance.  I intend to say to my negroes—­In the name of God, be free, my honest lads, I thank you for your past services; go, from henceforth, and work for yourselves; look on me as your old friend, and fellow labourer; be sober, frugal, and industrious, and you need not fear earning a comfortable subsistence.—­Lest my countrymen should think that I am gone to join the incendiaries of our frontiers, I intend to write a letter to Mr.—–­, to inform him of our retreat, and of the reasons that have urged me to it.  The man whom I sent to——­village, is to accompany us also, and a very useful companion he will be on every account.

You may therefore, by means of anticipation, behold me under the Wigwam; I am so well acquainted with the principal manners of these people, that I entertain not the least apprehension from them.  I rely more securely on their strong hospitality, than on the witnessed compacts of many Europeans.  As soon as possible after my arrival, I design to build myself a wigwam, after the same manner and size with the rest, in order to avoid being thought singular, or giving occasion for any railleries; though these people are seldom guilty of such European follies.  I shall erect it hard by the lands which they propose to allot me, and will endeavour that my wife, my children, and myself may be adopted soon after our arrival.  Thus becoming truly inhabitants of their village, we shall immediately occupy that rank within the pale of their society, which will afford us all the amends we can possibly expect for the loss we have met with by the convulsions of our own.  According to their customs we shall likewise receive names from them, by which we shall always be known.  My youngest children shall learn to swim, and to shoot with the bow, that they may acquire such talents as will necessarily raise them into some degree of esteem among the Indian lads of their own age; the rest of us must hunt with the hunters.  I have been for several years an expert marksman; but I dread lest the imperceptible charm of Indian education, may seize my younger children, and give them such a propensity to that mode of life, as may preclude their returning to the manners and customs of their parents.  I have but one remedy to prevent this great evil; and that is, to employ them in the labour of the fields, as much as I can; I am even resolved to make their daily subsistence depend altogether on it.  As long as we keep ourselves