learn.  I’ll tell you what I intend to do; I’ll send you to my house, where you shall stay two or three weeks, there you must exercise yourself with the axe, that is the principal tool the Americans want, and particularly the back-settlers.  Can your wife spin?  Yes, she can.  Well then as soon as you are able to handle the axe, you shall go and live with Mr. P. R., a particular friend of mine, who will give you four dollars per month, for the first six, and the usual price of five as long as you remain with him.  I shall place your wife in another house, where she shall receive half a dollar a week for spinning; and your son a dollar a month to drive the team.  You shall have besides good victuals to eat, and good beds to lie on; will all this satisfy you, Andrew?  He hardly understood what I said; the honest tears of gratitude fell from his eyes as he looked at me, and its expressions seemed to quiver on his lips.—­Though silent, this was saying a great deal; there was besides something extremely moving to see a man six feet high thus shed tears; and they did not lessen the good opinion I had entertained of him.  At last he told me, that my offers were more than he deserved, and that he would first begin to work for his victuals.  No, no, said I, if you are careful and sober, and do what you can, you shall receive what I told you, after you have served a short apprenticeship at my house.  May God repay you for all your kindnesses, said Andrew; as long as I live I shall thank you, and do what I can for you.  A few days after I sent them all three to——­, by the return of some waggons, that he might have an opportunity of viewing, and convincing himself of the utility of those machines which he had at first so much admired.

The further descriptions he gave us of the Hebrides in general, and of his native island in particular; of the customs and modes of living of the inhabitants; greatly entertained me.  Pray is the sterility of the soil the cause that there are no trees, or is it because there are none planted?  What are the modern families of all the kings of the earth, compared to the date of that of Mr. Neiel?  Admitting that each generation should last but forty years, this makes a period of 1200; an extraordinary duration for the uninterrupted descent of any family!  Agreeably to the description he gave us of those countries, they seem to live according to the rules of nature, which gives them but bare subsistence; their constitutions are uncontaminated by any excess or effeminacy, which their soil refuses.  If their allowance of food is not too scanty, they must all be healthy by perpetual temperance and exercise; if so, they are amply rewarded for their poverty.  Could they have obtained but necessary food, they would not have left it; for it was not in consequence of oppression, either from their patriarch or the government, that they had emigrated.  I wish we had a colony of these honest people settled in some parts of this province; their morals, their religion, seem to be as simple as their manners.  This society would present an interesting spectacle could they be transported on a richer soil.  But perhaps that soil would soon alter everything; for our opinions, vices, and virtues, are altogether local:  we are machines fashioned by every circumstance around us.