cities and under the light of civilization attain to the same years. She proved docile, therefore, and easy to teach the great lessons of the Christian faith and morality, which she received, in the Saviour's language, as a little child, and daily she endeared herself to her husband and his mother by the graces of the gospel sown in unvitiated ground; while the charm of brighter intelligence and the many truths they possessed and exemplified in their conduct, won her whole heart more deeply to them in return; so that she never entertained a regret at having to abandon her people, or a thought of returning to the tribe; but in a few years sunk into all the simple ways of that western civilization which exists on the outskirts of the great hunting-grounds, and became the mother of a fine family of sons and daughters worthy of the moral nature and physical beauty of their parents, towards whom, as the guardian and guide of them, she showed that she was as capable of teaching as she had herself been of being taught.

Thus a wild flower of the western wilderness became a loved and cherished daughter of civilization, and a meek and graceful exemplification of the gospel of peace.

THE

BEAVERS.

HE common beaver, so earnestly sought after for the valuable fur it produces, and so celebrated for its wonderful instinct, is still an inhabitant of the north of Europe and of Asia, where formerly it was found in considerable numbers, but the closer proximity of mankind through the increase of population has greatly reduced the numbers, and it is now rarely met with. Centuries ago it was a native of our own island.

In North America, however, the scene of the events described in the preceding pages,

it is found in greater profusion, though there is some fear that the continued assaults on its strongholds in the rivers and lakes of that great country will soon tend to its extinction.

It is generally supposed that there is but one species of true beaver, and that those few still to be found in the northern parts of Europe and Asia are of the same kind as the North American beaver, notwithstanding some slight difference of colour, fur, etc., which may be accounted for by the difference of climate.

Buffon, in his celebrated Natural History,* says of the instinct of animals: "In proportion as man rises above a state of nature, the other animals sink below that standard; reduced to slavery or treated as rebels, and dispersed by force, their societies have vanished, their industry and genius have become barren, their arts have disappeared; such species has lost its general qualities, and the whole have preserved only their individual properties, matured in some by example, by imitation, and by instruction; and in others by fear, and by the necessity of perpetually watching over their own safety. What views, what designs can be possessed by slaves without spirit, or exiles without power? Compelled to flee, and to exist in solitude, they can attain to no improvement; they can neither acquire nor transmit knowledge, but must continually languish in calamity and * Vol. vi. p. 128.