grave and important subjects, the other ignoble, or trivial, for
familiar or vulgar ones. But this distinction is not so much with them,
as with us, marked by a difference of words, but of terminations. Thus,
when they are treating of solemn, or weighty matters, they terminate the
verb and the noun by another inflexion, than what is used for trivial or
common conversation.

I do not know, whether I explain clearly enough to you this so material
a point of their elocution; but it makes itself clearly distinguished,
when once one comes to understand the language, in which it supplies the
place of the most pathetic emphasis, though even that they do not want,
nor great expression in their gestures and looks. All their conjugations
are regular and distinct.

Yet, with all these advantages of language, the nation itself is
extreamly ignorant as to what concerns itself, or its origin, and their
traditions are very confused and defective. They know nothing of the
first peopling of their country, of which they imagine themselves the
Aborigines. They often talk of their ancestors, but have nothing to say
of them that is not vague or general. According to them, they were all
great hunters, great wood-rangers, expert managers of canoes, intrepid
warriors, that took to wives as many as they could maintain by hunting.
They had too a custom amongst them, that if a woman grew pregnant whilst
she was sucking a child, they obliged her to use means for procuring an
abortion, in favor of the first-come, who they supposed would otherwise
be defrauded of his due nourishment. Most of them also value themselves
on being descended from their Jugglers, who are a sort of men that
pretend to foretel futurity by a thousand ridiculous contorsions and
grimaces, and by frightful and long-winded howlings.