an inspiration, than an acquisition by study and meditation. In truth, I
may venture to say, without presumption, that I talk the _Micmaki_
language as fluently, and as elegantly, as the best of their women, who
most excel in this point.

Another of my occupations is to engage and spur them on to the making a
copious chace, when the hunting-season comes in, that their debts to the
dealers with them may be paid, their wives and children cloathed, and
their credit supported.

It is neither gaming nor debauchery that disable them from the payment
of their debts, but their vanity, which is excessive, in the presents of
peltry they make to other savages, who come either in quality of envoys
from one country to another, or as friends or relations upon a visit to
one another. Then it is, that a village is sure to exhaust itself in
presents; it being a standing rule with them, on the arrival of such
persons, to bring out every thing that they have acquired, during the
winter and spring season, in order to give the best and most
advantageous idea of themselves. Then it is chiefly they make feasts,
which sometimes last several days; of the manner of which I should
perhaps spare you the description, if the ceremony that attends them did
not include the strongest attestation of the great stress they lay on
hunting; the excelling wherein they commonly take for their text in
their panegyrics on these occasions, and consequently enters, for a
great deal, into the idea you are to conceive of the life and manners of
the savages in these parts.

The first thing I am to observe to you is, that one of the greatest
dainties, and with which they crown their entertainments, is the flesh
of dogs. For it is not till the envoys, friends, or relations, are on