Mysie took occasion to call at one of these _quasi_ wigwams, soon after
her arrival, but could discern only one aboriginal vestige in either
inhabitants or customs. This existed in the shape of a dish of
succotash, (corn and beans boiled together,) which the good woman was
preparing for breakfast,--very possibly in ignorance that her ancestors
had cooked and eaten and named the compound ages before the white
intruders ever saw their shore.

Mysie pursued her morning walk in a somewhat melancholy mood. It is a
sad and dreary sight to behold a nation in decay; saddest when the fall
is from so slight an elevation as that on which the savage stood. Greece
and Rome, falling into old age, proudly boast, "Men cannot say I did not
_have_ the crown"; each shows undying, unsurpassable achievements of her
day of power and strength,--each, if she live no longer in the sight of
the world, is sure of dwelling forever in its memory. But the
aboriginal, when his simple routine of life is broken up by the
intrusion of a people more powerful, more wicked, and more wise than
himself, is incapable of exchanging his own purely physical ambitions
and pursuits for the intellectual and cultivated life belonging to the
better class of his conquerors, while his wild and sensuous nature
grasps eagerly at the new forms of vice which follow in their train.
Civilization to the savage destroys his own existence, and gives him no
better one,--destroys it irremediably and forever. The life sufficient
for himself and for the day is not that which stretches its hand into
the future and sets its mark on ages not yet born; it dies and is
forgotten,--forgotten even by the descendants of those who lived it.

Some of the Indian names still survive; and Mysie's indignation was
roused, when a descendant of the Mayhews, pointing out the hamlets of
Menemshee and Nashaquitsa, (commonly called Quitsy,) added,