been by the son of Se-quo-yah."

In his mature years, at Brainerd, although approaching seventy,
the nerve or fire of the old man was not dead. Some narrow-minded
ecclesiastics, because Gist would not go through the routine of a
Christian profession after the fashion they prescribed, have not
scrupled to intimate that he was a pagan, and grieved that the
Bible was printed in the language he gave. This arose simply from
not comprehending him. They persisted in considering him an
ignorant savage, while he comprehended himself and measured them.

In his old days a new and deeper ambition seized him. He was not
in the habit of asking advice or assistance in his projects. In
his journey to the West, as well as to Washington, he had an
opportunity of examining different languages, of which, as far as
lay in his power, he carefully availed himself. His health had
been somewhat affected by rheumatism, one of the few inheritances
he got from the old fur peddler of Ebenezer; but the strong spirit
was slow to break.

He formed a theory of certain relations in the language of the
Indian tribes, and conceived the idea of writing a book on the
points of similarity and divergence. Books were, to a great
extent, closed to him; but as of old, when he began his career as
a blacksmith by making his bellows, so he now fell back on his own
resources. This brave Indian philosopher of ours was not the man
to be stopped by obstacles. He procured some articles for the
Indian trade he had learned in his boyhood, and putting these and
his provisions and camping equipage in an ox-cart, he took a
Cherokee boy with him as driver and companion, and started out