signs, and strings of shells,* and rough paintings on rocks. or skins, were employed, to some extent, as means of communication or commemoration. The Cherokee, Sequoy'ah, called also George Guess, was the first to invent, about sixty years ago, signs for his people's language. The Indians, however, possess a Gesture Language, by which different tribes are enabled to hold intercourse with each other.

-15. Four great stocks, or families, embrace nearly all the Indians that were found east of the Mississippi. These are the Algonquin, the Ir'oquois, the Appal'achee, and the Cherokee. The Chico'ras, the Catawbas, the Yem'assees, the Uchees', and the Natchez, are not included in the four stocks. West of the Mississippi were the Daco'tahs, the Shoshonees', the Ap'aches, the Coman'ches, and the numerous indistinct tribes of the Rocky Mountains and of the Pacific slope. Of the Eastern Indians, the Iroquois had advanced furthest in social order and the arts of life. They formed a regular confederation, named, first, the Five, and afterwards, the Six Nations.

16. The Indians are supposed to be all of one race,† with the single exception of the Esquimaux. Great differences of appearance, of disposition, of culture, and of language. separate the several groups. The hair is always of the same peculiar character, and a like structure prevails through the numerous languages and dialects.

17. The first English settlers came in contact with various branches of the Algonquin stock along the Atlantic coast. The descendants of these settlers now cover the continent from the eastern to the western ocean. Their native antagonists have disappeared like dew from the prairie, and

permanent chief of the tribe. His office was usually hereditary; but he might be set aside.

* Seawan, or Wampum, is the name of such strings.

This has been questioned in recent years.

Powhatans', Delawares, Manhattans, Mohicans, Pequods, Narragansetts, etc.

DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

15

have dwindled away to less than half a million in the whole wide territory of the United States.*

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

18. Early visits to America are reported in numerous traditions. They are, for the most part, wild dreams. Plato's fable of Atlantis has been already mentioned. Other fables are equally vain. The expedition of the Welsh prince, Madoc, in the latter half of the twelfth century, is as visionary as the story of St. Brandan's Isle. More respect may, perhaps, be paid to the statement that Buddhists, from Central Asia, visited America in the fifth century. The tale of Icelandic and Norwegian explorations and settlements on the coasts of Greenland and the shores of New England, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is better founded. They did not come to the knowledge of the rest of Europe. The history of America begins only in the last years of the fifteenth century.

19 The beautiful city of Genoa fronts the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is sheltered from bleak winds by the chain of the Apennines. Its commerce, its wealth, and its power obtained for it the designation of Genoa the Proud. The epithet was justified by the splendor of its palaces and by the daring of its citizens. Much of its greatness had been lost in the middle of the fifteenth century. Yet

The number reported to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs in 1881 was 246,417, exclusive of Alaska.

+ St. Brandan's Isle was that appearance of clouds or haze on the horizon, resembling land, which is now familiar to seamen as Cape Fly-Away. It often deceived the navigators of the Atlantic, who mistook it for a new country in the West, which they pursued, but could not reach, as it retained its distance or vanished from them.

These Scandinavian discoveries are now extensively believed. It has been supposed that the communication with Greenland was interrupted by a great change of climate and by vast icebergs, about 1350.

it still had many vessels at sea. It still traded with the East and with the West. It still waged war with the Sultans of Constantinople, with the Caliphs of Egypt, and with the pirates who plundered the shores of Italy, and captured Christians to sell them as slaves to the Turks.

20. In this city a boy was born, about the year 1440,

who lived to do greater things than had ever been achieved in his native State in the days of its highest renown.* He was named Christopher Columbus. He was brought up in

*The Genoese are credited with an early attempt to discover land beyond che Atlantic ; but the authority for the statement is not given.

"The Genoese** made an effort in the year 1291 to obtain that discovery of a new world westward which their countryman Columbus effected two centuries later. * * They sent out two galleys for this important purpose, under Theodosius Doria and Ugolin Vivaldo, who were directed to sail far westward, without the Straits of Gib raltar, in quest of new countries; but they were never heard of more."