10 



iug apparatus, but gradually neglected it, soon rejected 

 it as an inconvenient and useless thing, and returned to 

 their fire of sticks. 



Their religion appears to be a mixture of Eoman Ca- 

 tholicism and Sun worship, yet the true character of their 

 faith must be determined by giving to it a closer study. 

 One of their curious religious customs is a system of 

 proxy, by which the women do religious service for the 

 men, and the priests for the women. 



We hope that before man}'- months, when Mr. McNeil 

 shall have returned again, he may enable us to communi- 

 cate a more extended account of this country, its people, 

 and its productions. 



COL. LESLIES' EXPEDITION. 



CANNON IN 1775, ON THE NORTH BKIDGE WHARF, 



The laughable defeat of Col. Leslie with the sixty- 

 fourth British Regiment, at the North Bridge, on Svm- 

 day, Feb. 26, 1775, has been made to appear still more 

 ridiculous, and quite Quixotic from information fur- 

 nished by Mr. Gideon Tucker, and communicated by his 

 nephew, Mr. Jonathan Tucker, both of Salem. Mr. 

 Gideon Tucker died in 1861, aged eighty-three years, 

 but previous to his death made a written statement, from 

 which it appears that these cannon were not public mili- 

 tary stores, but private property, owned by various per- 

 sons, and had been stored upon the wharf as useless in a 

 time of general peace. 



The following is his statement : 



"Being with my father at his wharf in North Salem, when I was six 

 or seven years old, then iu 1784 or thereabouts, from which wharf 

 privateers were fitted out in the Revolution, and where prizes were 



