46 MEMORIAL ON INDIAN HILL. 



the quantity of drift timber, to be frequently over- 

 flowed, and partially so apparently at high spring 

 tides. The farthest high land 1 saw bore west 

 about twelve miles. 



I left here a paper in a bottle, giving an account 

 of our proceedings, and should have been sorry to 

 think, as Wallis did when he left a similar docu- 

 ment on a mountain in the Strait of Magellan, that 

 1 was leaving a memorial that would remain un- 

 touched as lonof as the world lasts. No, I would 

 fain hope that ere the sand of my life-glass has run 

 out, other feet than mine will have trod this distant 

 shore ; that colonization will, ere many years have 

 past, have extended itself in this quarter ; that cities 

 and hamlets will have risen on the shore of the new- 

 found river, that commerce will have directed her 

 track thither, and that smoke may rise from Christian 

 hearths where now alone the prowling heathen lights 

 his fire. There is an inevitable tendency in man to 

 create ; and there is nothing which he contemplates 

 with so much complacency as the work of his own 

 hands. To civilize the world, to subdue the wilderness, 

 is the proudest achievement to which he can look 

 forward ; and to share in this great work by open- 

 ing new fields of enterprise, and leading, as it were, 

 the van of civilisation, fills the heart with inexpres- 

 sible delight. It is natural, therefore, as I traced 

 the record of our visit and deposited it on Indian 

 Hill, that I should look forward in a mood very 

 far difl^erent from that of Wallis, to the speedy 

 fruition of my hopes. 



