430 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 



Rasles (S.) — Continued. 



thus in a short time I made a Dictionary, and 

 also a Catechism containing the principles and 

 mysteries of religion.' 



' ' The Dictionary here mentioned was, without 

 doubt, the identical manuscript which is now, 

 for the first time, printed in the present vol- 

 ume. The author has left no other account of 

 it ; nor has he, either in the work itself or in his 

 Letters given any other explanation of the char- 

 acters of his alphabet, than the short remark 

 above quoted respecting the sound which he 

 calls a guttural, and which he denotes in his 

 Letter by ou, and the figure 8, but in his Diction- 

 ary by the character y, borrowed from the 

 Greeks. 



"The ms. is a small quarto volume, in Father 

 Easles' own handwriting; and on the first leaf 

 the author has made the following note, which 

 is placed at the head of the present edition : 

 ' 1691. II y a un an que je suis x>armi les 

 sauvages, je commence a mettre en ordre en 

 forme de dictionaire les mots que j'apprens.' 

 Immediately below this, on the same page is 

 added, in an old handwriting, the following : 

 ' Taken after the Fight at Norridgewalk among 

 Father Ealle's Papers, and given by the late 

 Col. Heath to Elisha Cooke Esq. — Dictionary of 

 the Norridgewalk Language.' It is under- 

 stood to have been presented by Mr. Cooke to 

 the Library of Harvard University, to which 

 valuable collection it now belongs. 



" Some years ago I gave a bibliographical 

 account of it, which was published in the 

 Memoirs of the American Academy, as an Ap- 

 pendix to an Essay on a Uniform Orthography 

 for the Indian Languages of ITorth America ; 

 to which the reader is referred. 



"This Dictionary is now printed from the 

 original in Father Easles' handwriting, and with 

 as much exactness as was practicable. His 

 abbreviations of words are retained, though, in 

 all cases where an unpractised reader of French 

 or Indian would beat a loss, they are explained 

 by printing the abbreviated word or phrase at 

 full length, in brackets, immediately after the 

 abbreviation. 



"Lest the numerous errors of orthography 

 and accentuation in the French part of the 

 work should be ascribed to the carelessness or 

 ignorance of the Editor, it is proper to apprize 

 the reader, that such of them as are properly 

 errors, and not the authorized orthography of 

 the age when Easles compiled his work, have 

 been suffered to remain, from a desire of 

 scrupulously following the manuscript. 



"It should be farther observed, that the lead- 

 ing words of each article, which are printed in 

 capitals and between brackets, have been 

 added by the Editor, in order to lessen, in some 

 degree, the ex treme inconvenience which would 

 have been experienced in using the work with- 

 out such aid. In all other instances, also, every 

 addition by the Editor is printed in brackets. 



" The manuscript was evidently begun upon 



Rasles (S.) — Continued. 



the plan of first filling up the right hand pages 

 of the book, and reserving the opposite ones 

 for subsequent additions. Most of these blank 

 pages were afterwards either partly or entirely 

 filled with additional matter ; many of them, 

 however, still remain blank. This state of the 

 MS. will explain to the reader the reason why 

 the paging in the margin of the present edition 

 is double, as (2, 3), &c. As the additional 

 words on the left hand pages belonged to differ- 

 ent places on the right hand pages and required 

 to be inserted under their respective heads, it 

 would have been impracticable, and contrary 

 to the author's own plan, to have printed the 

 pages consecutively; it was thought best to 

 consider the corresponding right and left pages 

 as constituting a single entire page, and to 

 aflix the double numbers as abovementioned. 

 Those readers who may wish to consult the 

 manuscript will now be able to do it with 

 great convenience by means of this marginal 

 paging. 



"In general the MS. is fairly written, and 

 perfectly legible ; a few places, however, are 

 quite illegible ; and, where this is the case, there 

 is of necessity an hiatus in the printed copy ; 

 of which the reader is apprized by a series of 



periods placed in this manner, Where 



a word was not wholly illegible, but the read- 

 ing doubtful, a note of interrogation is placed 

 immediately after it, in brackets, thus [?]. 

 Many passages which at first defied the keen- 

 est eye-sight were subsequently restored by 

 the application of the tincture of nut-galls. 

 The discovery of numerous obscure readings is 

 due to the critical sagacity of my friend, Mr. 

 Charles Folsom, A. A. S., whose indefatigable 

 care also detected many errors which would 

 otherwise have remained unobserved," 



Leclerc, 1867, no. 1238, sold a copy for 25 fr. 

 The Field copy, no. 1911, sold for $2.50 ; the Mur- 

 phy copy, no. 2102, for $7. Priced by Leclerc, 

 1878, no. 2095, 60 fr. ; by Dufosse, 1887, no. 24581, 

 40 fr. 



Sebastian Easle, French missionary, born in 

 Dole, France, in 1658, died in Norridgewoc k, 

 Me., 12 Aug., 1724. His name is often improp- 

 erly spelled Eaale, Eale, and Edle. After com- 

 pleting his studies in Dijon, he became a Jesuit, 

 and taught Greek for a time in the college of 

 the society at Ximes. At his request he was 

 attached in 1689 to the missions of Canada, and 

 sailing from La Eochelle, 23 July, he landed at 

 Quebec on 1 3 Oct. After having charge of var- 

 ious missions [among the Illinois at Missilima- 

 kinak, etc.], he was placed in charge of the 

 station of Norridgewock, on Kennebec Eiver 

 about 1695. Here he made a thorough study of 

 the Abenaki language. In the winter of 1705, 

 Capt. Hilton, with a party of 270 men, including 

 forty-five New Englanders, surprised Norridge- 

 wock and burned the church, but Easle escap- 

 ed to the woods with his papers. When peace 

 was restored in 1713 he set about building a new 



