182 
RURAL HOURS. 
blessings of Christianity. Let us acknowledge the strong claim 
they have upon us, not in word only, but in deed also. The 
native intellect of the red men who peopled this part of America 
surpassed that of many other races laboring under the curses of 
savage life ; they have shown bravery, fortitude, religious feel- 
ing, eloquence, imagination, quickness of intellect, with much dig- 
nity of manner ; and if we are true to our duty, now at the mo- 
ment when they are making of their own accord a movement in 
the path of improvement, perhaps the day may not be distant 
when men of Indian blood may be numbered among the wise and 
the good, laboring in behalf of our common country. 
It is painful, indeed, to remember how little has yet been done 
for the Indian during the three centuries since he and the white 
man first met on the Atlantic coast. But such is only the com- 
mon course of things ; a savage race is almost invariably corrupted 
rather than improved by its earliest contact with a civihzed peo- 
ple ; they suffer from the vices of civihzation before they learn 
justly to comprehend its merits. It is with nations as with in- 
dividuals — amelioration is a slow process, corruption a rapid one. 
Wednesday, 18 th. — Warm, brilliant weather. Thermometer 89, 
with much dry air. Walked in the woods. 
That ghost-like plant, the Indian-pipe, is in flower, and quite 
common here — sometimes growing singly, more frequently sev- 
eral together. The whole plant, about a span high, is entirely 
colorless, looking very much as if it were cut out of Derbyshire 
spar ; the leaves are replaced by white scales, but the flower is 
large and perfect, and from the root upward, it is wholly of un- 
tarnished white. One meets with it from June until late in Septem- 
ber ; at first, the flower is nodding, when it really looks some- 
