SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION. 
441 
society ; and however well disposed a child may 
be, there is but one sad and melancholy resource for 
it at last, that of again joining its tribe, and be- 
coming such as they are. Neither is there that 
disinclination on the part of the elder children to 
resume their former mode of life and customs that 
might perhaps have been expected ; for whilst still 
at school they see and participate enough in the 
sports, pleasures, or charms of savage life to prevent 
their acquiring a distaste to it ; and when the time 
arrives for their departure, they are generally willing 
and anxious to enter upon the career before them, 
and take their part in the pursuits or duties of their 
tribe. Boys usually leave school about fourteen, to 
join in the chase, or learn the practice of war. 
Girls are compelled to leave about twelve, through 
the joint influence of parents and husbands, to join 
the latter ; and those only who have been acquainted 
with the life of slavery and degradation a native 
female is subject to, can at all form an opinion of 
the wretched prospect before her. 
There are two other points connected with the 
natives to which I will briefly advert: the one, 
relative to the language in which the school 
children are taught, the other, the policy, or other- 
wise, of having establishments for the natives in the 
immediate vicinity of a town, or of a numerous 
European population. 
With respect to the first, I may premise, that for 
the first four years the school at the location in 
