252 TRAVELS THROUGH UPPER CANADA : 
time it seems wholly impossible that they should 
ever have been able to have made wampum 
from the clam shell for themselves ; they fashion 
the bowls of tobacco pipes, indeed, from stone, 
in a very curious manner, and with astonish¬ 
ing accuracy, considering that they use no 
other instrument than a common knife, but 
then the stone which they commonly carve 
thus is of a very soft kind; the clam shell, 
however, is exceedingly hard, and to bore and 
cut it into such small pieces as are necessary to 
form wampum, very fine tools would be want¬ 
ing. Probably they made sqme use of the 
clam shell, and endeavoured to reduce it to as 
small bits as they could with their rude in¬ 
struments before we came amongst them, but 
on finding that we could cut it so much more 
neatly than they could, laid aside the wampum 
before in use for that of our manufacture. Mr. 
Carver tells us, that he found sea shells very 
generally worn by the Indians who resided in 
the most interior parts of the continent, who 
never could have visited a sea shore themselves, 
and could only have procured them at the ex^ 
pence of much trouble from other nations. 
The Indians are exceedingly sagacious and 
observant, and by dint of minute attention, 
acquire many qualifications to which we are 
wholly strangers. They will traverse a track¬ 
less forest, hundreds of miles in extent, with- 
