great advantage; I must write to her immediately, and insist on her
making me a visit before she marries. She came to America two years
ago, with her uncle Colonel Montague, who died here, and I imagined was
gone back to England; she is however at Montreal with Mrs. Melmoth, a
distant relation of her mother's. Adieu! _ma tres chere!_

LETTER 11.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Sept. 10.

I find, my dear, that absence and amusement are the best remedies
for a beginning passion; I have passed a fortnight at the Indian
village of Lorette, where the novelty of the scene, and the enquiries I
have been led to make into their antient religion and manners, have
been of a thousand times more service to me than all the reflection in
the world would have been.

I will own to you that I staid too long at Montreal, or rather at
Major Melmoth's; to be six weeks in the same house with one of the
most amiable, most pleasing of women, was a trying situation to a heart
full of sensibility, and of a sensibility which has been hitherto,
from a variety of causes, a good deal restrained. I should have avoided
the danger from the first, had it appeared to me what it really was;
but I thought myself secure in the consideration of her engagements, a
defence however which I found grow weaker every day.

But to my savages: other nations talk of liberty, they possess it;
nothing can be more astonishing than to see a little village of about
thirty or forty families, the small remains of the Hurons, almost
exterminated by long and continual war with the Iroquoise, preserve
their independence in the midst of an European colony consisting of
seventy thousand inhabitants; yet the fact is true of the savages of
Lorette; they assert and they maintain that independence with a spirit
truly noble. One of our company having said something which an Indian
understood as a supposition that they had been _subjects_ of
France, his eyes struck fire, he stop'd him abruptly, contrary to
their respectful and sensible custom of never interrupting the person
who speaks, "You mistake, brother," said he; "we are subjects to no
prince; a savage is free all over the world." And he spoke only truth;
they are not only free as a people, but every individual is perfectly
so. Lord of himself, at once subject and master, a savage knows no
superior, a circumstance which has a striking effect on his behaviour;
unawed by rank or riches, distinctions unknown