hem; all the chiefs whose territories it is
necessary to pass through; the salubrity of the different localities;
the remedies against diseases; the treatment of fractures, and the
antidotes to the venom of snakes and scorpions.

"In these vast solitudes, where nothing seems to indicate the route,
where the wind covers up all traces of the track with sand, the khebir
has a thousand ways of directing himself in the right course. In the
night, when there are no stars in sight, by the simple inspection of a
handful of grass, which he examines with his fingers, which he smells
and tastes, he informs himself of his locale without ever being lost or
wandering.

"I saw with astonishment that our conductor, although he had but one
eye, and that defective, recognized perfectly the route; and Leon, the
African, states that the conductor of his caravan became blind upon the
journey from ophthalmia, yet by feeling the grass and sand he could
tell when we were approaching an inhabited place.

"Our guide had all the qualities which make a good khebir. He was
young, large, and strong; he was a master of arms; his eye commanded
respect, and his speech won the heart. But if in the tent he was
affable and winning, once _en route_ he spoke only when it was
necessary, and never smiled."

The Delawares are but a minute remnant of the great Algonquin family,
whose early traditions declare them to be the parent stock from which
the other numerous branches of the Algonquin tribes originated. And
they are the same people whom the first white settlers found so
numerous upon the banks of the Delaware.

When William Penn held his council with the Delawares upon the ground
where the city of Philadelphia now stands, they were as peaceful and
unwarlike in their habits as the Quakers themselves. They had been
subjugated by the Five Nations, forced to take the appellation of
squaws, and forego the use of arms; but after they moved west, beyond
the influence of their former masters, their naturally independent
spirit revived, they soon regained their lofty position as braves and
warriors, and the male squaws of the Iroquois soon became formidable
men and heroes, and so have continued to the present day. Their
war-path has reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean on the west,
Hudson's Bay on the north, and into the very heart of Mexico on the
south.

They are not clannish in their dispositions like most other Indians,
nor by their habits confined