of this confederacy, and
to make a few brief suggestions on its origin and history. In the time
that has been given me, I have had but little opportunity for research,
and even this little, other engagements, have not permitted me, fully to
employ. The little that I have to offer, would indeed have been confined
to the reminiscence of former reading, had I not been called, the
present season, to make a personal visit to the reservation still
occupied by the principal tribes.

1. Prominent in its effects on the rise and progress of nations, in the
geographical diameter of the country they occupy. And in this respect,
the Iroquois were singularly favored. They lived under an atmosphere the
most genial of any in the temperate latitude. Equally free from the
extremes of heat, and humidity, it has been found eminently favorable to
human life. Inquiries into the statistics of vitality will abundantly
denote this. Many of the civil sachems lived to a great age. And the
same may be said of those warriors who escaped the dart and club, until
they came to the period, not a very advanced one, when they ceased to
follow the war path.

They possessed a country, unsurpassed for its various advantages, not
only on this continent, but on the globe.--It afforded a soil of the
most fruitful kind, where they could, with ease and certainty, always
cultivate their maize. Its forests abounded in the deer, elk, bear and
other animals, whose flesh supplied their lodges. It was irrigated by
some of the sublimest rivers of the continent, whose waters ran south
and north, east, and by the Alleghanies, west, till they all found their
level, at distant points, either in the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and
Mexico, or in the intermediate shores of the Atlantic. Lakes of an
amazing size, compared to those of Europe, bounded this territory on the
north and north east. Its own bosom, was spotted, with secondary sheets
of water, like that of the Cayuga, upon whose banks we are assembled.
These added freshness and beauty to the thick, and almost unbroken
continuity of these forests.

Nations doubtless owe some of their characteristics to the natural
scenes of their country, and if we grant the same influence to the red
sons of the forest, they had sources of animating and elevating thoughts
around them.--Men who habitually cast their views to the Genesee and the
Niagara--who crossed in their light canoe, the Ontario and Erie, wending
their way into the subli