antique-looking spinning-wheels, a pair of churns,
a few clumsy chairs, a large chest, together with a couple of small
heavy waggons not yet placed upon the wheels,--were a few as lively
recruits as any land desirous of population could wish to welcome.

The party consisted, first, of a right venerable-looking old man, the
patriarch of the tribe, as he told me, seventy-four years old; six men,
his sons and grandsons; seven lively boys, his great-grandchildren, and
about an equal number of girls, the patriarch's wife, nearly as aged as
himself, but with a shrill piercing voice and the activity of a girl of
nineteen, with four other women, the wives of the ancient's sons.

At the moment I came upon them the whole camp was rousing into full
activity. The grandmother, assisted by a couple of her young women,
found ample occupation in first catching and next washing the junior
branches of the colonists: these appeared already aware of their being
in a country where every individual thinks for himself, or at least
thinks he does, which comes to the same thing, for they stoutly
resisted, to the last extremity, the soapless saline ablutions profusely
administered by their great grandam.

Meantime a couple of the more staid of the youngsters, who had been
passed outside the lines, were busied beneath the trees collecting
fallen sticks, leaves, &c. for keeping up the fire already lighted and
presided over by one of the females, whose task it evidently was to
prepare breakfast.

A couple of the men yet slept soundly; another pair were composedly
leaning against a waggon smoking their pipes; whilst a third, the
youngest of the grown men, and evidently the _beau-garcon_ of the party,
was busied about the completion of a careful toilet before six square
inches of looking-glass, held up to him by a young lass, rather
good-looking, who, kneeling before this Adonis in evident admiration,
most patiently abided the completion of his equipment previous to
commencing her own.

My course was at once arrested by a scene so new and unexpected; and I
stood for a long time contemplating the repose of this little group,
camping here in the midst of a busy population on the banks of the
Hudson, in the same manner and after the same fashion their ancestors
are described to have followed by the Rhone and the Danube in the time
of Caesar.

There was an air of confident security about the whole arrangement, that
spoke equally in favour of the