Note AH — {95} CHAP. V.

Notwithstanding this is the general character of the Southern Indian women, as they are called on the coasts of Hudson's Bay, and who are the same tribe with the Canadian Indians, I am happy to have it in my power to insert a few lines to the memory of one of them, whom I knew from her infancy, and who, I can truly affirm, was directly the reverse of the picture I have drawn.

Mary, the daughter of Moses Norton, many years Chief at Prince of Wales's Fort, in Hudson's Bay, though born and brought up in a country of all others the least favourable to virtue and virtuous principles, possessed them, and every other good and amiable quality, in a most eminent degree.

Without the assistance of religion, and with no education but what she received among the dissolute natives of her country, she would have shone with superior lustre in any other country: for, if an engaging person, gentle manners, an easy freedom, arising from a consciousness of innocence, an amiable modesty, and an unrivalled delicacy of sentiment, are graces and virtues which render a woman lovely, none ever had greater pretensions to general esteem and regard: while her benevolence, humanity, and scrupulous adherence to truth and honesty, would have done honour to the most enlightened and devout Christian.

Dutiful, obedient, and affectionate to her parents; steady and faithful to her friends; grateful and humble to her benefactors; easily forgiving and forgetting injuries; careful not to offend any, and courteous and kind to all; she was, nevertheless, suffered to perish by the rigours of cold and hunger, amidst her own relations, at a time when the griping hand of famine was by no means severely felt by any other member of their company; and it may truly be said that she fell a martyr to the principles of virtue. This happened in the Winter of the year 1782, after the French had destroyed Prince of Wales's Fort; at which time she was in the twenty-second year of her age.

Human nature shudders at the bare recital of such brutality, and reason shrinks from the task of accounting for the decrees of Providence on such occasions as this: but they are the strongest assurances of a future state, so infinitely superior to the present, that the enjoyment of every pleasure in this world by the most worthless and abandoned wretch, or the most innocent and virtuous woman perishing by the most excruciating of all deaths, are matters equally indifferent. But,

"Peace to the ashes, and the virtuous mind, Of her who lived in peace with all mankind; Learn'd from the heart, unknowing of disguise, Truth in her thoughts, and candour in her eyes; Stranger alike to envy and to pride, Good sense her light, and Nature all her guide; But now removed from all the ills of life, Here rests the pleasing friend and faithful wife."—Waller.

Her father was, undoubtedly, very blamable for bringing her up in the tender manner which he did, rendering her by that means not only incapable of bearing the fatigues and hardships which the rest of her countrywomen think little of, but of providing for herself. This is, indeed, too frequent a practice among Europeans in that country, who bring up their children in so indulgent a manner, that when they retire, and leave their offspring behind, they find themselves so helpless, as to be unable to provide for the few wants to which they are subject. The late Mr. Ferdinand Jacobs, many years Chief at York Fort, was the only person whom I ever knew that acted in a different manner; though no man could possibly be fonder of his children in other respects, yet as there were some that he could not bring to England, he had them brought up entirely among the natives; so that when he left the country, they scarcely ever felt the loss, though they regretted the absence of a fond and indulgent parent.