Mr. Fleming is attempting to reduce the language to writing. An elementary book of 100 pages has been prepared. Four stations have been formed among the Osages, with sixteen laborers. A printing establishment for the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Osage languages, is to be immediately commenced at the Union station. An elementary book of 126 pages has been printed. Missions are to be immediately commenced among the four bands of the Pawnees, the Sioux, Sacs, Foxes,

etc.

We believe that it is now generally conceded that there is no reasonable expectation of inducing the Indians to change their own language for the English. The mother tongue has more power in it, with those who speak it, than any other language which can be found. It is much easier for a man, who speaks their language to gain and keep their confidence, than for one who can speak only through an interpreter. In respect to the advantages of a uniform orthography in writing the Indian languages, Messrs. Kingsbury and Byington, after much experience, say: "We wish that all the missionaries sent out by the Board might adopt a uniform orthography. Some languages have more consonant sounds than others, and different ones also -and some have more vowel sounds, and nasal sounds, and diphthongal sounds than others. Perhaps all your missionaries among the Indians have adopted a uniform mode of writing. We think that it is entirely practicable from our own experience. We have taken specimens of thirteen different languages or dialects, and have found no particular difficulty in writing the same with one alphabet. In some languages we find some sounds which we do not in others. We especially wish that all the vowel sounds might be uniformly written, and we would recommend that Mr. Pickering's Essay,* be sent to the stations among the Indians, where it has not already been sent, and a copy or two of such Indian books as have been printed according to the general principles contained in his pamphlet. An instance has

See Essay of the Hon. John Pickering, on the adoption of a uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America, inserted in the 4th volume, pp. 319-360, of the Memoirs of the American Academy. This learned scholar adopts as the basis of his proposed Indian orthography, what we call the foreign sounds of the vowels; that is, the sounds which are usually given to them by those European nations, with whom we have much intercourse by books or otherwise, and who, like ourselves, use the Roman alphabet in their

occurred, in which we felt the need of uniformity in writing the Indian languages."

But our limits admonish us to close. If our labor shall contribute, in any measure, to call the public attention to this subject, we shall be gratified. We trust that in the most praiseworthy and honorable efforts, which are making for the evangelization of other continents, the poor aborigines of our own will not be neglected. We may count up more rapid victories elsewhere, but here the claims of justice call with imperative voice. We fear that there is an increasing apathy in our community on the subject of Indian civilization. True, the number of our Indians is comparatively small, and, every year, the pestilence and the trader's whiskey are thinning their ranks. Nevertheless, THEY, of all men, have the first claim on our compassion. We may refuse to extend the cup of cold water to other famishing tribes with less peril than we may to extend it to them. We should feel for them with a brother's sympathy. We should interpose quickly between them and annihilation, the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Some of them we have driven beyond the river by means which the most hard-hearted miser ought to despise, which a generous nation should abhor, and which will affix to the latest ages of time a blot on the page of our history, that the tears of the bitterest repentance cannot wash out. Let us do what we can to repair the remorseless injuries which we have inflicted upon them. Let us watch with candid but with vigilant eye the operation of the present national policy. If it is productive of wrong and outrage, let us lift up a fearless voice of remonstrance. If it secures the present and eternal happi

own languages.

Mr. P. proposes that the general pronunciation of the common letters of our alphabet should be as follows:

A as in the English, father.

B & D as in English, French. etc.
E as in there, short e as in met.
F as in English.

G as English game.
H as an aspirate.

I as in marine, short i as in him.
K, L, M and N as in English.
O English long o as in robe, also
short o as in some.

P and R as in English.

S as in English at the beginning of a word.

Tas in English.

U both long and short as Eng-
lish oo.

V as English v, and German w.
W and Z as in English.
Y as in the English yet.

The whole essay of Mr. P. is very interesting.

ness of the Indian, let us cheer it with all encouragement and co-operation. Let our missionary societies labor under the solemn conviction that the last sands of the Indian existence may now be running.*

ARTICLE VI.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GEOLOGY AND THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF THE CREATION.

By Edward Hitchcock, Professor of Chemistry and Nat. Hist. in Amherst College.

EVERY nation in all ages has had its recorded or traditional cosmogony. And it is not a little curious, that a subject which the most improved philosophy, aided by a divine revelation, finds it so difficult to understand and illustrate, should so interest men in all stages of civilization, and be even incorporated into the unwritten poetry of the rudest tribes. Men of all religions too, and those hostile to all religion; the pagan, the Christian, the deist, and the atheist, have regarded cosmogony as a store-house of tried arguments for the support of their opposing opinions. Ever since the introduction of Christianity into the world, this has been a portion of the field of contest between its friends and its enemies, where the battle has warmly raged. Many a friend of revelation, even before geology was known as a science, has fancied that he saw in the structure of our globe,

* The speech of Mr. Clay, though reported in such a manner as to do but little justice to the great orator, cannot be read without tears. "He rejoices that the voice, which, without charge of presumption or arrogance, has ever been raised in defence of the oppressed of the human species, had been heard in defence of this most oppressed of all. To him, in that awful hour of death, to which all must come, and which, with respect to himself could not be very far distant, it. would be a source of the highest consolation that an opportunity had been found by him, on the floor of the Senate, in the discharge of his official duty, to pronounce his views on a course of policy marked by such wrongs as were calculated to arrest the attention of every one, and that he had raised his humble voice and pronounced his solemn protest against such wrongs."

a demonstrative confirmation of the Mosaic history while many an infidel has seen with equal clearness, in those same natural monuments a refutation of the sacred record. And this is one of those subjects about which men are clear and positive just in proportion to the looseness and superficialness of their knowledge. The consequence has been, that the world has been flooded with a multitude of very weak and crude productions upon cosmogony. At the beginning of the last half century, indeed, these productions, called "Theories of the Earth," had become so ridiculous that for a number of years the press was much less prolific on the subject. Since the commencement of the present century, however, the discussion has been revived. with fresh interest; though it is not so much between the infidel and the Christian, as between Christian and Christian; the one defending, and the other opposing, certain theories. And there seems to be prevalent, as in former times, a strange delusion, which makes almost every intelligent man fancy himself amply qualified to write upon these points with the most dogmatic assurance. Hence a multitude of productions have been poured forth on the community, many of which exhibit such a want of maturity and such entire ignorance of some parts of the subject, that the men thoroughly versed in all its bearings have passed them by in pity or contempt. We, however, have caught the cacoethes scribendi, and must go on; though at the risque of having our efforts treated thus cavalierly, and cast into the same forgotten pile of literary rubbish.

We think it will explain the numerous failures of writers on the connection between the Bible and geology, to state, that most of them have been merely theologians, or merely philologists, or merely geologists, or at best but slightly acquainted with more than two of these branches. Being accurately acquainted with one or two of these departments of knowledge, they have overlooked the importance of a thorough acquaintance with the rest. But it is quite clear to us, that without at least a respectable acquaintance with them all, no man can successfully discuss their connection, or reconcile their apparent discrepancies. If he be not familiar with theology, how can he judge correctly of those theories of interpretation which modify essentially every institution and doctrine dependant upon the Mosaic chronology? If he be not acquainted with the rules of exegesis, now constituting a distinct and extensive science, how shall he determine whether those theories do not offer violence

to the sacred writers? And if he be ignorant of geology, how shall he know what modifications, if any, of the common interpretation of the Bible, are necessary to reconcile it with the records of nature's past operations? Nor is a mere theoretical knowledge of these subjects sufficient. Especially is this the case in geology; in which the fullest and most accurate descriptions convey but faint and inadequate ideas to the mind, in comparison with a personal examination of the rocks in the places where nature has piled them up.

We may inquire too, how readers are to judge of discussions on these subjects, if they have not at least a respectable acquaintance with the three departments of knowledge above named? Now in regard to theology and sacred philology, we may reasonably calculate, from the provisions that are made in our seminaries of learning for teaching them, that all publicly educated men at least, will be conversant with their elements. Nor is any such man respectable in society without this knowledge. But far different is the case in respect to geology. What provision is there in our literary institutions for teaching any thing more than its merest elements by a few lectures? and who feels any mortification in confessing his ignorance of the subject? Were not the community in general profoundly unacquainted with its details, so many statements, contradictory to its first principles, could not pass so quietly as they now do the round of our newspapers and periodicals. Some of our geologists, we happen to know, have been discouraged by the evidence they have seen of so much ignorance on the subject, from attempting to explain or defend the principles of their science when attacked; being quite sure that their statements would neither be understood nor appreciated. In the most enlightened parts of Europe the case is quite different. England every enlightened man knows something of geology: it is very much the case in France; and is becoming more and more so in Germany."* We rejoice, however, in the belief that the state of things in this country on this subject is rapidly improving.

"In

Notwithstanding these discouraging circumstances we propose to examine carefully the connection between geology and the Mosaic cosmogony. The two records have been, and still are, supposed to be at variance and to ascertain whether this opinion be correct, will be the great object of inquiry. If they

* American Quarterly Review, June, 1830, p. 363.