I had been trading among the Indians, asked me, with much kindness, to take up my lodging with him.
"Of this offer I was very glad to accept, though I found a scarcity of words to thank my countryman for his favour; as, from want of use, my remembrance of the English language had been so much effaced, as not only to repress fluency, but even to prevent an ordinary command of expression; and I was more especially at a loss for ceremonious phraseology, that department of language being unknown in the country whence I was just returned. My landlord was not a little astonished, when I could at last make shift to inform him of my having passed so many years among the Indians.
"He asked a thousand questions about customs which never existed, and told me of a multitude of things, of which all the time I had lived in that country, I had never dreamed the possibility. Indeed, from the superiority of his expression, joined to that fund of supposed knowlege which it served to communicate, a by-stander would have been led to imagine, that he was describing, to some ignorant guest, a country with whose manners he had been long conversant, and among whose inhabitants he had passed the greatest part of his life.
"At length, however, his discourse centered upon the fur-trade, and naturally glided from that to an offer of purchasing my beaver-skins. These things, I was informed by my courteous entertainer, had fallen so much in their price of late, that the traders could hardly defray their journey in procuring them; that himself had lost by some late bargains in that way; but that, to oblige a stranger, the singularity of whose adventures had interested him in his behalf, he would give me the highest price at which he had heard of their being sold for a long time past.
"This I accepted without hesitation, as I had neither language nor inclination for haggling, and having procured as much money by the bargain as, I imagined, would more than carry me to a seaport, I proceeded on my journey, accompanied by an inhabitant of Williamsburg, who was returning from an annual visit, to a settlement on the back-frontiers, which he had purchased in partnership with another, who constantly resided upon it. He seemed to be naturally of an inquisitive disposition; and having learned

from my former landlord, that I had lived several years with the Indians, tormented me, all the while our journey lasted, with interrogatories concerning their country and manners. But, as