Their traditions referred in a very vague way to long journeys from the northwest, and great suflTering from cold on their way hither, and of contests with a people who occupied the country before them. Of their own history they were lamentably ignorant. Their computation of time by moons and revolving cycles led all investigations into inextricable confusion. Any event beyond an individual's recollection floated vaguely in the boundless past. No records of any kind were made. For these reasons the Europeans were able to obtain from this people very little information of themselves or their fathers. They existed here for unnumbered centuries, and then passed away, leaving behind them no sign to mark their occupation of the country, save a few simple implements of stone, and no structure of any kind memorializes their power or attests their strengih or skill. We are thus singularly destitute of nearly all means

for acquiring accurate knowledge of this people's history.

The Algonquin tribes occupied nearly the whole Atlantic seaboard, and their language necessarily was widely diffused. It has been found more fertile in dialects than any other aboriginal speech. It was strangely agglutinative, and gave expression to thought by stringing words together into an extended compound. It was the mother-tongue of those who greeted Raleigh's colonists on the Roanoke, of those who boarded the " Half-Moon " on the Hudson, and of those who welcomed and fed the Pilgrims at Plymouth. It was heard from the land of the Esquimo to the Savannah River and from the Bay of Gaspe to the Mississippi.