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Show BARftN * A HOOTAN'S LAKB OF SALT WATER. 158 him four hundred of his own subjects and four Mozeemlek savages, whom'I took'for Spaniards. Hy mistake was occasioned by the great difference between these two American nations; for the Mozeemlek savages were clothed, they h* d a thick bushy beard, and their hair hung down under their ears; their complexion ' vas swarthy, their address waq civil and submissive, their itaien grave, and their carriage engaging. Upon these considerations I ceuld not imagine that they wwe savages, though, after all, I found my?' self mistaken. These' four slaves gave me a description of their country, which ihe Qnacsitares represented by way of a map upon a deer's skin, as you see it drawn in this map. Their villages stand upon a river that springs out of a ridge of mountains* from which the Long River likewise derives its source, there being a great many brooks there, which, by a joint confluence, form the' river/' .. j s . « The Mozeemlek nation . is- numerous and puissant. The four alaves of that country informed me that at the distance of one hundred and fifty leagues from the place I then was, their print: cipal river empties itself into a salt lake of three* hundred leagues in circumference, the mouth of which is' two leagues broad; that the lower part of that river is adorned with six noble cities, surrounded with stone cemented with fat earth; that the houses . of these cities have no roofs, but are open above, like, a platform, as you see them drawn in the map; that besides the above- mentioned cities, tfiere are above an htindred towns, great and small, round that sort of se&, upon which, they navigate " with suph boats as you see drawnr in the map ;* that the people of that country made strife, copper axes, and several ether manufactures, which the Outagamis and my other interpreters could, not give me to* understand, as being altogether unacquainted with such things; that their government was despotic, and lodged in the hands of one great heali, to whom the reBt paid a trembling submission; that the people upon that lake are called Tahuglauk, and are as numerous as the leaves of trees, ( such is the expression that the savages use for an hyperbole;) that the Mozeemlek people supply the cities - I , , . . • . . . I • • The boats, with ft drawing, are thus described i* the map:-" The teasels used by the Tahuglauk, ia which two hundred men may row, provided thej are aucl) forma aa y* Moseemlek {> eople drew me on y* bark of trees. According to my computation, such a Teasel must be one hundred and thirty feet long from the prow to the stem."- |