are employed. At one of the desks I saw
the surveyor whom I had met with a few days
before, in his Indian habiliments, just come out
of the woods, in which he had been surveying.
He was now transformed into a smart looking
clerk, so that I scarcely knew him. In the fore-
noon I left Batavia

, and passed several hunting
parties of Indians. Yesterday, while breakfasting
at Vandeventer's, I observed them sending out a
boy to a neighbouring settlement of these people,
to buy Indian corn; and, on inquiring the cause,
I was told that in the settlements of the white
people thereabouts, the corn harvest had generally
failed. This not having been the case with the
Indians, the white people were therefore indebted
to them for support that season. The mistress of
Vandeventer's Tavern, who is a sober religious
woman, informed me that she sometimes employed
the Indian females in needle work, at which some
of them arc exceedingly clever. On my inquiring
how it happened that they decreased in numbers
so fast, she told me that she often had conversation
on this subject, with the females she employed;
and, on close inquiry, they would freely confess
that they used various unnatural means to prevent
an increase. On the landlady pleading with them,
and endeavouring to convince them of the sinful-
ness of their practices, they would sometimes
reply, that it was impossible for them to carry
about a child, and also use the skins, &c. which their