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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