In Such A Case,
They Being On One Side Of The River, Or Lake, They Know Well Enough
What Course
Such a Place (which they intend for) bears from them.
Therefore, they get a great many Sticks and Chunks of
Wood in their Canoe,
and then set off directly for their Port, and now and then throw over
a Piece of Wood, which directs them, by seeing how the Stick bears
from the Canoes Stern, which they always observe to keep right aft;
and this is the Indian Compass by which they will go over
a broad Water of ten or twenty Leagues wide. They will find
the Head of any River, though it is five, six or seven hundred miles off,
and they never were there, in their Lives before; as is often prov'd,
by their appointing to meet on the Head of such a River, where perhaps,
none of them ever was before, but where they shall rendezvous exactly
at the prefixt time; and if they meet with any Obstruction,
they leave certain Marks in the Way, where they that come after
will understand how many have pass'd by already, and which way they are gone.
Besides, in their War Expeditions, they have very certain Hieroglyphicks,
whereby each Party informs the other of the Success or Losses
they have met withal; all which is so exactly perform'd
by their Sylvian Marks and Characters, that they are never at a Loss
to understand one another. Yet there was never found any Letters
amongst the Savages of Carolina; nor, I believe, among any other Natives
in America, that were possess'd with any manner of Writing or Learning
throughout all the Discoveries of the New-World.
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