CHAPTER XVI.

THE   REV.   HENRY   BARCLAY,   D.D.

North American Indians—Missions among them—The Five Nations—Rev. Thorough-
good Moor—Rev. Thomas Barclay, Missionary and Catechist—Henry Barclay, Birth,
Education, Ordination, and Early Labors among the Mohawiis—Called to Trinity
Church—Induction—Claimants to Church Property—Rev. Richard Charlton—
Samuel Auchmuty, Birthplace, Ordination—Elected Assistant to Dr. Barclay—Erect¬
ing of New Chape]—Kalm's Description of New York—Charity School—Two Wed¬
dings—School-house Destroyed by Fire—Auchmuty's Sermons—Grant of Land to
King's College—Organ for the Parish Church—Opening of St. George's Chapel—
Description of the Edifice.

A CLOUD of mystery, which the science of ethnology
has not yet removed, overhangs the American con¬
tinent. We are assured by the learned that this is the
oldest part of the habitable globe ; and there is ground
for believing that certain parts of it were inhabited at a
very distant period by races much more advanced in arts
and knowledge than the savages who were found here by
the European discoverers in the 15th and i6th centuries.
The vestiges of an extinct and long-buried splendor are
still visible in Central America and Mexico ; and the
Valley of the Mississippi presents objects apt to convince us
of the great abilities of those who left them in their places
long ago. The inferences drawn from these phenomena
may have been too highly colored by fancy, yet they
seem to leave us a choice between two theories : Either
that a higher and nobler race once dwelt here, yielding
at last to the inroad of fierce barbarians, or else that de¬
terioration and not elevation and improvement has been
the law of that aboriginal life.