a symbolical instrument of great importance among the American Indians. It is nothing more than a pipe, whose bowl is generally made of a soft red marble, and the tube of a very long reed, ornamented with the wings and feathers of birds. No affair of consequence is transacted without the calumet. It ever appears in meetings of commerce or exchanges; in congresses for determining of peace or war; and even in the very fury of a battle. The acceptance of the calumet is a mark of concurrence with the terms proposed, as the refusal is a certain mark of rejection. Even in the rage of a conflict this pipe is sometimes offered; and if accepted, the weapons of destruction instantly drop from their hands, and a truce ensues. It seems the sacrament of the savages; for no compact is ever violated which is confirmed by a whiff from this holy reed. When they treat of war, the pipe and all its ornaments are usually red, or sometimes red only on one side. The size and decorations of the calumet are for the most part proportioned to the quality of the persons to whom they are presented, and to the importance of the occasion. The calumet of peace is different from that of war. They make use of the former to seal their alliances and treaties, to travel with safety, and to receive strangers; but the latter is employed to proclaim war. It consists of a red stone, like marble, formed into a cavity resembling the head of a tobacco pipe, and fixed to a hollow reed. They adorn it with feathers of various colours, and name it the calumet of the sun, to which luminary they present it, in expectation of thereby obtaining a change of weather as often as they desire. From the winged ornaments of the calumet, and its conciliating uses, writers compare it to the caduceus of Mercury, which was carried by the caduceatores, or messengers of peace, with terms to the hostile states. It is singular, that the most remote nations, and the most opposite in their other customs and manners, should in some things have, as it were, a certain consent of thought. The Greeks and the Americans had the same idea, in the invention of the caduceus of the one, and the calumet of the other.