averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially.
Famous otherwise, through all the centuries, for the AMBER they
had been used to fish, and sell in foreign parts.

Amber, science declares, is a kind of petrified resin, distilled
by pines that were dead before the days of Adam; which is now
thrown up, in stormy weather, on that remote coast, and is there
fished out by the amphibious people,--who can likewise get it by
running mine-shafts into the sandhills on their coast;--by whom it
is sold into the uttermost parts of the Earth, Arabia and beyond,
from a very early period of time. No doubt Pytheas had his eye
upon this valuable product, when he ventured into survey of those
regions,--which are still the great mother of amber in our world.
By their amber-fishery, with the aid of dairy-produce and plenty
of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain
miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a
substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-
footed, rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was
trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of it was great.

As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian,
and even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes
as to Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no
effort hitherto, if efforts were made, had come to anything.
Let some daring missionary go to preach in that country, his
reception is of the worst, or perhaps he is met ou the frontier
with menaces, and forbidden to preach at all; except sorrow and
lost labor, nothing has yet proved attainable. It was very
dangerous to go;--and with what likelihood of speeding? Efforts,
we may suppose, are rare; but the pious wish being continual and