rs purely personal, was a letter of
inquiry from a mother anxious to learn the fate of an apparently wayward
son (named George J. Clark). "I had a letter from him, dated 24th June,
1881, in which he stated he was about to start with you on an expedition
to the Upper Mississippi, and this is the last intelligence we have ever
had of him.

"If he went with you on that expedition, you have, probably some
information to give relative to his present condition, if alive, or of
his fate, if dead.

"Will you be kind enough to give the information desired by letter to
me, at this place (Canandaigua, N. Y.)? By so doing you will confer a
favor on a fond mother and many friends." Not a lisp had ever been heard
of such a person, at least by that name.

The whole country, it was found, had now been in commotion for a month
or more, owing to the ravages of the cholera and the Black Hawk war. The
cholera had first broken out, it appears, in the Upper Lakes, on board
the steamers Sheldon Thompson and Henry Clay, containing troops for the
war. Its ravages on board of both were fearful. One of the boats landed
several soldiers at the island of Michilimackinack, who died there. A
boatman engaged in the fur trade took the disease and died after he had
reached the Little Rapids, and another at _Point aux Pins_, at the foot
of Lake Superior. But the disease did not spread in that latitude. "We
have heard," says a correspondent (25th July), "from Chicago, that the
ravages of the cholera are tenfold worse than the scalping-knife of the
Black Hawk and his party. A great many soldiers died, while on their way
to Chicago, on board the steamers."

_27th_. The agent of the dead-letter post-office, at Washington,
transmits me a diploma of membership of the Royal Geographical Society
of London, which appears to have been originally misdirected and gone
astray to St. Mary's, Georgia. The envelope had on it the general
direction of "United States, America"--a wide place to find a man in.

_Sept. 11th_. A letter, of this date, from the head of the Department,
at Washington, leaves it optional with me, under the consolidation of
agencies, to choose my place of residence. "You can make your own choice
of residence between the Sault and Mackinack, and arrange your
subordinate offices as you think proper."

I determined to remove the seat of the agency to Mackinack next spring,
and to make this my last winter at the Sault. I have now been ten years
a