t "day," in Gen. i, 5, means, in that place, a natural day
of twenty-four hours. The context cannot be read without it. Mr. M. and
Mr. Stuart pass the evening.

_31st_. No thawing to-day. There has been quite a blow on the lake.
Began some sketches of biblical geology.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Population of Michilimackinack--Notices of the weather--Indian name of
the Wolverine--Harbor closed--Intensity of temperature which can be
borne--Domestic incidents--State of the weather--Fort Mackinack
unsuccessfully attacked in 1814--Ossiganoc--Death of an Indian
woman--Death of my sister--Harbor open--Indian name of the Sabbath
day--Horticultural amusement--Tradition of the old church door--Turpid
conduct of Thomas Shepard, and his fate--Wind, tempests, sleet, snow--A
vessel beached in the harbor--Attempt of the American Fur Company to
force ardent spirits into the country, against the authority of
the Agent.

1834. _Jan. 1st_. My journal for this winter will be almost purely
domestic. It is intended to exhibit a picture of men and things,
immediately surrounding a person isolated from the world, on an island
in the wide area of Lake Huron, at the point where the current, driven
by the winds, rushes furiously through the straits connected with Lake
Michigan. Where the ice in the winter freezes and breaks up continually,
where the temperature fluctuates greatly with every wind, and where the
tempests of snow, rain and hail create a perpetual scene of changing
phenomena.

Society here is scarcely less a subject of remark. It is based on the
old French element of the fur trade--that is, a commonalty who are the
descendants of French or Canadian boatmen, and clerks and interpreters
who have invariably married Indian women. The English, who succeeded to
power after the fall of Quebec, chiefly withdrew, but have also left
another element in the mixture of Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen or Celts, and
Gauls, founded also upon intermarriages with the natives. Under the
American rule, the society received an accession of a few females of
various European or American lineage, from educated and refined circles.
In the modern accession, since about 1800, are included the chief
factors of the fur trade, and the persons charged by benevolent
societies with the duties of education and of missionaries; and, more
than all, with the families of the officers of the military and civil
service of the government.

In such a mass of diverse elements the Fr