t ossuaries and the scenery on that island.
Mr. F. is on his way to the Upper Mississippi as a geologist in the
service of the Topographical Bureau. He took a good deal of interest in
examining my cabinet, and proposed I should exchange the Lake Superior
minerals for the gold ores of Virginia, &c. He showed me his idea of the
geological column, and drew it out. I accompanied him around the island,
to view its reticulated and agaric filled limestone cliffs; but derived
no certain information from him of the position in the geological scale
of this very striking stratum. It is, manifestly, the magnesian
limestone of Conybeare and Phillips, or _muschelkalk_ of the Germans.

Lieut. Mather brought me a letter from Major Whiting, from which I learn
that he has been professor of mineralogy in the Military Academy at West
Point. I found him to be animated with a zeal for scientific discovery,
united with accurate and discriminating powers of observation.

Among my visitors about this time, none impressed me more pleasingly
than a young gentleman from Cincinnati--a graduate of Lane Seminary--a
Mr. Hastings, who brought me a letter from a friend at Detroit. He
appeared to be imbued with the true spirit of piety, to be learned in
his vocation without ostentation, and discriminating without ultraism.
And he left me, after a brief stay, with an impression that he was
destined to enter the field of moral instruction usefully to his
fellow-men, believing that it is far better to undertake to persuade
than to drive men by assault, as with cannon, from their strongholds
of opinion.

CHAPTER LV.

Rage for investment in western lands--Habits of the common
deer--Question of the punishment of Indian murders committed in the
Indian country--A chief calls to have his authority recognized on the
death of a predecessor--Dr. Julius, of Prussia--Gen. Robert
Patterson--Pressure of emigration--Otwin--Dr. Gilman and Mr.
Hoffman--Picturesque trip to Lake Superior--Indians desire to cede
territory--G.W. Featherstonehaugh--Sketch of his geological
reconnoisance of the St. Peter's River--Dr. Thomas H. Webb--Question of
inscriptions on American rocks--Antiquities--Embark for Washington, and
come down the lakes in the great tempest of 1835.

1835. _August_. The rage for investment in lands was now manifest in
every visitor that came from the East to the West. Everybody, more or
less, yielded to it. I saw that friends, in whose prudence and judgme