it is difficult, at Boston, to appreciate the
disheartening circumstances surrounding the missionary in the field. And
any youthful instability, or eccentricity of means in the way of
advancing the Gospel, should be forgiven, for the cause, after years of
experience, and not written against "a man of faith and prayer," as it
appears to have been by the pastor of Middleburgh, as with a pen
of iron.

_14th_. Pendonwa, son of Wahazo, a brother of the Ottawa chief, Wing,
reports himself as electing to become "an American," and says he had so
declared himself to Col. Boyd, the former Indian agent.

_27th_. Dr. C.R. Gilman, of New York, having, with Major M. Hoffman, of
Wall Street, paid me a visit and made a picturesque "trip to the
Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior," writes me after his safe return to the
city, piquing himself on that adventure, after having exchanged
congratulations with his less enterprising cityloving friends. It was
certainly an event to be booked, that two civilians so soldered down to
the habits of city life in different lines as the Doctor and the Major,
should have extended their summer excursion as far as Michilimackinack.
But it was a farther evidence of enterprise, and the love of the
picturesque, that they should have taken an Indian canoe, and a crew of
engagees, at that point, and ventured to visit the Pictured Rocks in
Lake Superior. "Life on the Lakes" (the title of Dr. G.'s book) was
certainly a widely different affair to "Life in New York."

_31st_. Circumstances had now inclined the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes of
Indians to cede to the United States a portion of their extensive
territory. Game had failed in the greater part of it, and they had no
other method of raising funds to pay their large outstanding credits to
the class of traders, and to provide for an interval of transition,
which must indeed happen, in view of their future improvement, between
the hunter and agricultural state.

The Drummond Island band had, for a year or two, advocated a sale. The
Ottawas of the peninsula determined to send a delegation to Washington
on the subject. I could not hesitate as to the course which duty
proscribed to me, under these important circumstances, and determined to
proceed to Washington, although the Secretary and acting Governor of the
Territory, Mr. Horner, on being consulted by letter, refused his assent
to this step. His want of proper information on the subject, being but
recently co