ailor, and such as we should
look for in his own Peter Simple. Temperance and religion, if not
morality, were to him mere cant words, and whether he was observed,
either before dinner or after dinner--in the parlor or out of it--his
words and manners were anything but those of a quiet, modest, English
gentleman.

I drove Mr. Lay and himself out one day after dinner to see the
curiosities of the island. He would insist walking over the arched rock.
"It is a fearful and dizzy height." When on the top he stumbled. My
heart was in my throat; I thought he would have been hurled to the rocks
below and dashed to a thousand pieces; but, like a true sailor, he
crouched down, as if on a yardarm, and again arose and completed his
perilous walk.

We spoke of railroads. He said they were not built permanently in this
country, and attributed the fault to our excessive go-aheadiveness. Mr.
Lay: "True; but if we expended the sums you do on such works, they could
not be built at all. They answer a present purpose, and we can afford to
renew them in a few years from their own profits."

The captain's knowledge of natural history was not precise. He aimed to
be knowing when it was difficult to conceal ignorance. He called some
well-characterized species of _septaria_ in my cabinet _pudding-stone,_
beautiful specimens of limpid hexagonal crystals of quartz, _common
quartz_, &c.

Mr. George P. Marsh, of Vermont, brings me a letter of introduction.
This gentleman has the quiet easy air of a man who has seen the world.
His fine taste and acquirements have procured him a wide reputation. His
translation of _Rusk's Icelandic Grammar_ is a scholar-like performance,
and every way indicative of the propensities of his mind for
philological studies.

It is curious to observe, in this language, the roots of many English
words, and it denotes through what lengths of mutations of history the
stock words of a generic language may be traced. Lond, skip, flaska,
sumar, hamar, ketill, dal, are clearly the radices respectively of land,
ship, flask, summer, hammer, kettle, dale. This property of the
endurance of orthographical forms gives one a definite illustration of
the importance of language on history.

_12th_. A large party of Munsees and Delawares from the River Thames, in
Upper Canada, reach the harbor in a vessel bound for Green Bay,
Wisconsin. The Rev. Mr. Vogel, in whose charge they are, lands and
visits the office with some of the princi