e's early publication on the Iroquois--Troops
for Florida--A question of Indian genealogy--Annuity payments--Indians
present a claim of salvage--Death of the Prophet Chusco--Indian
sufferings--Gen. Dodge's treaty--Additional debt claims--Gazetteer of
Michigan--Stone's Life of Brant--University of Michigan--Christian
Keepsake--Indian etymology--Small-pox breaks out on the
Missouri--Missionary operation in the north-west--Treaty of Flint River
with the Saginaws.

1837. _Aug. 16th_. A Mr. Nathan, an English traveler, of quiet and
pleasing manners, was introduced. He had been to St. Mary's Falls, and
to the magnificent entrance into Lake Superior, of whose fine scenery he
spoke in terms of admiration. It seems to me that Englishmen and
Englishwomen, for I have had a good many of both sexes to visit me
recently, look on America very much as one does when he peeps through a
magnifying glass on pictures of foreign scenes, and the picturesque
ruins of old cities, and the like. They are really very fine, but it is
difficult to realize that such things are. It is all an optical
deception.

It was clearly so with Marryatt, a very superficial observer; Miss
Martineau, who was in search of something ultra and elementary, and even
Mrs. Jameson, who had the most accurate and artistic eye of all, but
who, with the exception of some bits of womanly heart, appeared to
regard our vast woods, and wilds, and lakes, as a magnificent panorama,
a painting in oil. It does not appear to occur to them, that here are
the very descendants of that old Saxa-Gothic race who sacked Rome, who
banished the Stuarts from the English throne, and who have ever, in all
positions, used all their might to battle tyranny and oppression, who
hate taxations as they hate snakes, and whose day and night dreams have
ever been of liberty, that dear cry of _Freiheit_, whichever war made
"Germania" ring. It has appeared to me to be very much the same with the
Austrian and Italian functionaries who have wandered as far as
Michilimackinack within a few years, but who are yet more slow to
appreciate our institutions than the English. The whole problem of our
system, one would judge, seems to them like "apples of ashes," instead
of the golden fruits of Hesperides. They alike mistake realities for
fancies; real states of flesh and blood, bone and muscle, for cosmoramic
pictures on a wall. They do not appear to dream how fast our millions
reduplicate, what triumphs the plou