aithfully performed his duty.

_27th_. Visited Mr. Paulding (Secretary of the Navy) in the evening.
Found him a father aged bald-headed man, of striking physiognomy,
prominent intellectual developments, and easy dignified manners. It was
pleasing to recognize one of the prominent authors of _Salmagundi_,
which I had read in my schoolboy days, and never even hoped to see the
author of this bit of fun in our incipient literature. For it is upon
this, and the still higher effort of Irving's facetious History of New
York, that we must base our imaginative literature. They first taught us
that we had a right to laugh. We were going on, on so very stiff a
model, that, without the Knickerbocker, we should not have found it out.

_28th_. I prepared a list of queries for the department, designed to
elicit a more precise and reliable account of the Indian tribes than has
yet appeared. It is astonishing how much gross error exists in the
popular mind respecting their true character.

Talk of an Indian--why the very stare
Says, plain as language, Sir, have you been there?
Do tell me, has a Potawattomie a soul,
And have the tribes a language? Now that's droll--
They tell me some have tails like wolves, and others claws,
Those Winnebagoes, and Piankashaws.

_30th_. Mr. Paulding transmits a note of thanks for some Indian words.
The euphony of the aboriginal vocabulary impresses most persons. In most
of their languages this appears to result, in part, from the fact that a
vowel and a consonant go in pairs--_i.e._ a vowel either precedes or
follows a consonant, and it is comparatively rare that two consonants
are required to be uttered together. There is but one language that has
the _th_, so common in English. _Sh_ and _gh_ are, however, frequently
sounded in the Chippewa. The most musical words are found in the great
Muscogee and Algonquin families, and it is in these that the regular
succession of vowels and consonants is found.

_31st_. The year 1838 has been a marked one in our Indian relations. The
southern Indians have experienced an extensive breaking up, in their
social institutions, and been thrown, by the process of emigration, west
of the Mississippi, and the policy of the government on this head, which
was first shadowed out in 1825, and finally sanctioned by the act of
land exchanges, 1830, may be deemed as having been practically settled.
The Cherokees, who required the movements of an a