essed me as
being very English in his appearance and manners. His forehead is quite
Byronic in its craniological developments. His eye and countenance are
of the most commanding character. Pity that such a handsome man, so
active in everything that calls for the gun, the rod, the boat, the
horse, the dog, should have been shorn of so essential a prerequisite as
a leg. His conversational powers are quite extraordinary. I felt
constantly as if I were in the presence of a lover of nature and natural
things; a _bon vivant_ perhaps, or an epicure, a Tom Moore, in some
sense, whose day-dreams of heaven are mixed up with glowing images of
women and wine.

_27th_. I was directed from Washington to relieve the principal
disbursing officer at Detroit. Here then my hopes of visiting Europe are
blown sky high for the present. I must return to the north, and, so far
as labor is concerned, "heap Pelion on Ossa."

_April 6th_. There is hardly a word in the Indian languages which does
not readily yield to the power of analysis. They call tobacco, Ussama.
_Ussa_, means to put (anything inanimate). _Ma_, is a particle denoting
smell. The _us_, in the first syllable, is sounded very slight, and
often, perhaps, nearly dropt, and the word then seems as if spelt _Sa
ma_. The last vowel is broad.

_8th_. Left the city for Detroit. In ascending the Hudson, with so good
an interpreter at my side as Mrs. Schoolcraft, whom I have carried
through a perfect course of philological training in the English, Latin,
and Hebrew principles of formation, I analyzed many of the old Indian
names, which, until we reached Albany, are all in a peculiar dialect of
the Algonquin.

SING SING.--This name is the local form of the name for rocks, and
conveys the idea of the plural in the terminal letter. _Os-sin_ in
modern Algonquin (the Chippewa dialect), is stone, or rock. _Ing_, is
the local form of all nouns proper. The term may be rendered simply
_place of rocks_.

NYAC.--This appears to be the name of a band of Indians who lived there.
The termination in _ac_, is generally from _acke_, land.

CROTON.--Historically, this is known to have been the name of a noted
Indian chief, who resided near the mouth of the river. The word appears
to be derived from _noetin_, a wind. If we admit the interchange of
sounds of _n_ for _r_, as being made, and the ordinary change of _t_ for
_d_, between the Holland and Indian races, this derivation is probable.
The letter c