as we landed. The _Chemoquemon_ had indeed come! Thus the
American flag was carried to this point, and it was soon hoisted on a
tall staff in an open field east of Mr. Johnston's premises, where the
troops, as they came up, marched with inspiring music, and regularly
encamped. The roll of the drum was now the law for getting up and lying
down. It might be 168 or 170 years since the French first landed at
this point. It was just 59 since the British power had supervened, and
39 since the American right had been acknowledged by the sagacity of Dr.
Franklin's treaty of 1783. But to the Indian, who stood in a
contemplative and stoic attitude, wrapped in his fine blanket of
broadcloth, viewing the spectacle, it must have been equally striking,
and indicative that his reign in the North-West, that old hive of Indian
hostility, was done. And, had he been a man of letters, he might have
inscribed, with equal truth, as it was done for the ancient Persian
monarch, "MENE, MENE, TEKEL."

To most persons on board, our voyage up these wide straits, after
entering them at Point de Tour, had, in point of indefiniteness, been
something like searching after the locality of the north pole. We wound
about among groups of islands and through passages which looked so
perfectly in the state of nature that, but for a few ruinous stone
chimneys on St. Joseph's, it could not be told that the foot of man had
ever trod the shores. The whole voyage, from Buffalo and Detroit, had
indeed been a novel and fairy scene. We were now some 350 miles
north-west of the latter city. We had been a couple of days on board, in
the area of the sea-like Huron, before we entered the St. Mary's
straits. The Superior, being the second steamer built on the Lakes,[14]
had proved herself a staunch boat.

[Footnote 14: The first steamer built on the Lakes was called the
"Walk-in-the-Water," after an Indian chief of that name; it was launched
at Black Rock, Niagara River, in 1818, and visited Michilimackinack in
the summer of that year.]

The circumstances of this trip were peculiar, and the removal of a
detachment of the army to so remote a point in a time of profound peace,
had stimulated migratory enterprise. The measure was, in truth, one of
the results of the exploring expedition to the North-West in 1820, and
designed to curb and control the large Indian population on this extreme
frontier, and to give security to the expanding settlements south of
this point. It