ll admits of the passage of horse trains,
and the night temperature is quite wintry, although the power of the
sun begins to be sensibly felt during the middle and after part of
the day.

_9th_. A friend recently at Washington writes from Detroit under the
date of the 12th March: "A proposition was submitted to a committee of
the Senate, soon after my arrival in the city, by the Secretary of War,
for the establishment of the office of Superintendent of Mines. To this
office, had the project been carried into execution, you would have been
appointed. But shortly before I left there, it was thought more
expedient to sell all the mines than to retain them in the hands of the
government. Of course, if this plan be adopted, as I think it will be,
the other will be superseded." Here, then, drops a project, which I had
conceived at Potosi, and which has been before my mind for some four
years, and which I am still satisfied might have been carried through
Congress, had I given my personal attention to the subject, during the
present session. I have supposed myself more peculiarly qualified to
fill the station indicated, than the one I now occupy. And I accepted
the present office under the expectation that it would be temporary.
When once a project of this kind, however, is superseded in the way this
has been, it is like raising the dead to bring it up again; and it is
therefore probable that my destiny is now fixed in the North-West
instead of the South-West, for a number of years. I thought I had read
Franklin's maxims to some purpose; but I now see that, although I have
observed one of them in nine cases, I missed it in the tenth:--

"He that by the plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold, or drive."

I trusted, in the fall, that I could safely look on, and see this matter
accomplished.

As to the mines, they will still require a local superintendent. They
cannot be sold until there are some persons to buy, and it is not
probable such extensive tracts of barren lands can be disposed of in
years. Meantime, the rents of the mines are an object. The preservation
of the public timber is an object. And the duties connected with these
objects cannot be performed, with justice to the government, and
convenience to the lessees, without a local agent. In proportion as some
of the districts of mineral lands are sold, others will claim
attention; and it _may be_, and most probably _will be_, years before
the inte