cised than
it has been under the martinet who is now in command at this post. It is
an ancient point of settlement by the French, who are generally a mild
and obliging people, and disposed to submit to authorities. Some of
these are descended from persons who settled here under Louis XIV. That
a few Americans have followed the troops with more rigid views of
private rights, and who cannot be easily trampled on, is true. And the
military have, justly, no doubt, felt annoyances from a freedom of trade
with the soldiery, who cannot be kept within their pickets by bayonets
and commands. But he must be far gone in his sublimated notions of
self-complacency and temporary importance who supposes that a magistrate
would surrender his sense of independence, and impartiality between man
and man, by assuming new and unheard-of duties, at the beck of a
military functionary who happens to overrate his own, or misjudge
another's position.

_March 31st_. I have given no little part of the winter to a revision of
my manuscript journal of travels through the Miami and Wabash Valleys in
1821. The season has been severe, and offered few inducements to go
beyond the pale of the usual walk to my office, the cantonment, and to
the village seated at the foot of the rapids. Variety, in this pursuit,
has been sought, in turning from the transcription of these records of a
tourist to the discussion of the principles of the Indian languages--a
labor, if literary amusement can be deemed a labor, which was generally
adjourned from my office, to be resumed in the domestic circle during
the long winter evenings. A moral enjoyment has seldom yielded more of
the fruits of pleasure. In truth, the winter has passed almost
imperceptibly away. Tempests howled around us, without diminishing our
comforts. We often stood, in the clear winter evenings, to gaze at the
splendid displays of the Aurora Borealis. The cariole was sometimes put
in requisition. We sometimes tied on the augim, or snow-shoe, and
ventured over drifts of snow, whose depth rendered them impassable to
the horse. We assembled twice a week, at a room, to listen to the chaste
preaching of a man of deep-toned piety and sound judgment, whose life
and manners resemble an apostle's.

In looking back at the scenes and studies of such a season, there was
little to regret, and much to excite in the mind pleasing vistas of hope
and anticipation. The spring came with less observation than had been
de