themselves as harbingers of
spring almost unawares. It is still wintry cold during the nights and
mornings, but there is a degree of solar heat at noon which betokens the
speedy decline of the reign of frosts and snows.

The Indians, to whom the rising of the sap in its capillary vessels in
the rock-maple is the sign of a sort of carnival, are now in the midst
of their season of sugar-making. It is one of their old customs to move,
men, women, children, and dogs, to their accustomed sugar-forests about
the 20th of March. Besides the quantity of maple-sugar that all eat,
which bears no small proportion to all that is made, some of them sell a
quantity to the merchants. Their name for this species of tree is
In-in-au-tig, which means man-tree.

_April 5th_. PEACE POLICY.--The agent from La Pointe, in Lake Superior,
writes: "My expressman from the Fond du Lac arrived on the 31st of last
month, by whom I learned that the Leech Lake Indians were unsuccessful
in their war excursion last fall, not having met with their enemies, the
Sioux, and I trust my communication with Mr. Aitkin will be in time to
check parties that may be forming in the spring.

"The state of the Indians throughout the country is generally in a
critical way of starvation, the wild-rice crops and bear-hunts having
completely failed last fall."

_21st_. REVIVAL OF RELIGION AT MACKINAC.--My brother James, who crossed
the country on snow-shoes, writes: "Mr. Stuart, Satterlee, Mitchell,
Miss N. Dousman, Aitken, and some twenty others, have joined Ferry's
church." This may be considered as the crowning point of the Reverend
Mr. Ferry's labors at that point. This gentleman, if I mistake not, came
up in the same steamer with me seven years ago. It is seed--seed
literally sown in the wilderness, and reaped in the wilderness.

_29th_. MONEY CRISIS.--"The fact is," says a person high in power, "the
fiscal concerns of the department have come to a dead stand, and nothing
remains but to ascertain the arrearages, and pay them up. You well know
how all this has happened (by diversions and misappropriations of the
funds at Washington). Such management you can form no conception of.
There will be, during the year, a thorough change.

"I was glad to see your article. It is an able, and temperate, and
practical view of the subject (_N.A.R._, Ap. 1829), grossly exaggerated,
and grossly misunderstood."

_May 19th_. IDEA OF LAKE TIDES.--Maj. W. writes: "If you see _Sill