n lifted from the cabins.

At length, after a winding voyage of sixty miles, between wild banks of
forest, in some places smoking with fires, in some looking as if never
violated either by fire or steel, with huge carcasses of trees mouldering
on the ground, and venerable trees standing over them, bearded with
streaming moss, we came in sight of the white rapids of the Sault Sainte
Marie. We passed the humble cabins of the half-breeds on either shore,
with here and there a round wigwam near the water; we glided by a white
chimney standing behind a screen of fir-trees, which, we were told, had
belonged to the dwelling of Tanner, who himself set fire to his house the
other day, before murdering Mr. Schoolcraft, and in a few minutes were at
the wharf of this remotest settlement of the northwest.

Letter XXXV.

Falls of the St. Mary.

Sault Ste. Marie, _August_ 15, 1846.

A crowd had assembled on the wharf of the American village at the Sault
Sainte Marie, popularly called the _Soo_, to witness our landing; men of
all ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, with
beards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or three
pairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, just
flitting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed with a few Indian and
half-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quite
familiar in Wall-street.

I had a conversation with an intelligent geologist, who had just returned
from an examination of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had pitched
his tent in the fields near the village, choosing to pass the night in
this manner, as he had done for several weeks past, rather than in a
crowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told me that the external tokens,
the surface indications, as he called them, were more favorable than those
of any copper mines in the world. They are still, however, mere surface
indications; the veins had not been worked to that depth which was
necessary to determine their value with any certainty. The mixture of
silver with the copper he regarded as not giving any additional value to
the mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and rare. Sometimes, he told
me, a mass of metal would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, or
smaller, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, yet
both perfectly pure and unalloyed with each other. The masses of virgin
copper found in beds of