, 1846.

We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste.
Marie, by the failure of the steamer General Scott to depart at the proper
time. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we should
most certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by embarking on
board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls,
which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer,
and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had
just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a
broad path, with hillocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the
surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The
moment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obliged
to go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He had
just arrived with the proper apparatus, and the steamer had begun to work
its way slowly into the deep water; but some days must yet elapse before
she can float, and after that the engine must be put together.

Had the Julia Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I should
certainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblage
of Indians on Madeleine Island. This island lies far in the lake, near its
remoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionary
station and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vast
numbers to receive their annual payments from the United States.

"There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left the
place," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake,
"and they were starving. If an Indian family has a stock of provisions on
hand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and the
Indians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and were
living on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in the
lake."

I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the occasion would bring
together.

"Seven thousand," he answered. "Among them are some of the wildest tribes
on the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhood
of the white man. A new tribe will come in who never before would have any
transactions with the government. They are called the Pillagers, a fierce
and warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeet
and the Camanches, the most feroci