The noise and disagreeable odour arising from the bull-frogs and other reptiles that infest the swamp opposite the village at night, filled the air, and rendered it impossible for me to sleep.  As I lay restless on my bed, I suddenly heard a gun fired, and, starting up in some alarm, I hastily put on my clothes and descended to the bar of the hotel.  Here several of the inmates were assembled, and were preparing to cross the creek with lanterns, to explore the swamp, cries of distress having been distinctly heard, as of some benighted traveller who had lost his way.  After listening intently, and firing several rifles to guide the wanderer or apprize him that assistance was at hand, the party crossed the creek in a canoe, and moved along the skirts of the morass, hallooing loudly all the time; the cries, however, heard only at intervals at the commencement, became gradually indistinct, and at last ceased altogether.  After an ineffectual search for an hour or more, the party again turned towards Huron, strongly impressed with the belief, that the unfortunate being had sunk with his horse in the soft bed of the swamp, which is some miles in extent, and had perished miserably.  The day following, I visited the nearest point from which the cries were heard, but I could discern no sign of the sufferer, nor could I even trace footmarks; this, however, is not remarkable, as they would speedily be obliterated by the many reptiles nurtured in the morass.  It was afterwards questioned, whether the supposed wanderer was only a catamount, a species of jaguar that emits doleful cries at night.

The storm having abated, I soon after returned on board, and in due course reached Buffalo, where I had the pleasure of meeting with an old acquaintance, from whom I had long been separated, and who had delayed his intended voyage up the lake, to await my return.  A large proportion of the population of Buffalo are people of colour, and one quarter of the town is almost exclusively inhabited by them; many of these, I regret to add, are living in a state of degradation pitiable to behold, apparently without the least endeavour being made by their white fellow-citizens to improve their condition.  Some of these coloured people keep eating-houses, for the accommodation of those of their own complexion, but the greater number are employed as stokers and steam-boat hands.  A few of these men, despite the prejudice that exists (and it is nowhere in the Union more marked than in Buffalo), rise above the common level, and by that probity of character and untiring energy, which I believe to be inherent in the race, become men of substance.