They talk, on the New England coast, of Chebacco boats, built after a peculiar pattern, and called after Chebacco, an ancient settlement of sea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich.  The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, and flat-bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wild storms that surprise the mariner on Lake Superior.

We took yesterday a drive to the western shore.  The road twined through a wood of over-arching beeches and maples, interspersed with the white-cedar and fir.  The driver stopped before a cliff sprouting with beeches and cedars, with a small cavity at the foot.  This he told us was the Skull Cave.  It is only remarkable on account of human bones having been found in it.  Further on a white paling gleamed through the trees; it inclosed the solitary burial ground of the garrison, with half a dozen graves.  “There are few buried here,” said a gentleman of our party; “the soldiers who come to Mackinaw sick get well soon.”

The road we travelled was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, who commanded at the fort a few years since.  He is the marksman whose aim was so sure that the western people say of him, that a raccoon on a tree once offered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire.

We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves.  In one of its meadows was fought the battle between Colonel Croghan and the British officer Holmes in the war of 1813.  Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge of the wood, north of the meadow; one of them is the monument of Holmes; he lies buried at its root.  Another quarter of a mile led us to a little bay on the solitary shore of the lake looking to the northwest.  It is called the British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the late war to take possession of the island.

We wandered about awhile, and then sat down upon the embankment of pebbles which the waves of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped around the shore of the island—­pebbles so clean that they would no more soil a lady’s white muslin gown than if they had been of newly polished alabaster.  The water at our feet was as transparent as the air around us.  On the main-land opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofs were visible, with a background of woods behind them.

“There,” said one of our party, “is the old Mission Church.  It was built by the Catholics in 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since.  The name of the spot is Point St. Ignace, and there lives an Indian of the full caste, who was sent to Rome and educated to be a priest, but he preferred the life of a layman, and there he lives on that wild shore, with a library in his lodge, a learned savage, occupied with reading and study.”