“We should leave our names, our heirs. 
      Old time and waning moons sweep all the rest away.”

12th.  When last at Washington, Dr. Thornton, of the Patent Office, detained me some time talking of the powers of the letters of the English alphabet.  He drew a strong line of distinction between the names and the sounds of the consonants. L, for instance, called el, was sounded le, &c.

Philology is one of the keys of knowledge which, I think, admits of its being said that, although it is rather rusty, the rust is, however, a proof of its antiquity.  I am inclined to think that more true light is destined to be thrown on the history of the Indians by a study of their languages than of their traditions, or any other feature.

The tendency of modern inquiries into languages seems rather to have been to multiply than to simplify.  I do not believe we have more than three mother stocks of languages in all the United States east of the Mississippi, embracing also large portions of territory west of it, namely, the Algonquin, Iroquois, and what may be called Apallachian.  Perhaps a little Dakota.

15th.  Our first vessel for the season arrived this day.  If by a patient series of inquiries, during the winter, we had calculated the appearance of a comet, and found our data verified by its actual appearance, it could not be a subject of deeper interest than the bringing ashore of the ship’s mail.  Had we not gone to so remote a position, we could not possibly ever have become aware how deeply we are indebted to the genius and discoveries of Cadmus and Faust, whose true worshippers are the corps editorial.  Now for a carnival of letters.

Reading, reading, reading, “Big and small, scraps and all.”

If editors of newspapers knew the avidity with which their articles are read by persons isolated as we are, I have the charity to believe they would devote a little more time, and exert a little more candor, in penning them.  For, after all, how large a portion of all that a newspaper contains is, at least to remote readers, “flat, stale, and unprofitable.”  The mind soon reacts, and asks if this be valuable news.

I observed the Erythronium dens canis, and Panax trifolium appeared in flower on the 25th.

28th.  The schooner “Recovery” arrived from Fort William on the north shore of Lake Superior, bringing letters and despatches, political and commercial.  Mr. Siveright, the agent of the H. B. C., kindly sent over to me, for my perusal, a letter of intelligence from an American gentleman in the North.