I, with my two companions, found your fossil tree, in the Des Plaines, with considerable labor and difficulty.  This I anticipated, from the commonly reputed opinion of the uncommon height of the waters.  With your memoir in my hand, we rode up and down the waters till the pursuit was abandoned by the others, while my own curiosity and zeal did not yield till it was discovered.  The detached pieces were covered with twelve to twenty inches of water, and each of us broke from them as much as we could well bring away.  I showed them to Col.  Benton, the Senator in St. Louis; to Major O’Fallon; Col.  Strother, and other gentlemen there; to Mr. Birkbeck in Wanboro’; to Mr. Rapp in Harmony; and to a number of different people, through the countries I traveled, till my arrival in Virginia.

“On my arrival here (Philadelphia), I handed the pieces to Mr. Solomon W. Conrad, who delivers lectures on mineralogy, which he made partly the subject of one of his lectures.  Since that, I had a piece of it made into a hone, and I had marked on it, ‘Schoolcraft’s Fossil Tree.’

“Brooke’s Gazetteer, improved by Darby, has been ready for delivery three or four months, and is allowed to be a most valuable book.  He is, I am sorry to say, truly poor, while his labor is incessant.  He set out, several weeks since, to deliver lectures, in the country, where he will probably continue through the summer.”

16th.  J. D. Doty, Esq., writes from Detroit that a District Court has been established by Congress in the upper country—­that he has been appointed to the judgeship, and will hold a court at Michilimackinack, on the third Monday in July.  A beginning has thus been made in civil jurisdiction among us benighted dwellers on this far-off land of God’s creation.  He states, also, the passage of a law for claimants to lands, which have been occupied since 1812.  Where law goes, civilization will soon follow.

23d.  Giles Sanford, of Erie (Penn.), sends me some curious specimens of the concrete alum-slate of that vicinity—­they are columnar, fan-shaped—­and requests a description.  It is well known that the presence of strong aluminous liquids in the soil of that area had a tendency to preserve the flesh on General Wayne’s body, which was found undecayed when, after twenty years’ burial, they removed it to Radnor church, in Philadelphia.

28th.  Governor C. sends me a pamphlet of additional inquiries, founded chiefly on my replies, respecting the Indian languages.  He says—­“You see, I have given new scope to your inquiries, and added much to your labors.  But it is impracticable, without such assistance as you can render me, to make any progress.  I find so few—­so very few—­who are competent to a rational investigation of the subject, that those who are so must be loaded with a double burden.”

July 6th.  Mr. Harry Thompson, of Black Rock, N.Y., writes me that he duly forwarded, by a careful teamster, my three lost boxes of minerals, shells, &c., collected in the Wabash Valley, Missouri, and Illinois, in 1821, and that they were received by Mr. Meech of Geneva, and forwarded by him to E.B.  Shearman & Co., Utica.  The loss of these collections of 1821 seems to me very grievous.