19th.  Judge Doty writes from Mackinac:  “Believing the winds and fates to have been propitious, I trust you had a speedy, safe, and pleasant passage to your home.  A boat arrived this morning, but I heard nothing.  Mr. Morrison leaves this evening, and I forward, by him, your dictionary, with many—­many thanks for the use. We completed the copy of it last evening, making seventy-five pages of letter paper.  I hope I shall be able to return you the favor, and give you soon some nice Sioux words.”

August 5th.  Judge Doty, in a letter of thanks for a book, and some philological suggestions, transmits a list of inquiries on the legal code of the Indians—­a rather hard subject—­in which, quotations must not be Coke upon Littleton, but the law of tomahawk upon craniums.

“The Sioux,” he says, “must be slippery fellows indeed, if I do not squeeze their language, and several other valuable things, out of them next winter.  I expect to leave for the Mississippi this week, in a barge, with Mr. Rolette.”

6th.  Mr. D. H. Barnes, of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, reports that the shells sent to him from the mouth of the Columbia, and with which the Indians garnish their pouches, are a species of the Dentalium, particularly described in Jewett’s “Narrative of the Loss of the Ship Boston at Nootka Sound.”  He transmits proof plates of the fresh water shells collected by Professor Douglass and myself on the late expedition to the sources of the Mississippi.

11th.  The Adjutant-General of the Territory, General J. R. Williams, transmits me a commission as captain of an independent company of militia infantry, with a view, it is presumed, on the part of the executive, that it will tend to strengthen the capacity of resistance to an Indian combination on this frontier.

20th.  Mr. Giles Sanford, of Erie, sends me a specimen of gypsum from Sandusky Bay, and a specimen of the strontian-yielding limestone of Put-in-Bay, Lake Erie.

September 10th.  Judge Doty writes from Prairie du Chien, that he had a pleasant passage, with his family, of fifteen days from Mackinaw; that he is pleased with the place; and that the delegate election went almost unanimously for Major Biddle.  A specimen of native copper, weighing four pounds, was found by Mr. Bolvin, at Pine River, a tributary from the north of the Wisconsin, agreeing in its characters with those in my cabinet from the basin of Lake Superior.

15th.  Dr. John Bigsby, of Nottingham, England, writes from the North-West House, that he arrived yesterday from the Boundary Survey, and is desirous of exchanging some of his geological and conchological specimens for species in my possession.  The doctor has a very bustling, clerk-like manner, which does not impress one with the quiet and repose of a philosopher.  He evidently thinks we Americans, at this remote point, are mere barbarians, and have some shrewd design of making a chowder, or a speculation out of our granites, and agates, and native copper.  Not a look or word, however, of mine was permitted to disturb the gentleman in his stilted notions.