30th.  Trip to Tacquimenon Falls, Lake Superior.—­Accounts from the Indians represented the falls of the Tacquimenon River of Lake Superior as presenting picturesque features which were eminently worthy of a visit.  Confined to the house during the winter, I thought an excursion proper.  I determined to take the earliest opportunity, when the ice had left the lake, and before the turmoil of the summer’s business began, to execute this wish.  For this purpose, I took a canoe, with a crew of Chippewa Indians, with whom I was well acquainted, and who were familiar with the scene.  I provisioned myself well, and took along my office interpreter.  I found this arrangement was one which was agreeable to them, and it put them perfectly at their ease.  They traveled along in the Indian manner, talking and laughing as they pleased with each other, and with the interpreter.  Nothing could have been better suited to obtain an insight into their manners and opinions.  One of their most common topics of talk was the flight of birds, particularly the carnivorous species, to which they addressed talks as they flew.  This subject, I perceived, connected itself with the notions of war and the enemy’s country.

On one occasion after we had entered Lake Superior, and were leisurely paddling, not remote from the shore, one of the Indians fired at, and wounded a duck.  The bird could not rise so as to fly, but swam ashore, and, by the time we reached land, was completely missing.  A white man would have been nonplused.  Not so the Indian.  He saw a fallen tree, and carefully looked for an orifice in the under side, and, when he found one, thrust in his hand and drew out of it the poor wounded bird.  Frightened and in pain, it appeared to roll its eyeballs completely round.

By their conversation and familiar remarks, I observed that they were habitually under the influence of their peculiar mythology and religion.  They referred to classes of monetos, which are spirits, in a manner which disclosed the belief that the woods and waters were replete with their agency.  On the second day, we reached and entered the Tacquimenon River.  It carried a deep and strong current to the foot of the first falls, which they call Fairy Rocks.  This Indian word denotes a species of little men or fairies, which, they say, love to dwell on rocks.  The falls are broken into innumerable cascades, which give them a peculiarly sylvan air.  From the brink of these falls to the upper falls, a distance of about six miles, the channel of the river is a perfect torrent, and would seem to defy navigation.  But before I was well aware of it, they had the canoe in it, with a single man with a long pole in the bow and stern.  I took my seat between the centre bars, and was in admiration at the perfect composure and sangfroid with which these two men managed it—­now shooting across the stream to find better water, and always putting in their poles exactly