My personal knowledge of my native State, and of the States of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was now superior to that of most men with whom I was in the habit of conversing, and I subsequently made several little journeys and excursions that furthered me in the knowledge.

As yet, I knew nothing by personal observation of New England.  In the early part of 1813, having completed my nineteenth year, I went to Middlebury, in Vermont, on the banks of Otter Creek, where, I understand, my great-grandfather, who was an Englishman, to have died.  Soon after I accompanied Mr. Ep.  Jones, a man of decided enterprise, but some eccentricities of character, on an extensive tour through the New England States.  We set out from Lake Dunmore, in Salisbury, in a chaise, and proceeding over the Green Mountains across the State of Vermont, to Bellows’ Falls, on the Connecticut River, there struck the State of New Hampshire, and went across it, and a part of Massachusetts, to Boston.  Thence, after a few days’ stop, we continued our route to Hartford, the seat of government of Connecticut, and thence south to the valley of the Hudson at Rhinebeck.  Here we crossed the Hudson to Kingston (the Esopus of Indian days), and proceeded inland, somewhat circuitously, to the Catskill Mountains; after visiting which, we returned to the river, came up its valley to Albany, and returned, by way of Salem, to Salisbury.  All this was done with one horse, a compact small-boned animal, who was a good oats-eater, and of whom we took the very best care.  I made this distich on him:—­

     Feed me well with oats and hay,
     And I’ll carry you forty miles a-day.

This long and circuitous tour gave me a general idea of this portion of the Union, and enabled me to institute many comparisons between the manners and customs and advantages of New York and New England.

I am again compelled to lay my pencil aside by the quantity of water thrown into the canoe by the paddles of the men, who have been roused up by the increasing waves.

4th.  We went on under a press of sail last evening until eight o’clock, when we encamped in a wide sandy bay in the Straits of Michigan, having come a computed distance of 80 miles.  On looking about, we found in the sand the stumps of cedar pickets, forming an antique enclosure, which, I judged, must have been the first site of the Mission of St. Ignace, founded by Pierre Marquette, upwards of a hundred and eighty years ago.  Not a lisp of such a ruin had been heard by me previously.  French and Indian tradition says nothing of it.  The inference is, however, inevitable.  Point St. Ignace draws its name from it.  It was afterwards removed and fixed at the blunt peninsula, or headland, which the Indians call Peekwutino, the old Mackinac of the French.