29th.—­I received from the Rhode Island Historical Society, a copy of their publication of Roger Williams’ Key to the Indian languages.  This tract was greatly needed by philologists.  The language commented on is clearly of the Algonquin stock.  Dr. Edwards, in his “Observations on the Mukhekanieu,” demonstrates that the old Mohecan, as spoken on the Housatonic, was also of this type.

He says, indeed, that the difference in all the New England languages spoken by the nations were merely dialectic.  What I have heard of Eliot’s Bible of the Natic, or Massachusetts language, favors the same conclusion.  All this shows that the ancestors of the present lake tribes who speak these dialects, must have overspread all New England.  History is thus taught by language.  The lake tribes have only this tradition respecting the fact, that they came from the East.

30th.—­Dr. A.F.  Homes transmits me a diploma of membership of the Montreal Natural History Society.

May 14th.—­Mr. Reynolds recurs to the subject of the Ex.  Expedition, which he announced to me on the 5th of February.  “It is probable,” he observes, “that an expedition to the South Sea will sail from the City of New York in September next.  I wish, and so do several members of the national cabinet, that you would join it, and be the head of the scientific corps.  Your salary shall be almost anything you ask, and your relation to the general government shall not be prejudiced by a temporary absence.  The expedition will be absent about eighteen months or two years.  Will you not feel some ambition in being connected with the first American expedition of discovery?”

20th.—­Death is ever busy, thinning the ranks of our friends and relatives.  Mr. Shearman, of N.Y., communicates the death of my niece, Margaret Catharine (S.) at Vernon, New York.  She was a young lady of pleasing manners, and many fine personal and mental traits.  She conversed on her fate with perfect composure, and selected hymns to be sung at her funeral.

I accomplished my passage to Detroit I think on the 21st of May, being twenty-four days from St. Mary’s, without counting the trip in that season one of unusual length, and without any serious mishaps, which is, perhaps, remarkable, as all our lake vessels are ill found, and I attribute more of success to good luck, or rather Providence, than to any amount of seamanlike precaution.  It is, indeed, remarkable that a hundred vessels are not every year lost on the upper lakes where one now is, by being ill supplied or equipped, or through foolhardy intrepidity.

28th.—­A friend sent me the manuscript of his poem of “Sanillac” to read, and to furnish some notes.  The subject of the Indian is, certainly, susceptible of being handled by the Muses, in a manner to interest and amuse; and I regard every attempt of the kind as meritorious, although it may be the lot of but few to succeed.  The writer on the frontier, who fills up a kind of elegant leisure by composition, not only pleases himself, which is a thing nobody can deprive him of, but dodges the coarser amusements of bowling, whist, and other resorts for time-killing.  He forgets his remote position for the time, and hides from himself the feeling of that loneliness which is best conquered by literary employment.