SHARP CONTEST FOR MAYORALTY OF DETROIT.—­A shrewd and observant correspondent writes:  “John R. Williams has been elected mayor, after a close election, disputed by Chapin.  The enemy practised a good thing on him.  During one of the delegate elections, when his ambition seemed to tower higher than it now does, he published a sort of memorabilia, like that of Dr. Mitchell, in which was set forth, with much minuteness of detail, all that he had ever done, and much of all he ever thought, for the good of this poor territory.  Such, for instance, as that in 1802, he was appointed town-clerk of Hamtramck; that he offered, in 1811, his services to Congress in a military capacity, which offer was rejected, and ’was the first who received intelligence of the capture of Mackinac,’ &c.  This thing the remorseless enemy republished, after it had been fervently hoped, no doubt, that the unlucky bantling had descended to the tomb of the Capulets.  It was so unaccountably weak and stupid, and so unkindly contrasted at bottom with sundry specifications ‘of how’ he had, with a pertinacious consistency, opposed every projected public improvement here, that his friends pronounced it a forgery.”

April 14th.  THINGS SHAPING AT WASHINGTON.—­“I reached home,” says a friend, “last week, after a pleasant journey.  The time passed off, at Washington, pretty comfortably.  There was much to see and hear.  The elements of political affairs are combining and recombining, and it is difficult to predict the future course of things.

“You will see that, in the fiscal way, the department is better off than last year.  Our friend, Col.  McKenney, stands his ground well, and I see no difference in his situation.”

PERILOUS TRIP ON THE ICE.—­My brother James left the Sault St. Marie on the ice with a train, about the 1st of April.  He writes from Mackinac, on the 14th of April:  “We arrived here on the 12th, after a stay of seven days at Point St. Ignace.  We were seven days from the Sault to the Point, at which place we arrived in a cold rain storm, half starved, lame, and tired.  I suppose this trip ranks anything of the kind since the days of Henry.  I am sure mortals never suffered more than us.  After leaving the Sault, disappointment, hunger, and fatigue, were our constant companions.  The children of Israel traveled a crooked road, ’tis said, but I think it was not equal to our circuit.

“We found the ice in Muddy Lake very good, in comparison to that of Huron.  After leaving Detour, we were obliged to coast, and that too over piles of snow, mountains of ice, and innumerable rocks.  In one instance, we were obliged to make a portage across a cedar swamp with our baggage, and drove Jack about a mile through the water, in order to continue the ‘voyage in a train.’  We were obliged to round all those long points on Huron, afraid if we went through the snow of being caught on some island.

“Jack fell through the ice three times out of soundings, and it was with great difficulty we succeeded in getting him out.  We lost all our harness in the Lake, and were obliged to ‘rig out’ with an old bag, a portage collar, and a small piece of rope-yarn.  Jack was three days without eating, except what he could pick on the shore.  Take it all in all, I think it rather a severe trip.”