MEDICAL OR PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF THIS EXPOSURE TO COLD AND WET.—­“I came to this place (Vernon, N.Y.) much fatigued, and not in the best health.  I think my voyage from the Sault to Mackinac has impaired my health.  I was most strangely attacked on board the Aurora.  As I was reading in the cabin, all at once I was struck perfectly blind; then a severe pain in the head and face and throat, which was remedied by rubbing with vinegar; on the whole, rather a strange variety of attack.”

KINDNESS TO AN OLD DECAYED “MERCHANT VOYAGEUR.”—­There lived near me, on the Canadian shore, an aged Frenchman, a native of Trois Rivieres, in Lower Canada, whose reminiscences of life in the wilderness, in the last century, had the charm of novelty.  He was about seventy years of age, and had raised a family of children by a half-English half-Chippewa wife, all of whom had grown up and departed.  His wife and himself were left alone, and were very poor.  His education had been such as to read and write French well; he had, in fact, received his education in the College of Quebec, where he studied six years, and he spoke that language with considerable purity.  As the cold weather drew on in the fall of 1829, I invited him, with his wife, to live in my basement, and took lessons of him in French every morning after breakfast.  He had all the polite and respectful manners of a habitant, and never came up to these recitations without the best attention in his power to his costume.

Such was Jean Baptiste Perrault, who was from one of the best families in Lower Canada.  He had been early enamored with stories of voyageur adventure and freedom in the Indian country, where he had spent his life.  He was a man of good judgment, quick perceptions, and most extraordinary memory of things.  At my request, he committed to paper, in French, a narrative of his wild adventures, reaching from St. Louis to Pembina, between 1783 and 1820.  Most of the facts illustrate the hardships and risks of the Indian trade and Indian manners and customs.  They supply something for the history of the region while the country was under the English dominion.

Never was a man more grateful for this winter’s attention.  He moved back with his wife, who was quite attentive to him, to his little domicil on the opposite shore in the spring, and lived, I am informed, till Nov. 12, 1844, when he was about 85.

FOURTH LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.—­I was re-elected a member of the Legislative Council, and as soon as the lakes and river were fairly open, proceeded to Detroit, where I arrived about the middle of May.  In this trip I was accompanied by Mrs. S. and my infant son and daughter, with their nurse; and by Miss Charlotte Johnston, a young lady just coming out into society.  The council met and organized without delay, the committees being cast much in the manner of the preceding council, as a majority of the members were re-elected.  So far as changes of men had supervened, they were, perhaps, for the better.