When the appointed evening arrived, I found a highly respectable and very crowded audience, in the upper chamber of the old Indian council house.  It was certainly a better use of the building than paying the price of blood for white men’s and women’s scalps, during the fierce seven years’ struggle of the American Revolution, and the succeeding Indian wars.  My lights were badly placed for reading, and I got on indifferently in that respect, for I could not see well, but my facts and matter altogether were well and approvingly received; and the address was immediately published.

TEMPERATURE AT THE FOOT OF LAKE SUPERIOR.—­Mr. F. Andrain writes to me from St. Mary’s (Jan. 26th):  “The weather has been very mild indeed, here, until within a few days:  there has not been sufficient snow, as yet, to cover the stubble in the fields.  The severe weather commenced on the 23d instant.  The thermometer stood as follows:—­”

On the 23d,  at 9 o’clock A.M., 11 degrees below zero.
24th,       "       "    13    "        "
25th,       "       "     2    "        "
26th,       "       "     1    "        "

RUM AND TAXES.—­A trader at St. Mary’s writes (26th Jan.) as follows:  “It is the wish of several individuals, who keep stores in the village, to be informed whether the sutler in Fort Brady is not obliged to pay taxes as well as we.  For he has almost the exclusive trade of the Canadians.  It is tempting to purchase liquor at 2_s_. 6_d_. per gallon, when they have to pay 4_s_. in the village.  The temperance society is of no use, when any of its members can dispose of liquor at so low a rate.”  I put the last words in italics.

A MILD WINTER ADVERSE TO THE INDIANS.—­Mr. George Johnston observes (8th March):  “The weather on Lake Superior has been uncommonly mild the whole winter.  The southern shore of the lake from White Fish Point to Ance Kewywenon presents a scene of open lake, not any ice forming to enable the poor Indians to spear fish.”

DEATH OF A FRIEND.—­Mrs. Schoolcraft says (Feb. 3d):  “Mrs. Bingham passed the day with me a short time since, and brought me some Vermont religious papers, which I read yesterday, and found an account of the death of our poor friend Mr. Conant, which took place in November last in Brandon, Vermont, leaving his disconsolate widow and five children.  He suffered greatly for five years, but I am happy to find he was resigned in suffering to the will of the Almighty with patience; and I trust he is now a happy member of the souls made perfect in the precious blood of the Lamb.”  Thus ended the career of a man of high moral worth, mental vigor, and exalted benevolence of feeling and purpose.  This is the man, and the family, who showed us such marked kindness and attentions in the city of New York, in the winter of 1825—­kindness and attentions never to be forgotten. Feb. 7th.  This day is very memorable in my private history, for my having assumed, after long delay, the moral intrepidity to acknowledge, publicly, a truth which has never been lost sight of since my intercourse with the Rev. Mr. Laird, in the, to me, memorable winter of 1824—­when it first flashed, as it were, on my mind.  That truth was the divine atonement for human sin made by the long foretold, the rejected, the persecuted, the crucified Messiah.