“But the Senate is, at this moment, an extraordinary constellation of talent.  There is Mr. Webster, and Mr. Clay, and Mr. Calhoun, and a no-way inferior, Mr. Preston, the famous debater in the South Carolina troubles, and Mr. Benj.  Watkins Leigh, the equally celebrated ambassador near the government of South Carolina.  All are ranged on one side, and it is a phalanx as formidable, in point of moral force, as the twenty-four can produce.  Mr. Forsyth is the atlas upon whose shoulders are made to rest all the sins of the administration.  Every shaft flies at him, or rather is intended for others through him; and his Ajax shield of seven bull hides is more than once pierced, in the course of the frequent encounters to which he is invited, and from which they will not permit him to secede.  But it is all talk.  They will do nothing.  A constitutional majority in the Senate (two-thirds) is very doubtful, and a bare one in the House, still more problematical.  Of course, you are aware that the executive has expressed its unyielding determination not to sign a bill for the re-charter, or to permit a restoration of the deposits.

“Houses are cracking in the cities, as if in the midst of an earthquake, and there is hardly a man engaged in mercantile operations (I might say not one) who will not feel the ‘pressure.’”

Major W. Whiting writes from Detroit, March 28th:  “I spoke of the project of a road to Mackinack, which you wished me to bear in mind.  The Secretary approved the project, and the Quarter-Master General said it might be done without a special appropriation.  I was authorized to have the survey made as soon as the season will permit, and an officer has reported to me for that purpose.  He will start from Saginaw some time in the next month, to make a reconnoisance of the country, and will appear at the head of the peninsula when perhaps you little expect such a visitor.

“As soon as the survey shall be completed, the cutting out will be put under contract.  When this road shall be completed, you will feel more neighborly to us.  The express will be able to perform the journey in half the time, and, of course, the trips can be multiplied.”

June 4th.  Reuben Smith, a Mission scholar of the Algonquin lineage, determines to leave his temporary employment at the agency, and complete his education at the eastward.

5th.  Ossiganac, an Ottawa, who was formerly interpreter at the British post at Drummond Island, says that Ottawa tradition points back to the Manitouline Islands, as the place of their origin.  They call those islands Ottawa Islands, and Lake Huron Ottawa Lake.  They call Lake Superior Chippewa Lake.  All the Ottawas, he says, of L’Arbre Croche, Grand River, &c., came from the Ottawa or Manitouline Islands.  The French first found them there.[73]

[Footnote 73:  This is pretty well for Indian tradition, but is not so, in truth, as Charlevoix’s Hist. of New France denotes.]