With respect to the mission of Mackinack, its influence, on the whole, has been eminently good, and not evil.  Mr. Ferry possessed business talents of a high order, with that strict reference to moral responsibilities and accountabilities, which compose the golden fibres of the Gospel net.  He sought to bring all, white and red men, into this net; and its influences were extensively spread from that central point into the Indian country.  He gathered, from the remotest quarters, the half-breed children of the traders and clerks, into a large and well organized boarding school, where they were instructed in the points essential to their becoming useful and respectable men and women.  They were then sent abroad as teachers and interpreters, and traders’ clerks, over a wide space of wilderness, where they disseminated Gospel principles.  Many of their parents also embraced Christianity.  Many of the girls turned out to be ladies of finished education and manners, and married officers of the army or citizens.  There were some pure Indian converts of both sexes, among whom was the chief prophet of the Ottawas—­the aged Chusco.  In 1829, after seven years’ labor, he witnessed a revival among the citizens of that town, which appeared to be his crowning labor, and it had the effect to renovate the place, and for many years to drive vice and disorder, if not entirely away, into holes and corners, where they avoided the light.  He came to this island first, to begin his mission, I believe, in 1822.  The effort to set up a mission there seemed as wild and hopeless, to common judgments, as it would be to dig down the pyramids of the Nile with a pin.  I defended its course of proceedings from an unjust attack in the legislative council of the territory, in 1830, having had extensive opportunities to scan its principles and workings—­which were only offensive to worldly men, because, in upholding the Gospel banner, a shrewd knowledge of business transactions was at the same time evinced.  To be a fool in worldly things is sometimes supposed, by the wits of the world, to be an evidence of pious zeal.

6th.  Being on my passage this day up the River St. Clair, in the steamboat “Gen. Gratiot,” in company with several others, I asked Capt.  Wm. Thorn several historical questions respecting the settlement of Michilimackinack.  The following memoranda embrace his replies:  He is a native of Newport, Rhode Island, although he was for many years engaged, before the transfer of posts in 1796, in sailing British vessels on the lakes, and therefore deemed, when he was taken prisoner during the late war, to have been a British subject.