10th.  The Indians have brought me at various times the skins of a white deer, of an Arctic fox, of a wolverine, and some other species which have either past out of their usual latitudes or assumed some new trait.  Elks’ and deers’ horns, the foot, horns, and skin of the cariboo, which is the C.  Sylvestris, are deposited in my cabinet, and are mementos of their gifts from the forest.  One of the questions hardest for the Christian geologist to solve is—­how the animals of our forests got to America.  For there is every evidence, both from the Sacred Record and from the examination of the strata, that the ancient disruption was universal, and destroyed the species and genera which could not exist in water.  One of two conditions of the globe seems necessary, on the basis of the Pentateuch, to account for their migration—­either that a continental connection existed, or that the seas in northern latitudes were frozen over.  But, in the latter case, how did the tropical animals subsist and exist? The Polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the musk ox would do well enough; but how was the armadillo, the cougar, the lama, and even the bison to fare?

This question is far more difficult to solve than that of the migration of the aborigines, for they could cross in various ways; but quadrupeds could not come in boats.  Birds could fly from island to island, snakes and dogs might swim, but how came the sloth and the other quadrupeds of the torrid zone?  Who can assert that there has not been a powerful disruptive geological action in the now peaceable Pacific?  It is replete with volcanic powers.

15th.  Chabowawa, an Indian chief, a Chippewa, called to get some slips of the currant-bush from my garden, to take to his village.  Although the buds were too near the point of expansion, in the open and sunny parts of the garden, some slips were found near the fences more backward, and he was thus supplied.

25th.  I have long deliberated what I should do with my materials, denoting a kind of oral literature among the Chippewas and other tribes, in the shape of legends and wild tales of the imagination.  The narrations themselves are often so incongruous, grotesque, and fragmentary, as to require some hand better than mine, to put them in shape.  And yet, I feel that nearly all their value, as indices of Indian imagination, must depend on preserving their original form.  Some little time since, I wrote to Washington Irving on the subject.  In a response of this date, he observes:—­

“The little I have seen of our Indian tribes has awakened an earnest anxiety to know more concerning them, and, if possible, to embody some of their fast-fading characteristics and traditions in our popular literature.  My own personal opportunities of observing them must, necessarily, be few and casual; but I would gladly avail myself of any information derived from others who have been enabled to mingle among them, and capacitated to perceive and appreciate their habits, customs, and moral qualities.  I know of no one to whom I would look with more confidence, in these respects, than to yourself; and, I assure you, I should receive as high and unexpected favors any communication of the kind you suggest, that would aid me in furnishing biographies, tales or sketches, illustrative of Indian life, Indian character, and Indian mythology and superstitions.”