Capt.  Marryatt embarked on board the steamer Michigan, on his return from the island, after having spent several days in a social visit, including a trip to the Sault, in company with Mr. Lay, of Batavia.  While here, I saw a good deal of the novelist.  His manners and style of conversation appeared to be those of a sailor, and such as we should look for in his own Peter Simple.  Temperance and religion, if not morality, were to him mere cant words, and whether he was observed, either before dinner or after dinner—­in the parlor or out of it—­his words and manners were anything but those of a quiet, modest, English gentleman.

I drove Mr. Lay and himself out one day after dinner to see the curiosities of the island.  He would insist walking over the arched rock.  “It is a fearful and dizzy height.”  When on the top he stumbled.  My heart was in my throat; I thought he would have been hurled to the rocks below and dashed to a thousand pieces; but, like a true sailor, he crouched down, as if on a yardarm, and again arose and completed his perilous walk.

We spoke of railroads.  He said they were not built permanently in this country, and attributed the fault to our excessive go-aheadiveness.  Mr. Lay:  “True; but if we expended the sums you do on such works, they could not be built at all.  They answer a present purpose, and we can afford to renew them in a few years from their own profits.”

The captain’s knowledge of natural history was not precise.  He aimed to be knowing when it was difficult to conceal ignorance.  He called some well-characterized species of septaria in my cabinet pudding-stone, beautiful specimens of limpid hexagonal crystals of quartz, common quartz, &c.

Mr. George P. Marsh, of Vermont, brings me a letter of introduction.  This gentleman has the quiet easy air of a man who has seen the world.  His fine taste and acquirements have procured him a wide reputation.  His translation of Rusk’s Icelandic Grammar is a scholar-like performance, and every way indicative of the propensities of his mind for philological studies.

It is curious to observe, in this language, the roots of many English words, and it denotes through what lengths of mutations of history the stock words of a generic language may be traced.  Lond, skip, flaska, sumar, hamar, ketill, dal, are clearly the radices respectively of land, ship, flask, summer, hammer, kettle, dale.  This property of the endurance of orthographical forms gives one a definite illustration of the importance of language on history.

12th.  A large party of Munsees and Delawares from the River Thames, in Upper Canada, reach the harbor in a vessel bound for Green Bay, Wisconsin.  The Rev. Mr. Vogel, in whose charge they are, lands and visits the office with some of the principal men.  He says that most of them have been known as “Christian Indians.”  That the number recognized by this title on the Thames is 282, of whom 50 have been excommunicated.  Of these Christian Indians, 84 have been left on the Thames, in charge of the Rev. Abraham Lukenbach.