Aug. 1st.  During the number of years I have passed in the country of the upper lakes, I have noticed the mocking bird, T. polyglottis, but once or twice as far north as the Island of Michilimackinack.  I have listened to its varied notes, during the spring season, with delight.  It is not an ordinary inhabitant, nor have I ever noticed it on, the St. Mary’s Straits, or on the shores of Lake Huron north of this island.  This island may, I think, be referred to as its extreme, northern and occasional limit.

10th.  I determined to remove from Michilimackinack to the city of New York.  More than thirty years of my life have been spent in Western scenes, in various situations, in Western New York, the Mississippi Valley, and the basins of the Great Lakes, The position is one which, however suitable it is for observation on several topics, is by no means favorable to the publication of them, while the seaboard cities possess numerous advantages of residence, particularly for the education of the young.  So much of my time had been given to certain topics of natural history, and to the languages and history, antiquities, manners, and customs of the Indian tribes, that I felt a desire to preserve the record of it, and, in fact, to study my own materials in a position more favorable to the object than the shores, however pleasing, of these vast inland seas.  The health of Mrs. Schoolcraft having been impaired for several years, furnished another motive for a change of residence.  However great was the geographical area to be traversed, the change could be readily effected, and promised many of the highest concomitants of civilization.  Beyond all, it was a return to my native State after long years of travel and wandering, adventure, and residence, which would bear, I thought, to-be looked at and reflected on through the mellowed medium of reminiscence and study.

The journey was easily performed by steamers and railroads, which occupy every foot of the way, and it was accomplished without any but agreeable incidents.  I left the island, which is the object of so many pleasant recollections, about the middle of August, and reached the city of New York during that month, in season, after some weeks agreeably passed at a hotel, to take a private dwelling-house in the upper part of it (Chelsea, 19th street) early in September.  I now cast myself about to publish the results of my observation on the RED RACE, whom I had found, in many traits, a subject of deep interest; in some things wholly misunderstood and misrepresented; and altogether an object of the highest humanitarian interest.  But our booksellers, or rather book-publishers, were not yet prepared in their views to undertake anything corresponding to my ideas.  The next year I executed my long-deferred purpose of visiting England and the Continent with this plan in view, and was highly gratified with the means of comparison which these finished countries afforded with the rough scenes of Western America.  France, Belgium, Prussia, Germany and Holland were embraced in this tour.