The first letter I received on my return route from that eventful tour, was at the post of Green Bay, where a letter from J.T.  Johnston, Esq., of New York, awaited me:  “Since you departed,” he observes, “nothing of importance has occurred, either in the moral or political world.  The disturbances which disgrace the kingdom of Great Britain are, and still continue to be, favored by a few factionists.  Thistlewood, and the members of the Cato Street conspiracy, have been tried for high treason, and condemned, and I presume the next arrivals must bring us an account of their execution.  The Cortes has been established in Spain, and there floats a rumor that the Saint, the adored Ferdinand, has fled to France.  The public debates in France seem to me to thunder forth, as the precursor of some event which will yet violently agitate the country.  (Napoleon was now in St. Helena.) The stormy wave of discord has not subsided.  The temple of ambition is not overthrown, and party spirit will rush to inhabit it.  The convulsive struggle for independence in the South (America) still continues, but civil war appears about to interrupt its progress.  At home all is quiet.  A virtuous chief magistrate and a wise administration must benefit a people so PRONE TO DOMESTIC FACTION.”

This gave me the first glimpse of home and its actualities, and the letter was refreshing for the sympathies it expresses, after long months of tugging over portages, and looking about to arrange in the mind stratifications, to gather specimens of minerals, and fresh water shells, and watch the strange antics which have been cut over the whole face of the north-west by the Boulder Group of Rocks.

Sept. 6.  Mr. C.C.  Trowbridge writes from Michilimackinack:  “I forward the specimens collected by Mr. Doty and myself, on the tour (from Green Bay, on the north shore, to Michilimackinack).  The most interesting will probably be the organic remains.  They were collected in Little Noquet Bay, on the N.E. side, where ridges of limestone show themselves frequently.  Near the top of the package you find a piece of limestone weighing about two pounds, of which the upper stratum was composed; there are two pieces of the lower stratum, resembling blue pipestone.  The middle stratum was composed of these remains.  About ten miles N.E. of Great Bay de Noquet, we found flint, or hornstone, in small quantities in the limestone rocks.  There is also a specimen of the marble, which we saw little of; but since our arrival I am informed that a large bluff, composed of the same, is seen 30 to 40 miles from this.  The gypsum I picked up on St. Martin’s Islands.”