On reaching Detroit, Gov.  Cass invited Capt.  Douglass and myself to recruit ourselves a few days at his “old mansion of the ancient era.”  I examined and put in order my collection of specimens, selecting such as were designed for various institutions.  A local association of persons inclined to foster literary efforts, under the name of “Detroit Lyceum,” elected me a member.  The intrepid and energetic officer who had planned and executed this scheme of western exploration gave me a copy of his official letter to the Secretary of War, warmly approbating the conduct of Capt.  Douglass and myself, as members of the expedition.  All its results were attended with circumstances of high personal gratification.

I left Detroit on the 13th of October at 4 o’clock P.M., in the steamer “Walk-in-the-Water,” the first boat built on the Lake waters, and reached Black Rock at 7 o’clock in the morning of the 17th, being a stormy passage, in a weak but elegant boat, of eighty-seven hours.  Glad to set my foot on dry land once more, I hurried on by stage and canal, and reached Oneida Creek Depot on the 21st at 4 o’clock in the morning, stopped for breakfast there, and then proceeded on foot, through the forest, by a very muddy path, to Oneida Castle, a distance of three miles—­my trunk being carried by a man on horseback.  Thence I took a conveyance for Mr. W.H.  Shearman’s, at Vernon, where I arrived at ten o’clock A.M.

Capt.  Douglass, who had preceded me, wrote from West Point Military Academy, on the 27th, that in the sudden change of habits he had been affected with a dreadful influenza.  My own health continued to be unimpaired, and my spirits were buoyant.  After a few days’ rest, I wrote a report (Nov. 6th) to the Secretary of War on the metalliferous character of the Lake Superior country, particularly in relation to its reported wealth in copper.  I proceeded to Albany on the 7th of December, and arrived the day following, and was cordially greeted by all my friends and acquaintances.  It was my intention to have gone immediately to New York, but the urgent entreaties of Mr. Carter and others induced me to defer it.  Very little had been said by the members of the party about a publication.  We looked to Capt.  Douglass, who was the topographer and a professor at West Point, to take the lead in the matter.  The death of Mr. Ellicott, Professor of Mathematics at that institution, who was his father-in-law, and his appointment to the vacant chair, from that of engineering, placed him in a very delicate and arduous situation.  He has never received credit for the noble manner in which he met this crisis.  He was not only almost immediately required to teach his class the differential calculus, but the French copy—­a language with which he was not familiar—­was the only one employed.  He was therefore not only obliged to study a comparatively new science, but to do it in a new language; and when the course began, he had to instruct his class daily in tasks which he committed nightly.  Most men would have sunk under the task, but he went triumphantly through it, and I have never heard that the students or others ever had cause to suspect his information or question his abilities.  He wrote to me, and perhaps to me only, on this subject.