[Footnote 16:  This word has its pluraling thus, Od-jib-waeig.]

10th.  On examining the topography and advantages of the ground, Colonel Brady determined to take possession of a lot enclosed and dwelling, originally the property of the North West Company, and known as the Nolin House, but now the property of Mr. C.O.  Ermatinger.[17] To this place the troops were marched, soon after the close of the Indian council mentioned, and encamped within the area.  This area was enclosed with cedar pickets.  The dwelling-house, which occupied an eminence some eighth of a mile below the falls, was in old times regarded as a princely chateau of the once powerful lords of the North West Fur Trade, but is now in a decayed and ruinous state.  It was nick-named “Hotel Flanagan.”  Dilapidated as it was, there was a good deal of room under its roof, and it afforded quarters for most of the officers’ families, who must otherwise have remained in open tents.  The enclosure had also one or two stone houses, which furnished accommodations to the quartermaster’s and subsistence and medical departments.  Every nerve was now directed to fit up the place, complete the enclosure, and furnish it with gates; to build a temporary guard-house, and complete other military fixtures of the new cantonment.  The edifice also underwent such repairs as served to fence out, as much as possible, the winds and snows of a severe winter—­a winter which every one dreads the approach of, and the severity of which was perhaps magnified in proportion as it was unknown.

[Footnote 17:  For the property thus taken possession of, the United States Government, through the Quartermaster’s Department, paid the claimant the just and full amount awarded by appraisers.]

11th.  What my eyes have seen and my ears have heard, I must believe; and what is their testimony respecting the condition of the Indian on the frontiers?  He is not, like Falstaff’s men, “food for powder,” but he is food for whisky.  Whisky is the great means of drawing from him his furs and skins.  To obtain it, he makes a beast of himself, and allows his family to go hungry and half naked.  And how feeble is the force of law, where all are leagued in the golden bonds of interest to break it!  He is indeed

     “Like some neglected shrub at random cast
      That shades the steep and sighs at every blast.”

12th.  I received by to-day’s mail a note from De Witt Clinton, Governor of New York.  America has produced few men who have united civic and literary tastes and talents of a high order more fully than he does.  He early and ably investigated the history and antiquities of Western New York.  He views with a comprehensive judgment the great area of the West, and knows that its fertility and resources must render it, at no distant day, the home of future millions.  He was among the earliest to appreciate the mineralogical and geographical researches which