passengers on the Columbus, some five or six in number, were an American officer on his way to take command at Fort Winnepeg; a Methodist missionary and his wife, who spent the day singing hymns together, and retired to their cabin at night with all the eagerness of the most enthusiastic fondness; a young dressmaker going to join her family at Green Bay; and finally, Miss Mary, the chambermaid, a handsome, fair, freckled girl, liked by everybody on board.  Tired of being on shipboard, the whole band of passengers, male and female, and Miss Mary into the bargain, went off to walk and amuse themselves on shore.  Suddenly the people in the fort got wind of our presence.  The major commanding and his officers hastened up, asking where the prince was, and invited us all into the fort, to rest and refresh ourselves with them.  It was impossible to refuse such a kind and cordial invitation.  It was equally impossible to break up our party—­that would have been unmannerly, and contrary to American ideas of propriety and equality alike.  So we entered a drawing-room, in which the wives and daughters of the officers quartered in the fort were assembled.  They seemed to falter for a moment, when they beheld our lady companions.  They scanned the Methodist and his wife, and took their measure at once But the dressmaker and Miss Mary, hanging on the arms of two of my companions, seemed to puzzle them.  Anyhow they hastened towards them, took them by the hand, led them to the place of honour on the sofa, and began the conversation with “Do you speak English ?” I don’t recollect now how it all went off, but I know we were soon back on board, Miss Mary and all, under a salute of twenty-one guns.

Mackinaw, a small wooded island, with high shores, and a fort over which the stars and stripes of the Union floated, looked very picturesque as we approached it.  There was a ruin on one side of the American guard-house, to which we lost no time in climbing through the woods.  It was the old French fort, and our hearts swelled at the thought that the French flag was the first to float over this little Gibraltar, when, some hundred and sixty years previously, our officers took possession of this magnificent country in the name of their king.

Once more, with the eye of fancy, we saw our white-coated soldiers mounting guard on those ramparts, whence their gaze must have wandered over the confluence of the three great lakes and the immense empire they had won for France, while the Indian tribes hurried from all quarters to bend the knee to the Great Chief of the Pale Faces.  It was a great and glorious epoch; and what traveller would not feel deeply stirred when he comes upon such bitter memories of the vanished grandeur of his country?