April 14th. THINGS SHAPING AT WASHINGTON.--"I reached home," says a friend, "last week, after a pleasant journey. The time passed off, at Washington, pretty comfortably. There was much to see and hear. The elements of political affairs are combining and recombining, and it is difficult to predict the future course of things.
"You will see that, in the fiscal way, the department is better off than last year. Our friend, Col. McKenney, stands his ground well, and I see no difference in his situation."
PERILOUS TRIP ON THE ICE.--My brother James left the Sault St. Marie on the ice with a train, about the 1st of April. He writes from Mackinac, on the 14th of April: "We arrived here on the 12th, after a stay of seven days at Point St. Ignace. We were seven days from the Sault to the Point, at which place we arrived in a cold rain storm, half starved, lame, and tired. I suppose this trip ranks anything of the kind since the days of Henry. I am sure mortals never suffered more than us. After leaving the Sault, disappointment, hunger, and fatigue, were our constant companions. The children of Israel traveled a crooked road, 'tis said, but I think it was not equal to our circuit.
"We found the ice in Muddy Lake very good, in comparison to that of Huron. After leaving Detour, we were obliged to coast, and that too over piles of snow, mountains of ice, and innumerable rocks. In one instance, we were obliged to make a portage across a cedar swamp with our baggage, and drove Jack about a mile through the water, in order to continue the 'voyage in a train.' We were obliged to round all those long points on Huron, afraid if we went through the snow of being caught on some island.
"Jack fell through the ice three times out of soundings, and it was with great difficulty we succeeded in getting him out. We lost all our harness in the Lake, and were obliged to 'rig out' with an old bag, a portage collar, and a small piece of rope-yarn. Jack was three days without eating, except what he could pick on the shore. Take it all in all, I think it rather a severe trip."
MEDICAL OR PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF THIS EXPOSURE TO COLD AND WET.--"I came to this place (Vernon, N.Y.) much fatigued, and not in the best health. I think my voyage from the Sault to Mackinac has impaired my health. I was most strangely attacked on board the Aurora. As I was reading in the cabin, all at once I was struck perfectly blind; then a severe pain in the head and face and throat, which was remedied by rubbing with vinegar; on the whole, rather a strange variety of attack."
KINDNESS TO AN OLD DECAYED "MERCHANT VOYAGEUR."--There lived near me, on the Canadian shore, an aged Frenchman, a native of Trois Rivières, in Lower Canada, whose reminiscences of life in the wilderness, in the last century, had the charm of novelty. He was about seventy years of age, and had raised a family of children by a half-English half-Chippewa wife, all of whom had grown up and departed. His wife and himself were left alone, and were very poor. His education had been such as to read and write French well; he had, in fact, received his education in the College of Quebec, where he studied six years, and he spoke that language with considerable purity. As the cold weather drew on in the fall of 1829, I invited him, with his wife, to live in my basement, and took lessons of him in French every morning after breakfast. He had all the polite and respectful manners of a habitant, and never came up to these recitations without the best attention in his power to his costume.
Such was Jean Baptiste Perrault, who was from one of the best families in Lower Canada. He had been early enamored with stories of voyageur adventure and freedom in the Indian country, where he had spent his life. He was a man of good judgment, quick perceptions, and most extraordinary memory of things. At my request, he committed to paper, in French, a narrative of his wild adventures, reaching from St. Louis to Pembina, between 1783 and 1820. Most of the facts illustrate the hardships and risks of the Indian trade and Indian manners and customs. They supply something for the history of the region while the country was under the English dominion.
Never was a man more grateful for this winter's attention. He moved back with his wife, who was quite attentive to him, to his little domicil on the opposite shore in the spring, and lived, I am informed, till Nov. 12, 1844, when he was about 85.
FOURTH LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.--I was re-elected a member of the Legislative Council, and as soon as the lakes and river were fairly open, proceeded to Detroit, where I arrived about the middle of May. In this trip I was accompanied by Mrs. S. and my infant son and daughter, with their nurse; and by Miss Charlotte Johnston, a young lady just coming out into society. The council met and organized without delay, the committees being cast much in the manner of the preceding council, as a majority of the members were re-elected. So far as changes of men had supervened, they were, perhaps, for the better.