20th. Rain and thunder.
21st. Temperate; sinks and turns cold in the evening.
22d. Cold, with some snow.
23d. Thermometer continues to sink, and the ice is reported as having become strong everywhere.
24th. The third express from Detroit came in at an early hour, and my letters and papers were brought in before breakfast. During breakfast I opened a letter, announcing the death of my sister Catharine, on the 9th of January, at Vernon, N. Y.
Mr. Agnew and Mr. Chapman, who have been guests on the island, set out for the Sault. The lake is now finally and strongly closed by a covering of solid ice. Trains cross to-day, for the first time, to Point St. Ignace.
25th. Mr. Levake, another guest on the island, called at eight o'clock for my letters, with a view of overtaking the party who left yesterday.
26th. Wind west, and so strong as to drive the ice out between the harbor and the light-house, but did not affect the harbor itself, nor the straits.
27th. Snow and rain. Richardson May, a discharged soldier, and Manito Geezhig (Spirit-sky), a Chippewa Indian, arrived with the express mail for Saginaw.
28th. The weather is mild again. An express from the Hudson's Bay Company departed for Saginaw, at seven o'clock A.M. The adverb "fiducially" first brought to my notice, as the synonym of confidently, steadily. Finished the perusal of Mr. F.'s manuscript lectures, on the Romish Church. Think them an offhand practical appeal to truth, clear in method, forcible in illustration. Learning and research, such as are to be drawn from books other than the Bible, have not been evidently relied on. They might not do to print without revision. The New Testament does not, as an example, declare that Peter ever was at Rome, and yet that fact, got from other sources, is much relied on by that Church.