14th. A powder of snow covers the ground in the north, the wind in the N.W. It varies from N.W. to S.W., and by ten o'clock, A.M., it is pleasant and clear. Plant garden corn, an early species cultivated by the Ottawas.
15th. Cold and clear most of the day.
16th. Young Robert Gravereat first came to the office in the capacity of interpreter. It is a calm and mild day; the sun shines out. The thermometer stands at 50° at 8 o'clock, A.M., and the weather appears to be settled for the season. Miss Louisa Johnston comes to pass the summer.
15th. Ploughed potato land, the backward state of the season having rendered it useless earlier. Even now the soil is cold, and requires to lay some time after being ploughed up.
The steamer "Oliver Newberry" arrives in the afternoon, bringing Detroit dates of May 5th, and Washington dates a week later.
The new brig "John Kinzie" enters the harbor on the 19th, bringing up Gov. D.R. Porter, of Pennsylvania, and suit, with forty passengers.
20th. I may now advert to what the busy world has been about, while we have been watching fields of floating ice, and battling it with the elements through an entire season. A letter from E.A. Brush, Esq., Washington, March 13th, says: "Nothing is talked about here, as I may well presume you know from the papers, but the deposits and their removal, and their restoration; and that frightful mother of all mischief, the money maker (U.S. Bank). Every morning (the morning begins here at twelve, meridian) the Senate chamber is thronged with ladies and feathers, and their obsequious satellites, to hear the sparring. Every morning a speech is made upon presentation of some petition representing that the country is overwhelmed with ruin and disasters, and that the fact is notorious and palpable; or, that the country is highly prosperous and flourishing, and that everybody knows it. One, that its only safety lies in the continuance of the Bank; and the other, that our liberties will be prostrated if it is re-chartered. Of course, the well in which poor truth has taken refuge, in this exigency, is very deep.
"But the Senate is, at this moment, an extraordinary constellation of talent. There is Mr. Webster, and Mr. Clay, and Mr. Calhoun, and a no-way inferior, Mr. Preston, the famous debater in the South Carolina troubles, and Mr. Benj. Watkins Leigh, the equally celebrated ambassador near the government of South Carolina. All are ranged on one side, and it is a phalanx as formidable, in point of moral force, as the twenty-four can produce. Mr. Forsyth is the atlas upon whose shoulders are made to rest all the sins of the administration. Every shaft flies at him, or rather is intended for others through him; and his Ajax shield of seven bull hides is more than once pierced, in the course of the frequent encounters to which he is invited, and from which they will not permit him to secede. But it is all talk. They will do nothing. A constitutional majority in the Senate (two-thirds) is very doubtful, and a bare one in the House, still more problematical. Of course, you are aware that the executive has expressed its unyielding determination not to sign a bill for the re-charter, or to permit a restoration of the deposits.
"Houses are cracking in the cities, as if in the midst of an earthquake, and there is hardly a man engaged in mercantile operations (I might say not one) who will not feel the 'pressure.'"
Major W. Whiting writes from Detroit, March 28th: "I spoke of the project of a road to Mackinack, which you wished me to bear in mind. The Secretary approved the project, and the Quarter-Master General said it might be done without a special appropriation. I was authorized to have the survey made as soon as the season will permit, and an officer has reported to me for that purpose. He will start from Saginaw some time in the next month, to make a reconnoisance of the country, and will appear at the head of the peninsula when perhaps you little expect such a visitor.