Geological Survey of Dutchess County.--Dr. Benjamin Allen, of Hyde Park, writes to me (June 4th) on this subject, urging me to undertake the survey; but the necessity of closing my engagements in the West rendered it impossible.
Expedition of 1820.--Dr. Mitchell furnishes me opinions upon some of the scientific objects collected by me and my associates in the north-west in 1820:--
"The Squirrel sent by General Cass is a species not heretofore described, and has been named by Dr. Mitchell the federation squirrel, or sciurus tredecem striatus.
"The Pouched Rat, or mus bursarius, has been seen but once in Europe. This was a specimen sent to the British Museum from Canada, and described by Dr. Shaw. But its existence is rather questioned by Charles Cuvier.
"Both animals have been described and the descriptions published in the 21st Vol. of the Medical Repository of New York, p. 248 et seq. The specimens are both preserved in my museum. Drawings have been executed by the distinguished artist Milbert, and forwarded by him at my request to the administrators of the King's Museum, at Paris, of which he is a corresponding member. My descriptions accompany them. The originals are retained as too valuable to be sent out of the country.
"The Paddle Fish is the spatularia of Shaw and polyodon of Lacepede. It lives in the Mississippi only, and the skeleton, though incomplete, is better than any other person here possesses. It is carefully preserved in my collection.
"The Serpent is a species of the Linnaean genus Anguis, the orveto of the French, and the blind worm of the English. The loss of the tail of this fragile creature may render an opinion a little dubious, but it is supposed to be an ophias aureus of Dandin, corresponding to the Anguis ventralis of Linn, figured by Catesby.
"The shells afford a rich amount of undescribed species. The whole of the univalves and bivalves received from Messrs. Schoolcraft and Douglass, have been assembled, and examined with all I possessed before, and with Mr. Stacy Collins's molluscas brought from Ohio. Mr. Barnes is charged with describing and delineating all the species not contained in Mr. Say's memoir on these productions of the land and fresh waters of North America. The finished work will be laid before the Lyceum, and finally be printed in Silliman's New Haven Journal. The species with which zoology will be enriched will amount probably to nine or ten. We shall endeavor to be just to our friends and benefactors.
"The pipe adorns my mantelpiece, and is much admired by connoisseurs."
10. A New York Statesman, Jan. 1821.
CHAPTER VII.
Trip through the Miami of the lakes, and the Wabash Valley--Cross the grand prairie of Illinois--Revisit the mines--Ascend the Illinois--Fever--Return through the great lakes--Notice of the "Trio"--Letter from Professor Silliman--Prospect of an appointment under government--Loss of the "Walk-in-the-Water"--Geology of Detroit--Murder of Dr. Madison by a Winnebago Indian.
1821. I left New York for Chicago on the 16th June--hurried rapidly through the western part of that State--passed up Lake Erie from Buffalo, and reached Detroit just in season to embark, on the 4th of July. General Cass was ready to proceed, with his canoe-elege in the water. We passed, the same day, down the Detroit River, and through the head of Lake Erie into the Maumee Bay to Port Lawrence, the present site, I believe, of the city of Toledo. This was a distance of seventy miles, a prodigious day's journey for a canoe. But we were shot along by a strong wind, which was fair when we started, but had insensibly increased to a gale in Lake Erie, when we found it impossible to turn to land without the danger of filling. The wind, though a gale, was still directly aft. On one occasion I thought we should have gone to the bottom, the waves breaking in a long series, above our heads, and rolling down our breasts into the canoe. I looked quietly at General Cass, who sat close on my right, but saw no alarm in his countenance. "That was a fatherly one," was his calm expression, and whatever was thought, little was said. We weathered and entered the bay silently, but with feelings such as a man may be supposed to have when there is but a step between him and death.
We ascended the Miami Valley, through scenes renowned by the events of two or three wars. I walked over the scene of Dudley's defeat in 1812; of Wayne's victory in 1793; and of the sites of forts Deposit and Defiance, and other events celebrated in history. From Fort Defiance, which is at the junction of the River Auglaize, we rode to Fort Wayne, sleeping in a deserted hut half way. We passed the summit to the source of the Wabash, horseback, sleeping at an Indian house, where all the men were drunk, and kept up a howling that would have done credit to a pack of hungry wolves. The Canadians, who managed our canoe, in the mean time brought it from water to water on their shoulders, and we again embarked, leaving our horses at the forks of the Wabash. The whole of this long and splendid valley, then wild and in the state of nature, till below the Tippecanoe, we traversed, day by day, stopping at Vincennes, Terrehaute, and a hundred other points, and entered the Ohio and landed safely at Shawneetown. Here it was determined to send the Canadians with our canoe, round by water to St. Louis, while we hired a sort of stage-wagon to cross the prairies. I visited the noted locality of fluor spar in Pope County, Illinois, and crossing the mountainous tract called the Knobs, rejoined the party at the Saline. Here I found my old friend Enmenger, of Kemp and Keen memory, to be the innkeeper. On reaching St. Louis, General Cass rode over the country to see the Missouri, while I, in a sulky, revisited the mines in Washington, and brought back a supply of its rich minerals. We proceeded in our canoe up the River Illinois to the rapids, at what is called Fort Rock, or Starved Rock, and from thence, finding the water low, rode on horseback to Chicago, horses having been sent, for this purpose, from Chicago to meet us. There was not a house from Peoria to John Craft's, four miles from Chicago. I searched for, and found, the fossil tree, reported to lie in the rocks in the bed of the river Des Plaines. The sight of Lake Michigan, on nearing Chicago, was like the ocean. We found an immense number of Indians assembled. The Potawattomies, in their gay dresses and on horseback, gave the scene an air of Eastern magnificence. Here we were joined by Judge Solomon Sibley, the other commissioner from Detroit, whence he had crossed the peninsula on horseback, and we remained in negotiation with the Indians during fifteen consecutive days. A treaty was finally signed by them on the 24th of August, by which, for a valuable consideration in annuities and goods, they ceded to the United States about five millions of acres of choice lands.
Before this negotiation was finished, I was seized with bilious fever, and consequently did not sign the treaty. It was of the worst bilious type, and acute in its character. I did not, indeed, ever expect to make another entry in a human journal. But a vigorous constitution at length prevailed, and weeks after all the party had left the ground, I was permitted to embark in a vessel called the Decatur on the 23d of September for Detroit. We reached Michilimackinack the seventh day of our voyage, and returned to Detroit on the 6th of October. The incidents and observations of this journey have been given to the public under the title "Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley" (1 vol. pp. 459, 8vo.: New York).
I still felt the effects of my illness on reaching Detroit, where I remained a few days before setting out for New York. On reaching Oneida County, where I stopped to recruit my strength, I learned that some envious persons, who shielded themselves under the name of "Trio," had attacked my Narrative Journal, in one of the papers during my absence. The attack was not of a character to demand a very grave notice, and was happily exposed by Mr. Carter, in some remarks in the columns of the Statesman, which first called my attention to the subject.
"A trio of writers," he observes, in his paper of 17th August, "in the Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, have commenced an attack on the Narrative Journal of Mr. Schoolcraft, lately published in this city. We should feel excessively mortified for the literary reputation