ably "cantoned." The last vessel for the season has departed--the
last mail has been sent. Our population has been thinned off by the
departure of every temporary dweller, and lingering trader, and belated
visitor, till no one is left but the doomed and fated number whose duty
is here, who came here to abide the winter in all its regions, and who
cannot, on any fair principle or excuse, get away. They, and they alone,
are left to winter here. Of this number I am a resigned and willing
unit, and I have endeavored to prepare for the intellectual exigencies
of it, by a systematic study and analysis of the Indian language,
customs, and history, and character. My teachers and appliances are the
best. I have furnished myself with vocabularies and hand-books,
collected and written down, during the season. I have the post library
in my room, in addition to my own, with a free access to that of "mine
host" of the Emerald Isle, Mr. Johnston, to while away the time. My huge
Montreal stove will take long billets of wood, which, to use the
phraseology of Burns, "would mend a mill." The society of the officers
and their families of the garrison is at hand. The amusements of a
winter, in this latitude, are said to be rather novel, with their dog
trains and creole sleighs. There are some noble fellows of the old
"North West" order in the vicinity. There are thus the elements, at
least, of study, society, and amusement. Whatever else betide, I have
good health, and good spirits, and bright hopes, and I feel very much in
the humor of enjoying the wildest kind of tempests which Providence may
send to howl around my dwelling.

We have, as the means of exchanging sentiment, one English family of
refinement and education, on the American side of the river, and two
others, an English family and the Hudson Bay House in charge of a Scotch
gentleman, on the Canada shore. We have the officers attached to a
battalion of infantry, most of them married and having their ladies and
families with them, and about a dozen American citizens besides, engaged
in traffic and other affairs. These, with the resident _metif_
population of above 300 souls, and the adjacent Indian tribes,
constitute the world--the little isolated world--in which we must move
for six months to come. About fifty miles off, S.E., is the British post
of Drummond Island, and about forty west of the latter, the ancient
position and island settlement of Michilimackinack, that bugbear to