do they
need firearms, axes, kettles, knives, &c. They have almost lost the use
of bows and arrows, and they would find it nearly impossible to cut
their fire wood with implements made of stone or bone."

_16th_. Examined Mackenzie's Travels, to compare his vocabulary of
Knisteneaux and Algonquin, with the Odjibwa, or Chippewa. There is so
close an agreement, in sense and sound, between the two latter, as to
make it manifest that the tribes could not have been separated at a
remote period. This agreement is more close and striking than it appears
to be by comparing the two written vocabularies. Mackenzie has adopted
the French orthography, giving the vowels, and some of the consonants
and diphthongs, sounds very different from their _English_ powers. Were
the words arranged on a common plan of alphabetical notation, they would
generally be found to the eye, as they are to the ear, nearly identical.
The discrepancies would be rendered less in cases in which they appear
to be considerable, and the peculiarities of idiom, as they exist, would
be made more striking and instructive. I have heard both idioms spoken
by the natives, and therefore have more confidence in speaking of their
nearness and affinity, than I could have had from mere book comparison.
I am told that Mackenzie got his vocabulary from some of the priests in
Lower Canada, who are versed in the Algonquin. It does not seem to me at
all probable that an Englishman or a Scotchman should throw aside his
natural sounds of the vowels and consonants, and adopt sounds which are,
and must have been, from infancy, foreign.

As I intend to put down things in the order of their occurrence, I will
add that I had a visitor to-day, a simple mechanic, who came to talk to
me about _nothing_; I could do no less than be civil to him, in
consequence of which he pestered me with hems and haws about one hour. I
think Job took no interest in philology.

_17th_. Devoted the day to the language. A friend had loaned me a file
of Scottish papers called the _Montrose Review_, which I took occasion
to run over. This paper is more neatly and correctly printed than is
common with our papers of this class from the country. The strain of
remark is free, bold, and inquisitive, looking to the measures of
government, and advocating principles of rational liberty throughout
the world.

Col. Lawrence, Capt. Thompson, and Lieut. Griswold called in the course
of the day. I commenced reading M