t vast
region. The steamer, arriving once in twenty-four hours, brought mails
and travellers, and a little stir of novelty and excitement. Going a
day's journey into the adjacent country, Margaret and her companions
found such accommodation as is here mentioned:--

"The little log-cabin where we slept, with its flower-garden in front,
disturbed the scene no more than a lock upon a fair cheek. The
hospitality of that house I may well call princely; it was the boundless
hospitality of the heart, which, if it has no Aladdin's lamp to create a
palace for the guest, does him still greater service by the freedom of
its bounty to the very last drop of its powers."

In the Western immigration Milwaukee was already a station of
importance. "Here, on the pier, I see disembarking the Germans, the
Norwegians, the Swedes, the Swiss. Who knows how much of old legendary
lore, of modern wonder, they have already planted amid the Wisconsin
forests? Soon their tales of the origin of things, and the Providence
that rules them, will be so mingled with those of the Indian that the
very oak-tree will not know them apart, will not know whether itself be
a Runic, a Druid, or a Winnebago oak."

Margaret reached the island of Mackinaw late in August, and found it
occupied by a large representation from the Chippewa and Ottawa tribes,
who came there to receive their yearly pension from the Government at
Washington. Arriving at night, the steamer fired some rockets, and
Margaret heard with a sinking heart the wild cries of the excited
Indians, and the pants and snorts of the departing steamer. She walked
"with a stranger to a strange hotel," her late companions having gone on
with the boat. She found such rest as she could in the room which served
at once as sitting and as dining room. The early morning revealed to her
the beauties of the spot, and with these the features of her new
neighbors.

"With the first rosy streak I was out among my Indian neighbors, whose
lodges honeycombed the beautiful beach. They were already on the alert,
the children creeping out from beneath the blanket door of the lodge,
the women pounding corn in their rude mortars, the young men playing on
their pipes. I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the
Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at any
one's fancying it a melody. But now, when I heard the notes in their
true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison with the