by any but extraordinary hands.  This is a mistake.  The subjects are at home, and exist not only in exploring old literary mines, but in the very circumstances around us.  What more extraordinary than the current which throws such masses of people daily among us, tearing up, as it were, the old plan of life, and laying the foundations of new social ties in the wilderness.  Not a county is settled in the West, the initial steps of which does not furnish legitimate materials for an address which would edify the living generation, and instruct those which are to follow us.  A single century hence, and how much tradition will sleep in the grave that might now be rescued!  Somebody has written a book “How to Observe,” but there is good need of another—­“HOW TO THINK.”

7th.  A new and growing society has every kind of moral want.  The necessity for education exists in a thousand forms; and if the friends of it do not bestir themselves, the enemies will.  The friends of the Sunday School Union, in Michigan, feeling impressed with these views, issued a circular this day, making an appeal which deserves a hearty response.  Michigan mind appears very active in every department.

17th.  Received a circular (from Messrs. Baloh & Wales, of Marshall, Calhoun Co.) for the issue of an agricultural paper, adequate to the wants of that interest.

29th.  Dr. D. Houghton, the agent of the Geological Survey of the State, which is in progress, commits to me, in a letter of this date, the topic of the Indian terminology, and the bestowal of new names, from the aboriginal vocabulary.

30th.  An inquest was held this day, in Ionia, on the head waters of Grand River, on the bodies of a woman and two children, supposed (mistakingly) to have been murdered by the Indians.  By the testimony adduced, it is shown that a Mr. Aensel D. Glass, of whose family the bodies consist, lived about four miles from the nearest neighbor.  He had not been seen since the 14th of the month.  On the 28th, a Mr. Hiram Brown, one of his nearest neighbors, went there on business, and found the house burned, and the bodies of his wife and children lying half burned in the area of the house (which was of logs), having been previously most horribly mutilated.  No trace could be found of Mr. Glass, nor of a good rifle, two axes, and two barrels of flour, which he was known to have had.

Suspicion first fell on the Grand River Ottawas.  I investigated the subject, and found this unjust.  They are a peaceable, orderly, agricultural people, friendly to the settlers, and having no cause of dislike to them.  Suspicion next fell on the Saginaws, who hunt in that quarter, and whose character has not recovered from the imputation of murder and plunder committed during the war of 1812.  Petossegay was named as the probable aggressor.  But on an investigation made by Mr. Conner, at Saginaw, this imputation was also found improbable, and he was dismissed, leaving the horrible mystery unexplained.[84]