finished in their unity and design, strikingly colored by fancy, such as would have caught the popular whim.  But this was not his object.  He has been honest in his renderings of the aboriginal sense, whether pointed or mystical, of the Indian’s mythology, whether intelligible or obscure; of their shadowy glimpses of the past and the future; of the beginning and end of things, without alteration or embellishment.  Such a work was wanted, and such a work was expected from Mr. Schoolcraft.

“If we have room, we will quote one or two of the shorter tales, such as ‘Mon-daw-min, or the origin of Indian corn,’ and the ’Celestial Sisters,’ both of which are very characteristic, and show, under the garb of much figurative beauty, how Indians appreciate the blessings of a kind Providence, and, how his domestic affections may glow and endure.  Indeed, there are few of these tales that would not give interest to our columns, and we shall be pleased to give our readers an occasional taste, provided we thereby induce them to supply themselves with the full feast in their power.”

20th.  It is stated that the oldest town in the United States is St. Augustine, Florida, by more than forty years.  It was founded forty years before Virginia was colonized.  Some of the houses are yet standing which are said to have been built more than three centuries ago, that is to say, about 1540.  De Soto landed in Florida in 1539.  Narvaez, in his unfortunate expedition, landed in 1537.  Both these expeditions were confined to the exploration of the country west and north of the Bay of Espiritu Santo, reaching to the Mississippi.  De Soto crossed the latter into the southeastern corner of the present State of Missouri, and into the area of Arkansas, where he died.

21st. The Detroit Free Press, of this day, has the following remarks:—­

“Much interest is manifested in this work of Mr. Schoolcraft, as a timely rescue from oblivion of an important portion of the great world of mind—­important inasmuch as it is a manifestation of two principles of human nature prominent in an interesting variety of the human race, the sense of the marvelous and the sense of the beautiful, or the developments of wonder and ideality.  The character of a people cannot be fully understood without a reference to its tales of fiction and its poetry.  Poetry is the offspring of the beautiful and the wonderful, and much of it the reader will find embodied in the Indian tales to which the author of the Algic Researches has given an enduring record.

“Much of this work strongly reminds the reader of the Grecian Mythology and the Arabian Nights Entertainments.

“According to one of the Odjibwa tales, the morning star was once a beautiful damsel that longed to go to ’the place of the breaking of daylight.”  By the following poetic invocation of her brother, she was raised upon the winds, blowing from ‘the four corners of the earth,’ to the heaven of her hopes:—­