We should have been pleased to have had a more particular account of these boulders, which Mr Schoolcraft speaks of having seen upon the borders of the northern lakes, and which from all accounts, are scattered very widely over those regions. If the facts in regard to them were collected, they might throw some light upon the history of these inland seas, and possibly afford some grounds for determining the period of the great catastrophe, by which they were formed. Were they closely examined, they might probably be traced to their original places, as those upon the Jura and the banks of the Aar have been; perhaps they would confirm Mr Hayden's theory of a great northeast current. The appearances around Green Bay, particularly near the rivers which it recieves from the chain of mountains in which the Ontanagon rises, indicate very decidedly that copper abounds in the angle between lakes Superior and Michigan. A brilliant specimen of native copper, ten or twelve pounds in weight, was brought to Mr Schoolcraft by an Indian, who

'related that passing in his canoe during the afternoon of a beautiful summer's day, across Winnebago lake, when the sun was just visible above the tops of the trees, and a delightful calm prevailed over the face of the waters, he espied at a distance in the lake before him a beautiful form standing in the water. Her eyes shone with a brilliancy that could not be endured, and she held in her hand a lump of glittering gold. He immediately paddled towards the attractive object, but as he came near he could percieve that it was gradually altering as to its shape and complexion; her eyes no longer shone with brilliancy-her face lost the hectic glow of life,--her arms imperceptibly disappeared; and when he came to the spot where she stood, it was a monument of stone, having a human face, with the fins and tail of a fish. He sat a long while in amazement, fearful either to touch the super-human object or to go away and leave it; at length, having made an offering of the incense of tobacco, and addressed it as the guardian angel of his country, he ventured to lay his hand upon the statue, and finally lifted it into his canoe. Then sitting in the other end of the canoe with his back towards the miraculous statue, he paddled gently towards the shore, but was astonished, on turning round to find nothing in his canoe, but a large lump of copper, which I now present to you.'

How can it be said, that the aborigines of our continent are a stupid race, when they have a thousand such fictions showing the liveliest imagination?

The principal geological and mineralogical facts, which we learn from Mr Schoolcraft's Journal, are these-that the secondary region extends along the whole chain of lakes, which is mostly limestone and sandstone, and the latter chiefly around lake Superior-that beyond the portage of St Louis river, the few rocks, which are seen in situ are granitic, and that the same formation extends from thence downward along the Mississippi to the falls of St Anthony-that copper and iron are abundant near lakes Superior and Michigan, and lead throughout the whole limestone basin of the Mississippi. But a few earthy minerals are spoken of, and those mostly silicious. It would now be interesting and important to determine where the primitive range commences, which runs north of the lakes, and to what depth the secondary strata extend.

On the hundred and twenty third day from the time of his departure from Detroit, Mr Schoolcraft returns to it again, having made a complete tour of the northern lakes, and north of them to the sources of the Mississippi and down that river to the Ouisconsing, and thence across to Michigan, and again down the Huron to the St Clair. The whole distance travelled could not be far from three thousand six hundred miles. The narrative of this journey contains much valuable information upon the natural history and the geographical features of those unknown parts of our country, and also upon the manners and character of the savage tribes, who inhabit them. All who are interested in these subjects are much indebted to the author for the knowledge he acquired at the expense of so much toil and hardship, and for the fidelity with which he has communicated it. But it has been the defect of all the expeditions of this kind which we have sent out, not to be provided with the instruments necessary to make the requisite observations upon the country, which they went to explore, and it appears to have been the case here. We learn from it

nothing to be relied on about the height of mountains, the currents in the lakes, the fall of the rivers, the temperature of the waters, and the latitude and longitude of remarkable places. If it were reasonable to complain of one who has done so much as Mr Schoolcraft, because he has not done every thing, we would say that his descriptions are too loose and indefinite; we are not sure that he has seen one new animal, or plant, or mineral, as he has never marked those, which he supposes to be new, by any characters which decide them to

buried in their own dust and covered with the growth thousand years, forcing upon the imagination the appa thought of some great and flourishing, perhaps civilized ple, who have been so utterly swept from the face of the ea that they have not left even a traditionary name behind th At the present day, enough is known of our aborigines afford the ground-work of invention, enough is concealed leave full play for the warmest imagination; and we see why those superstitions of theirs, which have filled inanim nature with a new order of spiritual beings, may not be s cessfully employed to supersede the worn out fables of Ru mythology, and light up a new train of glowing visions, at touch of some future wizard of the West. At any rate we a confident that the savage warrior, who was not less beauti and bold in his figurative diction, than in his attitude of deat the same who suffered not the grass to grow upon the wa path,' and hastened to extinguish the fire of his enemy wi blood,' tracking his foe through the pathless forest, with i stinctive sagacity, by the fallen leaf, the crushed moss, or th bent blade, patiently enduring cold, hunger, and watchfulnes while he crouched in the night-grass like the tiger expectin his prey, and finally springing on the unsuspicious victin with that war-whoop, which struck terror to the heart of the boldest planter of New England in her early day, is no mea instrument of the sublime and terrible of human agency. And if we may credit the flattering pictures of their best historian, the indefatigable Heckewelder, not a little of softer interest might be extracted from their domestic life.

Instead of wearying our reader with a formal disquisition on the characters and scenes of the third epoch, we beg leave to introduce him, without farther ceremony, if he has not already made the acquaintance, to Mr Harvey Birch, better known by the name of the Spy of the Neutral Ground; whom we greet, as doubtless the reader does also, with the greater satisfaction, in that he has taken a world of trouble off our hands, doing away the painful necessity of establishing by syllogism and inference this part of our proposition, viz, that the American revolution is an admirable basis, on which to found fictions of the highest order of romantic interest. This trouble is taken off our hands, however, not because the work before us is a perfect model of its kind, but because, whatever other deficiencies or deformities may appertain to it, want of interest, the only unpardonable sin of romance, is not among them.

We do not propose, however, to give a minute analysis of a work, which has already been some months before the public, and has withal sufficient notoriety to have reached its third edition. We have a right to assume, that our readers are fashionable enough to have kept pace with their neighbors, and shall therefore tell no more of the story, than we find necessary for our purpose.

The narrative turns on the fortunes of Henry Wharton, a captain in the royal army, (then under sir Henry Clinton, with head quarters at New York) who imprudently visits his father's family at West Chester, (the neutral ground,) in disguise, and there falls into the hands of an American party under the command of Major Dunwoodie, his sister's betrothed lover, and his own bosom friend. He is tried and condemned as a spy; but succeeds in making his escape by the assistance of Harvey Birch, the pedlar, himself a notorious British spy, and with the connivance of Washington, who, under the assumed character of Harper, had been an inmate at the house of Wharton's father, at the time of the stolen visit, and was firmly convinced of the young man's innocent intentions.

Harvey Birch, by whose mysterious agency every important incident in the book is more or less affected, though a convicted spy of the enemy, with a price set upon his head, turns out in the sequel to have been all along in secret the confidential and trusty agent of Washington.

This finely conceived character, on whom the interest of the narrative mainly depends, is not wholly without historical foundation. It is matter of notoriety, that no military commander ever availed himself of a judicious system of espionage with more consummate address, or greater advantage to his cause, than General Washington. The similarity of the belligeerents in all outward appearances, and their community of language, furnished both parties with great facilities for mutual deception. But the minute local knowledge of our commander in chief, his extensive information in regard to the manners, habits, and occupations of the persons with whom he had to deal, his own acute observation and discriminating judgment, united to an intimate acquaintance with the characters of individuals, gave him in this respect peculiar advantages, which he never failed to improve. A fund, liberal, considering the parsimony and extreme poverty of our government at that

time, was furnished by congress, expressly to be employed in secret services of this nature, and Washington was never sparing of his own purse when occasion demanded additional supplies. Hence he was enabled to maintain great numbers of secret agents, who were often at work unsuspected in the very heart of the British army, transmitting regular and authentic intelligence of its minutest operations; while his most confidential officers were profoundly ignorant of the means and sources of his information, and frequently received themselves that, on which they were directed to rely, without knowing the quarter whence it came. We do not state this without authority. We have it through a channel, which ought not to be doubted, that, at a time when General Heath was left by Washington in command, he was directed to make daily search in the hollow of a certain tree for despatches from the enemy's camp; and the search was seldom fruitless, though the general professed himself entirely unsuspicious of the person or persons by whom he was thus supplied. Many similar facts are probably known to officers now living; and although others, who stood high in the service, should not possess the same kind of information, this is a species of negative evidence, which can weigh little in the scale. That services of this sort should have been performed by persons commonly reputed to be disaffected to the American cause, and even by those who lived ostensibly in British pay, is a thing not only extremely probable in itself, but likewise a fact capable of being established by living testimony. Indeed we have, within these few days, held direct communication with a man then in this city, who, having first suffered his name to be stricken off the rolls of his regiment for desertion, entered into the service of sir Henry Clinton, as a private, and sir Henry thought confidential agent, while he was, in truth, a spy upon the movements of that officer, and constantly conveyed all his valuable information to the commander of the American armies, in conformity with the understanding that subsisted between them; and this was a man of sufficient respectability ro receive a captain's commission for his services. It may well, however, be a matter of doubt, whether

* This man had a secret pass from Washington, to be used in case of emergency. He was accustomed to carry his despatches rolled up, in shape and size like a bullet, that they might be swallowed, if necessary. Once, when employed by sir Henry, as the bearer of a despatch to sir Guy Carleton in Canada, he met a brother tory, charged with despatches, vice versa, from sir