Pity that such a handsome man, so
active in everything that calls for the gun, the rod, the boat, the
horse, the dog, should have been shorn of so essential a prerequisite as
a leg. His conversational powers are quite extraordinary. I felt
constantly as if I were in the presence of a lover of nature and natural
things; a _bon vivant_ perhaps, or an epicure, a Tom Moore, in some
sense, whose day-dreams of heaven are mixed up with glowing images of
women and wine.
_27th_. I was directed from Washington to relieve the principal
disbursing officer at Detroit. Here then my hopes of visiting Europe are
blown sky high for the present. I must return to the north, and, so far
as labor is concerned, "heap Pelion on Ossa."
_April 6th_. There is hardly a word in the Indian languages which does
not readily yield to the power of analysis. They call tobacco, Ussama.
_Ussa_, means to put (anything inanimate). _Ma_, is a particle denoting
smell. The _us_, in the first syllable, is sounded very slight, and
often, perhaps, nearly dropt, and the word then seems as if spelt _Sa
ma_.
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