MEXICAN ARGUMENT FOR ANNEXATION. We have given this head to the following article, because it appears to us to have been intended by the writer to awaken his readers to a sense of the security and prosperity which would arise to them from a junction with the United States.[LIV. AGE.] Translated for the "Union" from the "Locomoter" of Vera Cruz, of July 26, 1846. The Texas question, which has been converted into an Anglo-American question, owing, if not to our want of foresight, at least to our indolence and inexperience, may also be converted, and perhaps very soon, into a European question; and for this reason we are induced to set forth some considerations which may assist public opinion in correcting itself, and in coming to the conclusion most advantageous to the nation. We believe that in Europe the Anglo-American question is viewed differently by the people and by the governments. Europe; and a proof of this has been furnished us in the sort of people who compose General Taylor's army, the greater part of them being Europeans!! We believe that, generally speaking, the sympathies of the people of Europe are not in our favor but in favor of the United States, even although they are aware of the injustice of the latter in usurping our territory, for there are times when public opinion cares little about the means by which a thing is done, or a project executed, and looks only at the results which spring from it. Mexico not only lacks the sympathies of Europe, but is almost hated; and this results from various causes and circumstances in which we ourselves have had no small share; and however grievous the confession may be to us, it is necessary to make it. Almost all the publications of the European press indicate the ill-will which exists towards us, and the works written by travellers who have visited us, with very few exceptions, have contributed to increase this tendency against us. And if it be certain that no people hate another without a sufficient cause or motive, it is necessary for us to inquire into the cause of this ill disposition, since it must exist. It cannot be found in a rivalry of power in war, commerce, or industry, because we have never been in a position sufficiently advantageous to provoke the jealousy of other nations. We must, then, seek elsewhere for the cause. In our opinion it is the restrictive system which we have practised, since our independence, against foreign commerce, against emigrants, and against the establishment of foreigners in our country. The people of Europe, no longer finding the territory of their countries sufficient to yield them what is essential to the comforts, or even necessaries of life, and finding the demand for their manual labor more and more diminished by each successive improvement in machinery resulting from economy in expenses, are met every year by an excess of idle population, who, eager for employment, come to the New World in search of what they can no longer find in the old. The adventurers who compose this surplus population, find in the ports of their respective nations a multitude of merchant vessels ready to sail for the United States-thanks When the people of Europe perceive that we imto the care with which that nation has protected its pose trammels and restrictions on the entrance of foreign commerce, by freeing it from the obstruc-foreigners; that we do not permit them to acquire tions, rules, and exactions, which paralyze it in the landed property; that we do not wish to tolerate Spanish American republics; and as these vessels the exercise of their mode of worship; that are generally of large burden, as is requisite for the we shut the door to their acquisition of the rights transportation of the cotton which the United of citizenship, that we prohibit the introduction of States send to Europe, a passage is offered in them their manufactures, &c., &c., it is impossible that at very moderate prices, and they are preferred, they should take the slightest interest in our fate, because the emigrants are poor, and seek cheapness for, after all, our national independence or the inin all that they need. These adventurers are tegrity of our territory, does not benefit them in aware, moreover, that on arriving with their fami- any manner. And when they see that the United lies in the United States, they are at liberty to States adopt a policy entirely different, that they live as they please, without meeting with restric- seek their interest in combination with the intertions of any kind, and that they may publicly prac-ests of other nations, it is natural that all their tice their mode of religious worship, and even become citizens of the new nation, if they believe it advantageous to their interests, by simply desiring it. Their coming, then, increases the strength of the United States, and once established in that nation, they seek lands to cultivate, and will take the direction of Mexico if they hear that this country abounds in milk and honey, and if they believe that they can easily introduce themselves into it under the protection of the government of the United States, for that of Mexico has redoubled the restric- of these resources by the Mexicans. tions and trammels which impede their entrance. It is necessary, therefore, if we desire that the This new population identify their lot and exist-people of Europe should feel any sympathy for us, ence with the lot and existence of their new coun- and take an interest in our fate, that we should entry, for their personal interest and that of their families thrive in it. This will happen more frequently now that Mexico is invaded by the United States, and is in open war with their govern ment. Hence it follows that Mexico will have to contend not only with the native Anglo-American population, but with the adopted citizens, or what is the same thing, with a part of the population of sympathies should be directed to that country, which has better comprehended the objects of fraternity among all the nations of the earth. Under these circumstances, they perhaps even desire that the United States should occupy Mexico, for they consider that in that event, our lands will be open not only to citizens of the United States, but also to those of all other nations; that all the riches of our soil will be explored, and humanity and civilization will thus gain more than by the possession deavor wholly to reform ourselves, for the fault has been great; and we can accomplish it only by completely changing our policy, and adopting another, more frank and liberal than heretofore. The governments of Europe will entertain sympathies in favor of Mexico, for it does not comport with their interests that the United States should be aggrandized. They know that the experiment which that nation has made of a democratic federa tive republic has great attractions for the people color, among which I discovered two or three pairs whom they govern, on account of its happy results; of mustachios. It was a party of copper mine and that if it should extend through North Ameri- speculators, just flitting from Copper Harbor and ca it will pass to South America, and, in course of Eagle river, mixed with a few Indian and half time, even to the continent of Europe, and realize, breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I perhaps, the idea of Chateaubriand, that a republic saw a face or two quite familiar in Wall street. will be the future condition of the world; that I had a conversation with an intelligent geolothen thrones would totter under the impulses of de- gist, who had just returned from an examination mocracy, and dynasties would be extinguished by of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had the abolition of the principle of inheritance of power. pitched his tent in the fields near the village, choosKings perceive, moreover, that the forms of govern- ing to pass the night in this manner, as he had ment and social organization of the United States are done for several weeks past, rather than in a drawing away the population of Europe; that the crowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told emgration from Europe increases every day; that the me that the external tokens, the surface indi debility caused by depopulation may reach a fear- cations, as he called them, were more favorable ful point; and that, in fine, the Anglo-American than those of any copper mines in the world. nation will clothe and deck herself with the spoils They are still, however, mere surface indications; of Europe, as has heretofore been the case. the veins had not been worked to that depth which It is natural, therefore, that the sympathies of was necessary to determine their value with any kings should be in favor of any enemy of the United certainty. The mixture of silver with the copper States, whether Mexico or any other Spanish he regarded as not giving any additional value to American nation; for, in fact, it is no more than the mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and having sympathies in favor of their own interest, rare. Sometimes, he told me, a mass of metal and of their own self-preservation and existence in time to come. Mexico ought promptly to avail herself of this disposition, and reserve herself to cultivate the sympathies of the people afterwards; but it behoves her to proceed with circumspection, and not seek assistance on onerous conditions. Nevertheless, we do not calculate in any case upon being protected by force of arms; for the commercial interests of Europe with the United States are of too much importance to be sacrificed by kings in a war, when they could hardly expect to be compensated by any concessions from Mexico on the reestablishment of peace; and consequently we ought not to expect anything more than the aid of diplomacy, which, however, is much; for although physical force does not make part of it, moral force does, and that, in these enlightened times, has become powerful. would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, or smaller, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, and yet both perfectly pure and unalloyed with each other. The masses of virgin copper found in beds of gravel are, however, the most remarkable feature of these mines. One of them which has been discovered this summer, but which has not been raised, is estimated to weigh twenty tons. I saw in the propeller Independence, by which this party from the copper mines was brought down to the Sault, one of these masses, weighing seventeen hundred and fifty pounds, with the appearance of having once been fluid with heat. It was so pure that it might have been cut in pieces by cold steel and stamped at once into coin. Among these copper hunters came passenger from Lake Superior, a hunter of the picturesque, Mr. Charles Lanman, whose name I hope I mention without impropriety, since I am only anticiWe have seen, in the discussions in the French pating the booksellers in a piece of literary intellichambers, the difference between the opinions of gence. He has been wandering for a year past in the governments and people of Europe. Guizot, a the wilds of the west; during the present summer man of the government, and representing the senti- he has traversed the country in which rise the ments of the king, used emphatic and almost springs of the Mississippi and the streams that flow threatening expressions against the propagandism into Lake Superior, and intends to publish a sketch of the United States with respect to Mexico, and of his journey soon after his arrival at New York. declared that the interests of France required the If I may judge from what I learned in a brief conpreservation of the American equilibrium. Thiers, versation, he will give us a book well worth readan opposition man, representing popular opinions, ing. He is an artist as well as an author, and addresses words of praise and sympathy to the sketched all the most remarkable places he saw in Anglo-American nation; declares that the Ameri- his travels, for the illustration of his volume. On can equilibrium is impracticable, and that France the river St. Louis, which falls into the western has an interest in preserving the friendship of the extremity of Lake Superior, he visited a stupenUnited States, and in her always increasing pros-dous waterfall not described by any traveller or perity. The opinions of these two statesmen geographer. The volume of water is very great should not be considered simply as the opinions of and the perpendicular descent a hundred and fifty two individuals, but as the opinions of two great feet. He describes it as second only to the catapolitical functionaries, or even more, as the opin-ract of Niagara. ions of the king and the people. Two or three years ago this settlement of the Sault Ste. Marie, was but a military post of the United States in the midst of a village of Indians and half-breeds. There were, perhaps, a dozen white residents in the place, including the family of the Baptist missionary and the agent of the American Fur Company, which had removed its station hither from Mackinaw and built its warehouse on this river. But since the world has begun to talk of the copper mines of Lake Superior, settlers flock into the place; carpenters are busy in knocking up houses with all haste, on the govern SAULT STE. MARIE. ment lands, and large warehouses have been built | upon piles driven into the shallows of the St. Mary. Five years hence, the primitive character of the place will be altogether lost, and it will have become a bristling Yankee town, resembling the other new settlements of the west. Here the navigation from lake to lake is interrupted by the falls or rapids of the river St. Mary, from which the place receives its name. The crystalline waters of Lake Superior on their way through the channel of this river to Lake Huron, here rush and foam and roar, for about three quarters of a mile, over rocks and large stones. Close to the rapids, with birchen canoes moored in little inlets, is a village of the Indians consisting of log cabins and round wigwams, on a strong shrubby tract, reserved to them by the government. The morning after our arrival, we went through this village in search of a canoe and a couple of Indians to make the descent of the rapids, which is one of the first things that a visiter to the Sault must think of. In the first wigwam we entered were three men and two women as drunk as men and women could well be. The squaws were speechless and motionless, too far gone as it seemed to raise either hand or foot; the men though apparently unable to rise were noisy, and one of them, who called himself a half-breed, and spoke a few words of English, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the next door was a woman busy "The in washing, who spoke a little English. old man out there," she said in answer to our questions, can paddle canoe, but he is very drunk, he cannot do it to-day." 66 "Is there nobody else," we asked, "who will take us down the falls?" At one time we would seem to be directly approaching a rock against which the waves were dashing, at another to be descending into a hollow of the waters in which our canoe would be inevitably filled, but a single stroke of the paddle given by the man at the prow put us safely by the seeming danger. So rapid was the descent that almost as soon as we descried the apparent peril, it was passed. In less than ten minutes, as it seemed to me, we had left the roar of the rapids behind us, and were gliding over the smooth water at their foot. In the afternoon we engaged a half-breed and his brother to take us over to the Canadian shore. His wife, a slender young woman, with a lovely physiognomy, not easily to be distinguished from a French woman of her class, accompanied us in the canoe with her little boy. The birch bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art. We were in one of the finest that float on St. Mary's river, and when I looked at its delicate ribs, mere shavings of white cedar, yet firm enough for the purpose-the thin broad laths of the same wood with which these are enclosed, and the broad sheets of birch bark, imperviable to water, which sheathed the outside, all firmly sewed together with the tough slender roots of the fir tree, and when I considered its extreme lightness and the grace of its form, I could not but wonder at the ingenuity of those who had invented so beautiful a combination of ship-building and basket-work. "It cost me twenty dollars," said the half-breed, "and I would not take thirty for it." We were ferried over the waves where they dance at the foot of the rapids. At this place large "I don't know; the Indians all drunk to-day."quantities of white-fish, one of the most delicate Why is that? why are they all drunk to-kinds known on our continent, are caught by the day?" course. By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with the customary "bon jour," manifested a curiosity to know the nature of our errand. The woman explained it to him in English. “Oh, Messieurs, je vous servirai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French, "I go, I go." We told him that we doubted whether he was quite sober enough. Indians, in their season, with scoop nets. The whites are about to interfere with this occupation of the Indians, and I saw the other day a seine of prodigious length constructing, with which it is intended to sweep nearly half of the river at once. "They will take a hundred barrels a day," said an inhabitant of the place. On the British side the rapids divide themselves into half a dozen noisy brooks, which roar round little islands, and in the boiling pools of which the speckled trout is caught with the rod and line. We landed at the warehouses of the Hudson's Bay Company, where the goods intended for the Indian trade are deposited, and the furs brought from the They are surrounded by "Oh, Messieurs, je suis parfaitement capable-northwest are collected. first rate, first rate." We shook him off as soon as we could, but not till after he had time to propose that we should wait the next day, and to utter the maxim, "Whisky, good-too much whisky, no good." In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we found two men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pilot us over the rapids. They took one of the canoes which lay in a little inlet close at hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream in the edge of the rapids. Arriving at the head of the rapids, they took in our party, which consisted of five, and we began the descent. At each end of the canoe sat a half-breed with a paddle, to guide it, while the current drew us rapidly down among the agitated waters. It was surprising with what dexterity they kept us in the smoothest part of the water, seeming to know the way down as well as if it had been a beaten path in the fields. a massive stockade, within which lives the agent of the company; the walks are gravelled and well kept, and the whole bears the marks of British solidity and precision. A quantity of furs had been brought in the day before, but they were locked up in the warehouse, and all was now quiet and silent. The agent was absent: a half-breed nurse stood at the door with his child, and a Scotch servant, apparently with nothing to do, was lounging in the court enclosed by the stockade; in short, there was much less bustle about this establishment of one of the most powerful trading companies in the world, than about one of our farm houses. Crossing the bay at the bottom of which these buildings stand, we landed at a Canadian village of half-breeds. Here were one or two wigwams and a score of log cabins, some of which we entered. In one of them we were received with great appearance of deference by a woman of decidedly Indian features, but light complexioned, barefoot,. with blue embroidered leggins falling over her an- | a swamp full of larches and firs. Near at hand was a burial ground, with graves of the Indians and half-breeds, which we entered. Some of the graves were covered with a low roof of cedar bark, others with a wooden box; over others was placed a little house like a dog-kennel, except that it had no door; others were covered with little log cabins. One of these was of such a size that a small Indian family would have found it amply large for their accommodation. It is a practice among the savages to protect the graves of the dead from the wolves by stakes driven into the ground and meeting at the top like the rafters of a roof, and perhaps when the Indian or half-breed, exchanged his wigwam for a log cabin, his respect for the dead led him to make the same improvement in the architecture of their narrow houses. At the head of most of these monuments stood wooden crosses, for the population here is principally Roman Catholic, some of them inscribed with the names of the dead, not always accurately spelled. "Are you not afraid of Tanner?" I was asked. Mrs. Schoolcraft, since the assassination of her husband, has come to live in the fort, which consists of barracks protected by a high stockade. It is said that Tanner has been seen skulking about within a day or two, and yesterday a place was discovered which is supposed to have served for his retreat. It was a hollow, thickly surrounded by shrubs, which some person had evidently made his habitation for a considerable time. There is a dispute whether this man is insane or not, but there is no dispute as to his malignity. He has threatened to take the life of Mr. Bingham, the venerable Baptist missionary at this place, and as long as it is not certain that he has left the neighborhood, a feeling of insecurity prevails. Nevertheless, as I know no reason why this man should take it into his head to shoot me, I go whither I list, without the fear of Tanner before my eyes. MACKINAW. From the same. STEAMER ST. LOUIS, Lake Huron, August 20, 1846. YESTERDAY evening we left the beautiful island of Mackinaw, after a visit of two days delightfully passed. We had climbed its cliffs, rambled on its shores, threaded the walks among its thickets, driven out in the roads that wind through its woods -roads paved by nature with limestone pebbles, a sort of natural macadamization, and the time of our departure seemed to arrive several days too soon. The fort which crowns the heights near the shore commands an extensive prospect, but a still wider one is to be seen from the old fort, Fort Holmes, as it is called, among whose ruined entrenchments the half-breed boys and girls now gather gooseberries. It stands on the very crest of the island, overlooking all the rest. The air, when we ascended it was loaded with the smoke of burning forests, but from this spot, in clear weather, I was told a mag Not far from the church stands a building, regarded by the half-breeds as a wonder of architecture, the stone house la maison de pierre, as they call it, a large mansion built of stone by a former agent of the Northwest or Hudson's Bay Company, who lived here in a kind of grand manorial style, with his servants and horses and hounds, and gave hospitable dinners in those days when it was the fashion for the host to do his best to drink his guests under the table. The old splendor of the place has departed; its gardens are overgrown with grass, the barn has been blown down, the kitchen,nificent view might be had of the Straits of Mackin which so many grand dinners were cooked, consumed by fire, and the mansion, with its broken and patched windows, is now occupied by a Scotch farmer of the name of Wilson. We climbed a ridge of hills back of the house to the church of the Episcopal mission, built a few years since as a place of worship for the Chippewas, who have since been removed by the government. It stands remote from any habitation, with three or four Indian graves near it, and we found it filled with hay. The river from its door is uncommonly beautiful; the broad St. Mary's lying below, with its bordering villages and woody valley, its white rapids, and its rocky islands, picturesque with the pointed summits of the fir-tree. To the northwest the sight followed the river to the horizon, where it issued from Lake Superior, and I was told that in clear weather one might discover, from the spot on which I stood, the promontory of Gros Cap, which guards the outlet of that mighty lake. The country around was smoking in a dozen places with fires in the woods. When I returned I asked who kindled them. "It is old Tanner," said one, "the man who murdered Schoolcraft.' There is great fear here of Tanner, who is said to be lurking yet in the neighborhood. I was going the other day to look at a view of the place from a lovely eminence, reached by a road passing through inaw, the wooded islands, and the shores and capes of the great mainland, places known to history for the past two centuries. For when you are at Mackinaw you are at no new settlement. In looking for samples of Indian embroidery with porcupine quills, we found ourselves one day in the warehouse of the American Fur Company, at Mackinaw. Here, on the shelves, were piles of blankets, white and blue, red scarfs, and white boots; snowshoes were hanging on the walls, and wolf-traps, rifles and hatchets were slung to the ceiling-an assortment of goods destined for the Indians and halfbreeds of the northwest. The person who attended at the counter spoke English with a foreign accent. I asked him how long he had been in the northwestern country. "To say the truth," he answered, "I have been here sixty years and some days." "You were born here then?" "I am a native of Mackinaw, French by the mother's side; my father was an Englishman." "Was the place as considerable sixty years ago as it now is?" "More so. There was more trade here and quite as many inhabitants. All the houses, or nearly all, were then built; two or three only have been put up since." I could easily imagine that Mackinaw must have been a place of consequence when here was the centre of the fur trade, now removed further up the | 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since. 577 country. I was shown the large house in which The name of the spot is Point St. Ignace, and there the heads of the companies of voyageurs engaged lives an Indian of the full cast, who was sent to in the trade were lodged, and the barracks, a long Rome and educated to be a priest, but he preferred low building, in which the voyageurs themselves, the life of a layman, and there he lives on that wild seven hundred in number, made their quarters from shore, with a library in his lodge, a learned savage, the end of June till the beginning of October, when occupied with reading and study. they went out again on their journeys. This interval of three months was a merry time with those light- to see Point St. Ignace, its venerable Mission You may well suppose hearted Frenchmen. When a boat made its ap- Church, its Indian village, so long under the care that I felt a strong desire pearance approaching Mackinaw, they fell to con- of Catholic pastors, and its learned savage who jecturing to what company of voyageurs it belonged; talks Italian, but the time of my departure was as the dispute grew warm the conjectures became already fixed. My companions were pointing out bets, till finally, unable to restrain their impatience to me the mouth of Carp river, which comes down the boldest of them dashed into the waters, swam through the forest roaring over rocks, and in any out to the boat, and climbing on board, shook hands of the pools of which you have only to throw a line, with their brethren, amidst the shouts of those who with any sort of bait, to be sure of a trout, when stood on the beach. the driver of our vehicle called out, "Your boat is We looked and saw the St. Louis They talk, on the New England coast, of Che-coming." bacco boats, built after a peculiar pattern, and steamer (not one of the largest, but one of the after Chebacco, an ancient settlement of sea-faring finest boats in the line between Buffalo and Chimen, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of peculiar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides and flat bottomed, an excellent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wild storms that surprise the mariner on Lake Superior. We took yesterday a drive to the western shore. The road twined through a wood of overarching beeches and maples, interspersed with the white cedar and fir. The driver stopped before a cliff sprouting with beeches and cedars, with a small cavity at the foot. This he told us was the Skull Cave. It is only remarkable on account of human bones having been found in it. Further on a white paling gleamed through the trees; it enclosed the solitary burial ground of the garrison, with half a dozen graves. "There are few buried here," said a gentleman of our party; "the soldiers who come to Mackinaw sick get well soon." The road we travelled was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, who commanded at the fort a few years since. He is the marksman whose aim was so sure that the western people say of him that a raccoon on a tree once offered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire. We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves. In one of its meadows was fought the battle between Colonel Croghan and the British officer Holmes, in the war of 1813. Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge of the wood north of the meadow; one of them is the monument of Holmes; he lies buried at its root. ter of a mile led us to a little bay on the solitary Another quarshore of the lake looking to the northwest. It is called the British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the late war to take possession of the island. cago) making rapidly for the island, with a train of black smoke hanging in the air behind her. We hastened to return through the woods, and in an hour and a half were in our clean and comfortable quarter in this well ordered little steamer. But I should mention that before leaving Mackof the place-the Sugar Loaf Rock, a remarkable inaw, we did not fail to visit the principal curiosities rock in the middle of the island, of a sharp conical form, rising above the trees with which it is surrounded, and lifting the stunted birches on its shoulders higher than they, like a tall fellow holding up a little boy to overlook a crowd of men-and the Arched Rock on the shore. The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and through the opening spanned by the arch of the rock I saw the long waves, rolled up by a fresh wind, come one after another out of the obscurity, and break with roaring on the beach. among the evergreens, by which this rock is The path along the brow of the precipice and reached, is signally wild, but another which leads to it along the shore is no less picturesque-passing under impending cliffs and overshadowing cedars, and between huge blocks and pinnacles of rock. fest fate of Mackinaw, which is to be a wateringI spoke in one of my former letters of the maniplace. I cannot see how it is to escape this destiny. People already begin to repair to it for health and refreshment from the southern borders of Lake Michigan. Its climate during the summer months is delightful; there is no air more pure and elastic, are so hot on the prairies, arrive here tempered to and the winds of the south and southwest, which a grateful coolness by the waters over which they have swept. The nights are always, in the hottest season, agreeably cool, and the health of the place We wandered about awhile, and then sat down more beautiful than Mackinaw, as you may judge is proverbial. The world has not many islands upon the embankment of pebbles which the waves from the description I have already given of parts of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped of it. The surface is singularly irregular, with around the shore of the island-pebbles so clean summits of rock and pleasant hollows, open glades that they would no more soil a lady's white muslin of pasturage and shady nooks. To some, the savgown than if they had been of newly polished alabaster. The water at our feet was as transparent as the air around us. On the mainland opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofs were visible, with a back ground of woods behind them. "There," said one of our party," is the old Misgion Church. It was built by the Catholics in age visitors, who occasionally set up their lodges |