were, fourteen years ago. Such a situation, contrast-
ed with a land of peace, and the security of life,
liberty, and property, may enable us to make some
estimate of the blessings we enjoy, and the princi-
ples which lead to a permanent security of them.

This morning the Ottoway, Capt. Cowan, sailed
for Fort Erie, to go by the way of Miami Bay, hav-
ing provisions on board for McKee and the Indians
at the Rapids. With whom Capt. Elliott, deputy
Indian agent for the British, embarked, to join
McKee at the council. We acquainted him repeat-
edly with our design in coming to this country, and
our prospects of the importance of the business in
agitation, and engaged him to use his influence as
speedily as possible, to open the way for a treaty. I
sent by this vessel some intelligence to Philadelphia,
and sailed up the river past Hog Island and Pearl
Island, into the lower end of Lake St. Clair, which
is about thirty-six miles long, and eighteen broad.
After taking a prospect of Gross Point, the residence
of Commodore Grant, viewed N. Williams’s stone
wind mill, dined at his house, and returned eight or
nine miles to our lodgings. William Savery and
William Hartshorn, in our absence, were visited by
a Shawnese warrior, who announced to them what had
before been frequently suggested to us by divers per-
sons, that if the commissioners did not immediately
agree, that all the land west of the Ohio, should be
evacuated, and given up by the United States, or
even hinted any thing to the contrary, by offering
gifts or money as purchase, of which they under-
stood they had brought abundance with them, that
none of them, or their company, would ever go off
the ground alive — for their fathers, who are now all