captured at Vincennes with Governor Hamilton. The family to which the Marquis Pierre Legardeur de Repentigny belonged had many distinguished members whose relationship is not generally known among us. He held the only seigneurie in Michigan after the surrender of Lamothe Cadillac's rights. It was granted to him jointly with De Bonne at the Sault Ste. Marie in the later days of the French rule, in 1750, and the claim of his heirs was a few years ago rejected by the United States supreme court on very narrow grounds. Two brothers Tonty, who commanded at Detroit, have been confused with each other. Mr. Cuillerier, whose family are now always known as Beaubien, was a conspicuous figure during the Pontiac war, and in the French manuscript is usually called by the former name. In the other diaries he is called by both names. In the French and English diaries his daughter, who was very highly distinguished for beauty and accomplishments, is called Mademoiselle des Rivières. Trottier des Rivières was the old ordinary family name. These variations make trouble with American annalists. They are only specimens out of many, and are frequent in Detroit.

It sometimes happens that two or three generations have credit or otherwise for each other's conduct. The family of Chabert de Joncaire acted as interpreters among the Iroquois for almost a century, and there is nothing in the public documents showing when one succeeded another. They are seldom named before the British days except as Joncaire, or some corruption of it, as, for example, Jean Coeur, and some writers have confounded this name with Jonquière, who

was a French governor-general. The last much known member of the family, Colonel Chabert de Joncaire, was chosen representative of Wayne county in the legislature of the Northwest territory in the last century, and was a very able man. An obituary notice of his daughter, an old lady who died recently, speaks of him as having come to Detroit with Lamothe Cadillac-a degree of antiquity that would not have been claimed by the gallant colonel, whose descendants here are of great respectability.

In the recently printed new version of the Pontiac manuscript, the careful translators have been led into a substantial error by a failure to understand the location of the Indian villages near Detroit. The only villages there were the Ottawa village on the Canada side near Belle Isle, the Huron village at Sandwich, and the Potawatamie village then below but now within the present city of Detroit. The French name of the latter tribe being long, was generally contracted into Poux, for convenient shortness. In the manuscript it is uniformly so written. The translators throughout render it Foxes. The Foxes left Detroit after the siege of 1712, and thereafter continued to live west of Lake Michigan. They were always called by the French either Outagamis or Renards, those words being identical. They are referred to in the same manuscript as Renards. These slips are easily made. A similar error appears where the manuscript contains the name Pani (pronounced Pawnee), which frequently occurs and is not uniformly rendered. Panis were all captive Indians, not merely of the Pawnee tribe but of others. The

word obtained a specific meaning denoting the condition of captivity and servitude.

In rendering into English the old French narratives and documents, sufficient attention has not been paid to the fact that old French, like old English, has many words now obsolete, and many that have changed meanings. Some common words like matacher and matachia are not found at all in the modern dictionaries, although familiar here and throughout Canada. Now and then it is difficult to know in what particular sense they were used here, without some knowledge of local tradition. Cleared lands were called déserts a use of that word which is said by lexicographers to have been confined to the American settlements. Dr. O'Callaghan, in the 'New York Colonial Documents,' refers to the word minot as signifying a quantity of about three bushels. If it ever had such a meaning (which is more than doubtful) it was not so here. The minot was, and probably is, exactly a bushel of sixty pounds of wheat, and our half-bushel measure was always called a demi-minot. Our lands would have yielded fabulous crops if each minot should be multiplied by three. In like manner translators are very apt to be puzzled about the word pot, as a liquid measure. The "cask of sixteen pints" (or two gallons) saved by an Indian from destruction by the squaws in the pillage of May 13, as rendered in this translation of the Pontiac manuscript, is in the manuscript one of sixteen pots, or eight gallons, each pot being half a gallon, making the salvage more worth contending for. In like manner the French pinte, like the Scotch pint, is an English quart. Sir Walter Scott recalls the slur of the north

countryman at the nation that had the smallest pint-stoup.

In Mrs. Sheldon's translated extract from a report of Mons. D'aigremont on the Detroit settlement in 1708, is a similar mistake in regard to lands. It is in the original report stated that there were sixty-three lots (emplacements) occupied within the fort, and twenty-nine farms (terres) outside. The translation leaves out the farms and counts but twenty-nine lot owners. The charges on arable lands are there stated to be so much per rood, when it should be by arpents, or French acres, which is a much larger measure. These differences create misapprehension concerning the extent and condition of the settlement.

Reference has already been made to typographical errors. These may involve dates and names, and sometimes entirely change the sense. In a semi-centennial article read last June, some care was taken in very plain type-writing to point out that the early courts were all held by laymen, but the corrector, concluding no doubt that this must be a blunder, substituted lawyers for laymen, and spoiled the meaning. In the same article our venerable Judge Wilkins was transmuted into Williams, a highly respectable name belonging to some one else. Three Michigan generals named Williams, two of whom earned distinction in the rebellion have been occasionally confounded with each other in history, where they deserve better treatment. The numerous and eminent Macombs have in likewise been mingled up in events running through a century. Even so uncommon a name as Arent Schuyler De Peyster, borne by uncle and

nephew, has led to confusion of conduct and family relations; and the veteran colonel and poet, who in his old age capped verses with Burns, has more than once been mistaken for his younger kinsman. The date of an old Scottish lordchancellor's death, which was set a year too late by one historian, who was followed by many others, became one of the turning points in the modern trial of the Stirling peerage case, where a forged patent of nobility was set up as issued by him several months after his death. The tombstone of a very prominent man in our own early annals has a similar error of dates.

Our streams have also led to disputes. Historians have sometimes doubted and sometimes disputed about the identity of streams and lakes. The White river country was coveted by the English, but held by the French, in the middle of the last century, and Dr. O'Callaghan, with some hesitation and erroneously, identified it with the White river of Arkansas, instead of the Wabash country. The word Wabash (Ouabache) signifies white, and that river and one of its main tributaries were both called White river in English. Many rivers were named from the tribes near them. There were several rivers of the Miamis. Two are distinguished in Ohio as the Maumee and the Miami-different forms of the same word. Our Saint Joseph river was also originally River of the

Miamis. So we had in Michigan three Huron rivers, the Huron of Lake St. Clair, now the Clinton; the Huron of Lake Erie, still called Huron and separating Wayne from Monroe, and the Little River of the Hurons, afterwards known as the River Savoyard, running under the walls of Fort Pontchartrain and long since disappeared. When old writers referred to any of these rivers, unless they gave other land-marks, they left us in doubt.

Time itself is adding to the confusion. Bloody Run flows no longer, although some of us have seen its banks full and known it as a mill stream. The bed of Campau's mill river, which a century and a half ago furnished a good water power near the present Fort Street railroad bridge, in what is now the heart of Detroit, is filled with railroad tracks and dry. A brief foot-note when any of these places are referred to would save a good deal of controversy hereafter.

No one knows how important in settling doubts some apparently small fact may become. If any society should attempt to weed out its own collections the wheat might perish with the chaff. If contributors look out for small as well as great blunders, and if the society takes care to follow copy implicitly, while perfection will not be reached, many imperfections. will be avoided.

JAMES V. CAMPBELL.

THE Cleveland public library was established by the board of education under the provisions of a statute passed by the state legislature in March, 1867, which authorized the levy of a tax of one-tenth of a mill for library purposes. The nucleus of the library was the collection of books forming the library of the public schools, which had been established under an earlier state law, and was kept in the East high school. It was open for two hours of each Saturday afternoon during the school year of forty weeks, but was very little used, except by the pupils of the schools, owing to the limited time allowed for drawing and to the impression prevailing that it was simply a collection of children's books. This appears to have been a mistaken impression, as the first report of the librarian describes them as too abstruse and formally didactic to interest the young people for whom they were intended. The collection was supposed to contain two thousand three hundred volumes, but after deducting from this number books charged to various persons and not recovered, about two thousand two hundred volumes were actually transferred to the public library.

In September, 1868, a room twenty by eighty feet in size, on the third floor of the Northrop & Harrington block on Superior street, was rented, book cases and other furniture procured, the room fitted up and a number of new books, variously reported at three thousand six hundred or

four thousand, were purchased. It is probable that the smaller number is the correct one, which would make, with the books from the high school, the number of volumes on the shelves at the time of opening, five thousand eight hundred; and, with an unexpended balance of $1,800, which is also reported, purchases were at once made, bringing the number to six thousand or more, thus accounting for the discrepancy in the reports. Owing to delays in fitting up the rooms, the library was not opened until February 17, 1869—on the afternoon of that day it was thrown open for inspection, and in the evening a meeting was held at which it was formally dedicated to the public use. The address was by Mr. Edwin R. Perkins, president of the board of education. Remarks were also made by the Rev. Anson Smyth, describing in a humorous way the drafting of the law under which the library was established; by H. S. Stevens, noted at that time for a recently published series of "Round the World " letters; by the mayor, Honorable Stephen Buhrer, and by Mr. W. H. Price, who had been president of the board of education when the statute establishing the library was enacted, and had been instrumental in securing its passage.

The work of fitting up the library had been carried forward under the supervision of Mr. Luther M. Oviatt, who had been chosen librarian. The selection and purchase of books had also been largely his