[1] There are so many modes for evading the simplest provisions of a written constitution, when power feels itself fettered, that it is not easy to say in what manner the difficulties of this case were got over. The reduction law said that there should be only nine captains, thirty-six lieutenants, and one hundred and fifty midshipmen _during peace_, and, as the country was at war with Tripoli in 1804, there was a show of plausibility in getting over the force of this particular enactment. Still the appointments of the commanders were not to fill vacancies, under any common sense construction of their nature; and, even admitting that political ingenuity could torture the law of Congress to build four vessels like those actually put into the water, into an obligation to appoint proper persons to command them, these appointments could have no validity after the termination of the next session of the Senate. Of the _facts_ of the case we believe there can be no doubt. [2] Mr. Ridgely signed a letter to Preble just two months later as a lieutenant. He may possibly have been promoted at the time the Intrepid went in. * * * * * WINTEMOYEH. A LEGEND OF MACKINAW. BY GEORGE H. COLTON. The incident related in the following lines is recorded of a young British officer, commanding at Fort Mackinaw, soon after the French war. His name was Robinson; and the cliff, from which the enraged Indian sprung with his daughter, rising to three hundred feet above the water, is called, to this day, Robinson’s Folly. They had been married about two weeks when the tragical event took place. How glorious, gleaming o’er the wave, Whereon the evening sun is shining, With woods, and bannered fortress brave, And chalky cliff, and scallop cave, And vines o’er gray old rocks entwining, Proud Mackinaw uplifts her form, Unchanged by years of sun and storm! Borne from afar, around her feet The purple waters murmuring meet; In milder beauty’s dimpling smiles Rise, near, her deep-born sister isles, And, winding wild, with forests green, Low banks, and lonely coves unseen, Stretch wide away, on either hand, Shores fair as an enchanted land. Ah, me! there is no spot of earth, Though brightest with the smile of God, Where’er the human heart hath birth, Or human foot hath trod, That doth no deed of terror know, Or thought of unrecorded wo! Nor ever hath the evening sun Looked forth the rounded world upon, And witnessed in no lovely place Some scene of sin or dark distress!