On closing his sermon, which was short and unexceptionable, the bishop leaned forward over the pulpit, and commenced an extemporaneous address to his congregation. I have often had occasion in the United States to admire the ready, graceful fluency of their extemporaneous speakers and preachers, and I have never heard anything more eloquent and more elegant than this address; it was in perfect good taste, besides being very much to the purpose. He spoke in behalf of the domestic missions of his diocese. I understood that the missions hitherto supported in the back settlements are, in consequence of the extreme pressure of the times, likely to be withdrawn, and the new, thinly-peopled districts thus left without any ministry whatever. He called on the people to give their aid towards sustaining these domestic missionaries, at least for a time, and said, among other things, that if each individual of the Episcopal church in the United States subscribed one cent. per week for a year, it would amount to more than 300,000 dollars. This address was responded to by a subscription on the spot of above 400 dollars--a large sum for a small town, suffering, like all other places, from the present commercial difficulties. * * * * * LEAVE DETROIT. July 18. This evening the Thomas Jefferson arrived in the river from Buffalo, and starts early to-morrow morning for Chicago. I hastened to secure a passage as far as the island of Mackinaw: when once there, I must trust to Providence for some opportunity of going up Lake Huron to the Sault Ste. Marie to visits my friends the MacMurrays; or down the lake to the Great Manitoolin Island, where the annual distribution of presents to the Indians is to take place under the auspices of the governor. If both these plans--wild plans they are, I am told--should fail, I have only to retrace my way and come down the lake, as I went up, in a steamer; but this were horridly tedious and prosaic, and I _hope_ better things. So _evviva la speranza!_ and Westward Ho! * * * * * On board the Jefferson, River St. Clair, July 19.