The Breast, or Potoash, and the Cradle Top mountains, are two prominent elevations in the primitive range west of the Grand Island. No one, we venture to predict, from our own experience, will ever ascend them without labor, or reach their summits without high gratification. The outer coast of Grand Island presents the north westerly front of that magnificent sandstone formation, called Ishpábica by the Indians, and Picture Rocks by the whites, which assumes so imposing an outline in the range of coast ruins immediately east of that island. The Great Sand Downs,[2] form a continuation of this coast toward the east, and renew in this lighter form, a most picturesque series of elevations, which the former range exhibits in rock. Minuter sections of the coast, and of the banks of the rivers that intersect it, are of a character to arrest attention, and will furnish, in after years, a tissue of glowing themes for the pen and pencil. Among these, we may notice the falls of the Taquimenon, the Monia, and the St. Louis. [Footnote 2: _Les Grandes Sables_.] Up to the year 1820, very little was known, even by report, of this interesting and romantic region. The scanty notices of it in the colonial writers were of the most vague and unsatisfactory character. The tale of the massacre of the garrison of Michilimackinac, and of a far off region in which Pontiac exerted his power, had been occasionally heard. But as these events were to be found only in the works of the early French writers, few took the trouble to examine them. Still fewer knew aught of its topography and natural resources, or of the interesting communities of men, women and children, to whom it was "a home and a country" long before Columbus reached St. Salvador. In the year referred to, the gentleman who at present fills the chair of the War Department conducted an exploratory expedition through the region. Its capacities for military occupation, and the character and disposition of its native population and mineral topography, constituted the principal objects of attention. But no one who was a member of that expedition, could remain an indifferent spectator of the striking scenery, and the varied forms of thrilling interest which it threw before the eye. It may be regretted that Mr. Cass himself has given so little of his attention to descriptions of these rife scenes. His graphic notice of the "Pictured Rocks," and his historical illustrations of ancient Indian institutions, will be remembered by the reader.