UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST-1857-1864 275 



eral professors, his first question to each of them being, 

 with his German use of the consonants, "Professor, can 

 you bray?" and henceforward this was added to the many 

 standing jokes upon him in the student world. 



I also found at the university other admirable men, and 

 among those to whom I became specially attached was 

 Thomas M. Cooley. When he had become chief justice 

 of the State, and the most eminent writer of his time on the 

 Constitution of the United States, he was still the same 

 man, gentle, simple, and kindly. Besides these were 

 such well-known professors as Fasquelle in modern lit- 

 erature; Williams, Douglass, and Winchell in science; 

 Boise in Greek; Palmer, Sager, and Gunn in medicine 

 and surgery; Campbell and Walker in law. Of these 

 Judge Campbell was to me one of the main attractions 

 of the place a profound lawyer, yet with a kindly humor 

 which lighted up all about him. He was especially inter- 

 ested in the early French history of the State, to which he 

 had been drawn by his study of the titles to landed prop- 

 erty in Detroit and its neighborhood, and some of his dis- 

 coveries were curious. One of these had reference to an 

 island in the straits near Detroit known as l i Skillagalee, ' ' 

 which had puzzled him a long time. The name seemed to be 

 Irish, and the question was how an Irish name could have 

 been thus applied.^ Finally he found on an old map an ear- 

 lier name. It was lie aux Galets, or Pebble Island, which, in 

 the mouths of Yankee sailors, had taken this apparently 

 Celtic form. Another case was that of a river in Canada 

 emptying into the straits not far from Detroit. It was 

 known as " Yellow Dog River"; but, on rummaging 

 through the older maps, he discovered that the earlier 

 name was Eiver St. John. To account for the transfor- 

 mation was at first difficult, but the mystery was finally 

 unraveled: the Riviere St. Jean became, in the Canadian 

 patois, Riviere Saan Jawne, and gradually Riviere Chien 

 Jaune ; recent geographers had simply translated it into 

 English. 



The features which mainly distinguished the University 



