Seeing America First, with the Berry Brothers

WITH THE BERRY BROTHERS
WRITTEN BY ELEANOR COLBY
ILLUSTRATED BY F. W. PFEIFFER
NIAGARA-BUFFALO. COPYRIGHT 1917 BY BERRY BROS., INCORPORATED DETROIT.
Grown-ups talk a lot about SEEING AMERICA FIRST. They say that this is the most wonderful land in the world and that everyone ought to see it before going to any other country. That is exactly what we Berry Wagon Boys are going to do, and as we travel we are going to write this little book for other boys and girls to read.
Our home city, Detroit, is as interesting as any place we shall visit. We love to hear of the days when Cadillac and his hundred men landed here and built their fort and how within a year six thousand Indians had camped within sight of the stockade. Detroit does not look much as it did then. It is now one of the leading Metropolitan Cities of the United States, and is growing as fast as Jack's famous beanstalk. It has grown from 400,000 to 800,000 within the past ten years, and it is lucky that there is lots of room for it to stretch in, for when people once get the craze for living in Detroit, no other place satisfies them.
We always take visiting friends to see the sights of Belle Isle, our island park. They are amazed at the wonderful fish in the big aquarium and interested in the zoo, the public bath house with its 800 rooms, and the beautiful casino. After taking them to a fine lunch at the Boat Club, we auto around the five and one-half miles of shore drive, and they oh and ah till it sounds as though they were taking a singing lesson.
There is no fleet of fresh water passenger steamers in the world equaling those which call Detroit their home port, and our Detroit River is too fine and dignified to cut up any of the antics in which some rivers indulge. It never rises and messes up the city for it is too busy carrying its countless boats of precious freight.
Detroit is a great manufacturing city, and it is quite likely that the flowers and vegetables in your garden, the medicine that cures you when you are sick, and the auto that you ride in, came from our city, for Detroit leads the world in these manufactures.