THE ST. MARY'S RIVER. CHARMING SCENERY. THE LOCALITY FOR SUMMER HOMES. AN EPISODE. MACKINAW. GRAND RAPIDS, A BEAUTIFUL CITY.
At Sault Ste. Marie, we took steamer for Mackinaw. The steamer was comfortable, and the trip a charming one.
The run down the Ste. Marie into Lake Huron, has few equals in sweet, gentle, and at times picturesque scenery. Low lying hills lie on both banks of the river, some of them lifting from the water. Now and then, a promentory or an island point lifts the general quiet tone into something of boldness. These are washed and laved by waters of pallucid purity. The hills, both however, generally lie back from the river on banks with pretty plains under them; here, wide enough for a small field, or garden; there, giving space for a pretty farm. The uplands rise from the small bottoms in easy flowing slopes, green in fresh growth. There are on both slopes occasional farms and small hamlets, affording life and movement to the pretty picture.
When this continent shall become a single nation—one grand Republic; the frozen arms of an Arctic ice-floe enfolding its northern boundary; the warm breath of the Gulf of Mexico reddening the cheek of the orange and covering Magnolia groves with snowy bloom along its southern shores; the mighty Pacific pouring its sonorous swell on its western confines from Behring's sea to the Tropic of Cancer, and the storm breeding Atlantic roaring along its shores, from Lincoln Sea to Key West; when brothers shall clasp hands across the deep waters of the lakes without the espionage of a custom collector, then these low-lying hills and sweet plains at their feet—these pretty islands and rugged promentories, will become the summer homes of the rich of the mighty land, and the green waters will reflect the villas and cottages of the wealthy and the well to do, along the entire river; and the world will know no more beautiful and sweetly rural locality.
I was leaning on the taffrail of our boat, enjoying the sweet prospect—the long reach of Georgian Bay, lying to the east—and some bold points lifting about us, when I heard a gentleman call the attention of a lad by his side, to a rock they could see in the distance through their glasses.[ [1]
"At the foot of that rock, I caught twenty black bass in an hour," said the gentleman.
A deep groan close by my side caught my ear. I turned to find a gray headed old man, also leaning on the rail, whose glass was turned in the same direction as those of the gentleman and lad. The man of the groan, was evidently seventy odd years old, with a gentle face, but now in deep and painful thought; tears were coursing down his cheeks, and when he lowered his glasses, showed eyes red with weeping. His face looked so wan that I feared he was sick. I spoke to him gently.
He answered me kindly, and then said: "I was watching through my glass a spot in the distance beyond the rock adverted to by the gentleman to that boy, and when he spoke of catching fish at its base, a long ago past was weighing on my mind. His words brought up the groan you heard and not any illness of my own—a past connected with a big rock near the spot I was looking at, and of a tragedy which deeply distressed me, and changed the course of my life."
I very naturally asked: "Are the matters you refer to, such that you cannot speak of them?" I handed him, at the same time, my card. He looked up saying "Ah, yes! I know of you. A few days since I read some letters of yours in the Chicago Tribune, from the National Park. They made me half resolve to go there next year." He asked me if I intended publishing them in book form; that he thought such a book, just now, would be acceptable; that he had preserved my letters for use, should he make the excursion. A man who has published any thing, is as easily captured by a kindly word for his bantling, as ever mother was by praise for her first baby. I told him that my letters, even if enlarged as I might see fit, would hardly make a book of fit size for publication.
The elderly gentlemen landed at Mackinaw with us. After wandering over this pretty old island, visiting its places of interest which well repay a visit—after listening to a few dozen prominent lawyers, judges, merchants and physicians talking through their noses—all of them victims of hay-fever—I was lazily resting on the hotel piazza, awaiting the hour for taking the ferry boat to reach the train for home, when my new made friend of the boat came to me and said: "Mr. Harrison, you say your letters are not enough to make a book of publishing size. I spoke to you of a tragedy, which changed the course of my life. I have at home, but will send it to you, a manuscript, touching that sad affair, which would not be inappropriate in a letter touching a trip from the Soo to Chicago. The manuscript is a plain and faithful story of the events narrated; you can, however, supply fictitious names, and alter certain immaterial points and touch up the whole. I thanked him, and assured him I would probably gladly use his material." He afterward sent to me "The Secret of the Big Rock," which will be found following this letter.