Little Venice, St. Clair River.
Showing the type of “Inns,” where people may pass their holidays at small expense.
Courtesy of Northern Steamship Co.
There are many hundreds of these “groves” along the Lakes, unknown to all but those who live near them. Only on occasion of Sunday-school picnics or Fourth of July celebrations are they crowded. They are the most ideal of all places in which to spend one’s holidays, if rest and quiet recreations are what the pleasure-seeker desires. And these groves are easily found. I do not believe there is a twenty-mile stretch along Lake Erie that does not possess its grove, and sometimes there are a dozen of them within that distance. I know of many that are not even situated near villages, being five or six miles away and patronised almost entirely by farmers. In almost any one of them a family may enjoy camp life if they wish, buy their supplies of neighbouring farmers, do their own cooking, rent a good boat for from twenty-five to fifty cents a day, and get other things at a corresponding cost. I am personally acquainted with one family of four who came from Louisville to one of these sylvan resorts on Lake Huron last year, and the total expense of their three weeks’ vacation, not including railroad fare, was under fifty dollars. The experience of these parents and their children is not an exception. It is a common one with those who are acquainted with the Lakes and who know how to take advantage of them to their own profit.
A Scene on Belle Isle, Detroit River.
There is another phase of Lake life, a degree removed from that which I have described, which is also unknown beyond its own local environment and which ought to be made to be of great profit and pleasure to those seeking holiday recreation along our Inland Seas. The shores of the Lakes, from end to end, are literally dotted with what might appropriately be called lakeside inns—places located far from the dust and noise and more fashionable gaiety of crowded resorts and cities, where one may enjoy all of the simpler pleasures of water-life for from six to eight dollars a week. This price includes room, board, boats, fishing-tackle, and other accommodations. At most of these places the board is superior to that which one secures at the large resorts. Fish, frogs’ legs, and chickens play an important part in the bill of fare, and almost without exception they are placed upon the table in huge dishes, heaped with fresh viands from the kitchen as soon as they become empty. The fish cost the innkeepers nothing, for they are mostly caught by the pleasure-seekers themselves; frogs usually abound somewhere in the immediate vicinity, and where the landlord does not raise his own fowls they are purchased from neighbouring farmers. The inn is a local market for butter, eggs, celery, and vegetables of all kinds, so it is not difficult to understand why the board at these places is superior to almost any that can be found in a city. I have no doubt that if these lakeside inns were generally known they would be so crowded that life would not be worth living in them. But they are not known and as a consequence are running along in their old-fashioned way, sources of unrivalled summer joy to those who have been fortunate enough to discover them. At many of these inns only a dollar a day is charged, all accommodations included, and the price is seldom above $1.50 a day, even for transients. I know of one inn that has been “discovered” by half a dozen travelling men and their wives. Three of these families live in Cleveland, one in Pittsburg, and two in New York, and each year they spend a month together on Lake St. Clair. The cost is six dollars a week for each adult! A few weeks ago I was talking with one of these men, the representative of a New York dry-goods firm, and he told me that for himself, his wife, and two children it cost less to stay a month at this place than it did to pass a single week at an ocean resort, and that the accommodations and opportunities for pleasure were greater there than he had ever been able to afford on the Atlantic. I do not wish to emphasise the attractions of any particular inn, for in most ways all of them are alike. And the holiday-seeker who knows nothing of the Lakes can find them as easily as he can locate the groves I have described. The secret of the whole thing is in the knowledge that hundreds of such places really exist.
I have often thought that if it were possible for every person in the United States to make a trip over the Lakes, beginning at Niagara Falls, our Inland Seas from that day on would be recognised as the greatest pleasure-grounds in the world. At Niagara Falls, the traveller takes the Gorge ride, and perhaps makes a trip on the Maid of the Mist. But he is probably unaware that in the immediate neighbourhood are a score of spots hallowed in history, and whose incidents have made up some of the most romantic and tragic pages in the story of our country. He may not know that within walking distance of the falls was fought the battle of Queenston Heights, that at certain points the earthworks of the British still remain, that he may stand in the very spot where General Brock fell dying, and that he may follow, step by step, that thrilling fight far up on the summit of those wild ridges. Neither does the ordinary tourist know that almost within sight of the falls is one of the oldest cemeteries in America, where many of the men who were slain in the battles of those regions are at rest. Old Fort Niagara remains almost unvisited, and the spot not far distant where the adventurer La Salle built the Griffin, the first vessel ever to sail the Lakes, is virtually unknown. Two weeks, and every hour of them filled with interest, might be spent by the Lake tourist at Niagara Falls, yet the average person is satisfied with a day. And it is all because he does not know. This may be said of his experiences from end to end of the Lakes.
Steamer “Western States.”