The Great Lakes—Sieur de La Salle—Lake St. Clair—Lake Huron—Detroit—Ann Arbor—Mackinac Island—Sault Sainte Marie—Lake Superior—Lake Nepigon—Thunder Bay—Port Arthur—Kakabika Falls—The Pictured Rocks—Marquette—Keweenaw—Iron and Copper—Houghton—Lake Gogebic—Superior City—Duluth—Messabi and Vermillion Ranges—Green Bay—Wisconsin—Milwaukee—Waukesha—Madison—Rock Island—Davenport—Moline Rapids—Dubuque—Iowa—Black Hawk—Minnesota—La Crosse—Lake Pepin—Falls of St. Anthony—St. Paul—Minneapolis—Fort Snelling—Flour and Lumber—Lake Minnetonka—Minnehaha Falls—Hiawatha and Minnehaha—Source of the Mississippi—Itasca Lake—Minnesota River—Red River of the North—Ancient Lake Agassiz—Sioux Falls—Fargo—Great Wheat Farms—Manitoba—Rat Portage—Keewatin—Winnipeg—Hudson Bay Company—Dakota—Bismarck—The Bad Lands—Yellowstone River—Montana—Big Horn River—Custer Massacre—Livingston—Cinnabar Mountain—Yellowstone National Park—Mammoth Hot Springs—Norris Geyser Basin—Firehole River—Lower, Middle and Upper Geyser Basins—Yellowstone Lake and Falls—The Grand Canyon—Two-Ocean Pond—Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way.
THE GREAT LAKES.
René Robert Cavelier, the Sieur de La Salle, was the chief French pilgrim and adventurer in the seventeenth century who explored the Great Lakes and valley of the Mississippi, and secured for his country the vast empire of Louisiana, stretching from Canada to the Gulf. His explorations were made in 1669 and again in 1678, and like all the discoverers of that early time he was hunting for the water way thought to lead to the South Sea and provide a route to China. The historian Parkman describes La Salle as one of the most remarkable explorers whose names live in history; the hero of a fixed idea and determined purpose; an untiring pilgrim pushing onward towards the goal he was never to attain; the pioneer who guided America to the possession of her richest heritage. Throughout the northwest his memory is preserved in the names of rivers, towns, and otherwise, and his maps and narratives gave the earliest geography of the Lakes and the vast and prolific region obtained from France in the Louisiana cession.
The Great Lakes on the northern border of the United States are the largest bodies of fresh water on the globe. They carry an enormous commerce, nearly a hundred thousand men being employed by the fleet of lake vessels, which approximates two millions tonnage. At the head of Lake Erie the waters of Detroit River pour in, draining the upper lakes, this stream, about twenty-five miles long, flowing from Lake St. Clair and broadening from a half-mile to four miles width at its mouth. Lake St. Clair is elevated five hundred and thirty feet, but is small, being about twenty-five miles in diameter, and shallow, only about twenty feet deep. The navigation of its shallows is intricate, and is aided by a long canal through the shoals at the upper end, where the St. Clair River discharges, a strait about forty miles long, flowing south from Lake Huron. This great lake is at five hundred and eighty feet elevation, and in places seventeen hundred feet deep, covering twenty-four thousand square miles, and containing many islands. At its northern end, Lakes Superior and Michigan join it by various straits and water ways beyond Mackinac Island. Westward of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and between them and Lake Huron, a long peninsula of the Dominion of Canada projects southward into the United States, terminating opposite Detroit. Similarly, to the westward of Lake Huron, and between it and Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan has its lower peninsula projecting upward to Canada. The Canadian projection, which is part of Ontario Province, is unfortunately located, being almost surrounded by these expansive lakes, having bleak, cold winds sweeping across them and seriously impeding its agriculture. The surface has little charm of scenery and the population is sparse. The trunk railways, however, find this an almost direct route from Western New York to Detroit and Chicago, and various roads traverse it, coming out on the Detroit River and the swift-flowing St. Clair River, which are crossed both by car-ferry and tunnel. At the outlet of Lake Huron, St. Clair River is less than a thousand feet wide between Point Edward and Fort Gratiot, and here and at Ports Sarnia and Huron the low and level shores are lined with docks, elevators and other accessories of commerce. This river brings vast amounts of sand down out of Lake Huron with its swift current, which are deposited on the St. Clair Flats beyond its mouth, keeping that lake shallow, and requiring the long ship canal to maintain navigation. Below Lake St. Clair, the wider Detroit River presents many fine bits of scenery, while the city of Detroit spreads for several miles along the northwestern bank, and has Windsor opposite, on the Canadian shore. Pretty islands dot the broadening stream below Detroit, and the varying width, with the bluffs on the Canadian side, and the meadows, fields and forests of Michigan, give lovely views.
DETROIT AND MACKINAC.
Detroit means "the strait," and the original Indian names for the river mean "the place of the turned channel." The early visitors who reached it by boat at night or in dark weather, and were inattentive to the involved currents, always remarked, as the Indians did before them, that owing to these extraordinary involutions of the waters, when the sun appeared again it always seemed to rise in the wrong place. The French under La Salle were the first Europeans who passed through the river, and in 1701 the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, who received grants from Louis XIV., came and founded Fort Pontchartrain there, naming it after the French Minister of Marine, around which a settlement afterwards grew, to which the French sent colonists at intervals. The British got possession in 1760, and it successfully resisted the conspiracy and attacks of the Ojibway Indian chief Pontiac for over a year, the garrison narrowly escaping massacre. The United States, after the Revolution, sent out General St. Clair as Governor, and his name was given the lake to the northward. Detroit was a frontier post in the War of 1812, being alternately held by British and Americans. In 1824 it had about fifteen hundred people and became a city. It now has three hundred and fifty thousand population, and its commercial importance may be estimated from the fact that the whole enormous traffic of the Lakes passes in front of the city during the seven months that navigation is open, the procession of craft often reaching sixty thousand vessels in the season. Detroit also has extensive and varied manufactures. It has a gradually rising surface and broad and well-paved streets on a rectangular plan, with several avenues radiating from a centre, like the spokes of a wheel. The central square is the Campus Martius, an expansion, about a half-mile from the river, of Woodward Avenue, the chief street. Here is an elaborate City Hall, the principal public building, having in front a magnificent Soldiers' Monument. The suburbs are attractive, and there are various pleasant parks and rural cemeteries, the leading Park of Belle Isle, covering seven hundred acres, being to the northeastward, with a good view over Lake St. Clair. Fort Wayne, the elaborate defensive work of Detroit, is on the river just below the city, and has a small garrison of regular troops. It is yet incomplete, and is designed to be the most extensive fortification on the northern frontier, commanding the important passage between Lakes Huron and Erie and the railway routes east and west.
The peninsula of Michigan was originally covered with the finest forests, so that lumbering has always been a leading industry of the people. The greater portion of its pine woods, however, has been cut off, so that that branch is declining; but its ample supply of hard woods has made the State a great manufacturer of furniture, which is shipped all over the country. Thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, on the Huron River, is the city of Ann Arbor, with a population of fifteen thousand. Here are the extensive buildings of the University of Michigan, the leading educational establishment of the northwest, attended by over three thousand students, of whom a large number are young women. It is richly endowed, and has departments of law and medicine, as well as of literature and science, a large library and an observatory. The State makes a liberal annual contribution for its support, raised by taxation, it being governed by eight regents elected by the people. At the northern extremity of the Michigan Peninsula is the Strait of Mackinac, through which Lake Michigan discharges into Lake Huron. This water way is about four miles wide. In the strait is Mackinac Island, about nine miles in circumference, which was early held by the French on account of its strategic importance, but, being taken by the English in 1760, was captured by Pontiac when he organized the Indian revolt against the British in 1763, and all its inhabitants massacred. It is now a military post and reservation of the United States. This rocky and wooded island contains much picturesque scenery, and is a favorite summer resort, its weird legends, fresh breezes, good fishing and clear waters being the attraction. It was an early post of the northwestern fur-traders, and here was founded one of the frontier trading-stations of the Astor Fur Company in the early nineteenth century by John Jacob Astor of New York, the building in the little village being still known as the Astor House.
LAKE SUPERIOR.
To the northward of Mackinac, Lake Superior discharges into Lake Huron through the Sault Sainte Marie Strait, the "Leap of St. Mary." This strait of St. Mary is a winding and most beautiful stream, sixty-two miles long, being a succession of expansions into lakes and contractions into rivers, dotted with pretty islands and having some villages on the banks. The chief attraction is the Sault, or "Leap," which is a rapid of about eighteen feet descent, the navigation being maintained through capacious modern systems of locks and ship canals provided by both the United States and Canada. To the westward is the great Lake Superior, the largest fresh-water lake on the globe, three hundred and sixty miles long and covering thirty-two thousand square miles, with a coast-line of about fifteen hundred miles. It is elevated about six hundred feet above the ocean level, and has a depth averaging one thousand feet. Nearly two hundred rivers and creeks flow into it, draining a region of a hundred thousand square miles. There are a few islands in the eastern and western portions, but all the centre of the lake is a vast unbroken sheet of water, and generally of a low temperature, the deeper waters being only 39° in summer. The early French missionaries, who were the first explorers, told their interesting story of Lake Superior in Paris in 1636, and in their published account speak of its coasts as resembling a bended bow, of which the north shore makes the arc of the bow, the south shore the chord, and the great Keweenaw Point, projecting far from the southern shore, represents the arrow. Superior has generally a rock-bound coast, displaying impressive beauties of scenery, particularly on the northern shore, where the beetling crags and cliffs are projected boldly into the lake along the water's edge. This northern coast is also much indented by deep bays, bordered by precipitous cliffs, back of which rise the dark and dreary Laurentian Mountains. There are also rocky islands scattered near this portion of the coast, some presenting vast castellated walls of basalt and others peaks of granite, elevated a thousand to thirteen hundred feet above the lake. Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is there grander scenery.
The most considerable affluent of Lake Superior upon its northern coast is the Nepigon River, coming grandly down cascades and rapids, bringing the waters of Lake Nepigon, an elliptical lake among the mountains to the northward covering about four thousand square miles, bounded by high cliffs, and elevated over eight hundred feet. It is studded with islands, has very deep waters, and receives various streams from the remote northern wilderness. Upon the northwestern shore of Lake Superior are gigantic cliffs, surrounding Thunder Bay, a deep indentation divided from Black Bay by the great projecting promontory of Thunder Cape, rising nearly fourteen hundred feet in grand columns of basalt, the summit containing the crater of an extinct volcano. Across from it is McKay Mountain, another basaltic Gibraltar, rising twelve hundred feet from the almost level plain bordering the bay. Pic Island is between them, guarding the entrance. The pretty Kaministiquia River flows through rich prairie lands down to Thunder Bay, and here is the chief Canadian town on the lake, Port Arthur. Thirty miles up this river is the famous Kakabika Falls, where the rocks are cleft so that the stream tumbles into a chasm one hundred and thirty feet deep, and then boils along with rapid current for nearly a half-mile through the fissure, the sides towering perpendicularly, and in some places even overhanging their bases. Upon this river was for many years the well-known Hudson Bay Company's fur-trading station of Fort William, which now has grain elevators, and is a suburb of the spreading settlement of Port Arthur. This was the beginning of the great portage from Lake Superior over to the Hudson Bay waters at Fort Garry, on the Red River in Manitoba, now Winnipeg, the portage being the present route of the Canadian Pacific Railway.