On the evening of the 31st July we embarked on the North Star for Superior City. She is of first class, eleven hundred and six tons, and bore an immense freight from the East to the remote peninsula, in exchange for its precious minerals. The entire sail from Cleveland to Superior is nine hundred and sixty-four miles.
As these boats are the only means of commerce and intercourse for the dwellers on the upper lakes above Detroit, very frequent are their stops and calls, taking and leaving much freight, consuming much time on their way. However, our voyage was speedy: we arrived at our distant terminus, Superior City, very early on the morning of the 5th of August, making the running time about seventy-five hours.
Leaving Ohio, one of the earliest settled States of the Western Valley, and organized sixty years since, our course from Cleveland stretched northwesterly across the wide lake, passing the island scene of Perry's splendid triumph, and thence northerly, by its river, to Detroit, a sail of one hundred and twenty miles, arriving early on the 1st of August.
The city lies extended along its beautiful river, at one extremity guarded by its old fort, and at the other are the extensive copper-smelting furnaces, where the ore from the Superior mines, brought by the steamers, flows in liquid copper. It is comparatively an ancient town, settled as early as 1701 as a French frontier post; and some of its land titles, always protected at each national change, with some of its old families, derive their origin from these early French pioneers.
Our afternoon sail was up Detroit River and the St. Clair, threading our way among its many verdant islands and rich shores graced with numerous pretty villages. At 9 p.m. we reached Port Huron and its Canadian opposite neighbor, Sarnia. At this point is the southern outlet of Lake Huron, distant seventy-three miles from Detroit. Sarnia is also the western depot of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, while Windsor, facing Detroit, terminates the Canadian Great Western. From Sarnia, passing old Fort Gratiot, over to Port Huron, the railway ferry boat, propelled by the current only, transfers its passengers to the cars of the Grand Trunk line, on Michigan soil, and by a short branch intersects the Michigan Central Railroad, a few miles west of Detroit. For over twelve hundred miles this iron road, fitly named the Grand Trunk, transports our Western products. Entering Lake Huron, with its innumerable islands and almost wilderness shores, our sail through it, of two hundred and seventy-five miles in all, brought us early, on the 2d of August, off Saginaw and Thunder Bays, its western arms, with Presque Isle, the Great Manitoulin Island, bearing north by east; and by noon, we reached Point de Tour, at the outlet of St. Mary's River, three hundred miles from Detroit, lying opposite to Drummond's Island.
Point de Tour has but a solitary dwelling, from whose roof rises the light tower. Its inmates are said to have preferred this solitude to the crowded refinement of a New England city. Shortly after, and still coasting the western side, we stopped at Church's Landing, where an enterprising New Englander has built his log houses in the forest, amid the Indians, and drives an active commerce in raspberry jam. His trade has prospered, and he had just completed a new and handsome dwelling. Fourteen miles farther brought us to Saut Sainte Marie, or the rapids of the eastern outlet of Lake Superior.
Lake Huron is at an average height of five hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea level, and one hundred feet in depth below Lake Superior, with a length in direct line of two hundred and seventy-five miles, from Port Huron to Saut Sainte Marie. Georgian Bay, to the east of the Great Manitoulin Island, is its broad eastern expansion; while, on the west, the Straits of Mackinaw open into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan, extending a length of four hundred and forty-six miles to Chicago. The borders of Lake Huron are sparsely peopled. The primitive forest bends over the lake's clear waters, and surrounds the log cabin or infant settlement with the wigwam and canoe of the Indian half breeds, who are still fishing and hunting round the graves of their ancestors-once the fiercest of all the warrior races that scarce forty years ago as sovereigns roamed its wilds.
The majestic solitudes of these lakes first received the white man in 1679, when the discoverers La Salle and Hennepin, in the vessel of sixty tons, which they had built with their Indians at Cayuga Creek, sailed up Niagara River, Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron, to Mackinaw, and thence through Lake Michigan to the mouth of Green Bay. Entering Lake Erie on the 7th of August, 1691, they arrived at Green Bay on the 2d of September following, encountering many storms and cautiously seeking their untried way. After gathering a rich cargo of furs, the vessel, in charge of the pilot and five men, started to return, and was heard of no more. She doubtless perished with her crew in a gale on Lake Huron. She carried seven cannon, was well manned and armed, adorned with carved griffin and eagle heads, and bore the banner and religion of France amid all the border tribes.
Surely the voyage of Columbus, discovering Hispaniola, while sailing before and obeying the trade winds, did not surpass in real adventure this simple expedition of those half-warrior pioneer voyageurs, Fathers Hennepin and La Salle. The memory of their visit is yet immortal in the local names given by them and still cherished; while the influence of France still lingers at Detroit and many other prominent points in this wide region, once the empire of Louis XIV.
We reached the Saut Sainte Marie about 4 P. M. of the 2d of August. Here the River St. Mary, or the eastern outlet of Lake Superior, after a wide course of fifty miles, gathers the multitude of its waters into a narrow channel of less than a mile in width and length, of swift and impassable rapids.