Leaving Grass Lake late in the afternoon, it was necessary to make better time in order to cover the remainder of the twenty three miles lying between Chelsea and Jackson. The pace quickened. I came into the latter city at six o'clock, and rode directly to the hotel.
Ninetieth Day.
Hurd House,
Jackson, Michigan,
August Ninth.
I clipped the following notice from the Citizen of this date, as a memento of my stay at Jackson. It chronicled the fact that:
"Captain Willard Glazier lectured last evening in the interest of the Custer Monument Fund. His lecture was a good historical review delivered with graceful rhetoric and at times real eloquence. The Captain is still in the city giving his horse a rest; a noble Kentucky Black Hawk, whom he has ridden all the way from Boston, and whom he expects to carry him to San Francisco. He starts to-morrow morning for Battle Creek, where he lectures on Saturday evening."
My advance agent, Babcock, went on to Battle Creek in the morning, where arrangements were made with local committees for my lecture on the twelfth. After he had gone I made a leisurely inspection of the city. It was impossible to do more on account of the extreme heat.
This may no doubt be considered the centre of the closely populated southern end of Michigan, a region dear, in times past, to the heart of the Indian, but which knows him no more. A Chippewa chief standing upon this soil, once said: "These lakes, these woods, these mountains were left to us by our ancestors; they are our inheritance, and we will part with them to no one." He knew not the strength of the pale faces who listened; for within a few years they were ready to claim, on the same grounds, those hills, and lakes, and mountains for their own.
Compared to the peninsula, whose mineral-laden shores are washed by Superior, Michigan and Huron, there is the greatest contrast; and La Hontan, making a little exploratory trip up there before anyone else, called it "the fag end of the world." These words might still be applied to some of the wildest northern points, but here is the very heart of civilization.