"I thought so! - I knew it! - A regular John Bull trick! just like them!"
were some of the observations made, and very mild they were, considering
the aggravated circumstances.
Two men took the culprit by his shoulders, and the others, pressing
behind, impelled him to the door, amid a chorus of groans and hisses,
disposing of him finally by placing him in the emigrant-car, installing
the lady in the vacated seat. I could almost fancy that the shade of the
departed Judge Lynch stood by with an approving smile.
I was so thoroughly ashamed of my countryman, and so afraid of my
nationality being discovered, that, if any one spoke to me, I adopted
every Americanism which I could think of in reply. The country within
fifty miles of Detroit is a pretty alternation of prairie, wood, corn-
fields, peach and apple orchards. The maize is the staple of the country;
you see it in the fields; you have corn-cobs for breakfast; corncobs,
mush, and hominy for dinner; johnny-cake for tea; and the very bread
contains a third part of Indian meal!
I thought the little I saw of Michigan very fertile and pretty. It is
another of the newly constituted States, and was known until recently
under the name of the "Michigan Territory." This State is a peninsula
between the Huron and Michigan Lakes, and borders in one part closely on
Canada. It has a salubrious climate and a fertile soil, and is rapidly
becoming a very productive State. Of late years the influx of emigrants of
a better class has been very great. The State has great capabilities for
saw and flour mills; the Grand Rapids alone have a fall of fifteen feet in
a mile, and afford immense water-power.
In Michigan, human beings have ceased to be "alligators" they are
"hosses." Thus one man says to another, "How do you do, old hoss?" or,
"What's the time o' day, old hoss?" When I reached Detroit I was amused
when a conductor said to me, "One o' them 'ere hosses will take your
trunks," pointing as he spoke to a group of porters.
On arriving at Detroit I met for the first time with tokens of British
enterprise and energy, and of the growing importance of Canada West.
Several persons in the cars were going to New York, and they took the
ferry at Detroit, and went down to Niagara Bridge by the Canada Great
Western Railway, as the most expeditious route. I drove through the very
pleasant streets of Detroit to the National Hotel, where I was to join the
Walrences. Having indulged the hope of rejoining my former travelling
companions here, I was greatly disappointed at finding a note from them,
containing the intelligence that they had been summoned by telegraph to
Toronto, to a sick relative.
