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Of The Town, We Had A Glimpse Of A Prairie Approaching Within Half A Mile
Of The River.
We were next driven through a street of shops, and thence to
our steamer.
The streets of Southport are beds of sand, and one of the
passengers who professed to speak from some experience, described the
place as haunted by myriads of fleas.
It was not till about one o'clock of the second night after leaving
Chicago, that we landed at Mackinaw, and after an infinite deal of trouble
in getting our baggage together, and keeping it together, we were driven
to the Mission House, a plain, comfortable old wooden house, built thirty
or forty years since, by a missionary society, and now turned into an
hotel. Beside the road, close to the water's edge, stood several wigwams
of the Potawottamies, pyramids of poles wrapped around with rush matting,
each containing a family asleep. The place was crowded with people on
their way to the mining region of Lake Superior, or returning from it, and
we were obliged to content ourselves with narrow accommodations for the
night.
At half-past seven the next morning we were on our way to the Sault Ste.
Marie, in the little steamer General Scott. The wind was blowing fresh,
and a score of persons who had intended to visit the Sault were withheld
by the fear of seasickness, so that half a dozen of us had the steamer to
ourselves. In three or four hours we found ourselves gliding out of the
lake, through smooth water, between two low points of land covered with
firs and pines into the west strait. We passed Drummond's Island, and then
coasted St. Joseph's Island, on the woody shore of which I was shown a
solitary house. There I was told lives a long-nosed Englishman, a half-pay
officer, with two wives, sisters, each the mother of a numerous offspring.
This English polygamist has been more successful in seeking solitude than
in avoiding notoriety. The very loneliness of his habitation on the shore
causes it to be remarked, and there is not a passenger who makes the
voyage to the Sault, to whom his house is not pointed out, and his story
related. It was hinted to me that he had a third wife in Toronto, but I
have my private doubts of this part of the story, and suspect that it was
thrown in to increase my wonder.
Beyond the island of St. Joseph we passed several islets of rock with
fir-trees growing from the clefts. Here, in summer, I was told, the
Indians often set up their wigwams, and subsist by fishing. There were
none in sight as we passed, but we frequently saw on either shore the
skeletons of the Chippewa habitations. These consist, not like those of
the Potawottamies, of a circle of sticks placed in the form of a cone, but
of slender poles bent into circles, so as to make an almost regular
hemisphere, over which, while it serves as a dwelling, birch-bark and mats
of bulrushes are thrown.
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