The driver stopped before a cliff sprouting with beeches and
cedars, with a small cavity at the foot. This he told us was the Skull
Cave. It is only remarkable on account of human bones having been found
in it. Further on a white paling gleamed through the trees; it inclosed
the solitary burial ground of the garrison, with half a dozen graves.
"There are few buried here," said a gentleman of our party; "the soldiers
who come to Mackinaw sick get well soon."
The road we travelled was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, who
commanded at the fort a few years since. He is the marksman whose aim was
so sure that the western people say of him, that a raccoon on a tree once
offered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire.
We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves. In one of its meadows
was fought the battle between Colonel Croghan and the British officer
Holmes in the war of 1813. Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge of
the wood, north of the meadow; one of them is the monument of Holmes; he
lies buried at its root. Another quarter of a mile led us to a little bay
on the solitary shore of the lake looking to the northwest. It is called
the British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the late
war to take possession of the island.
We wandered about awhile, and then sat down upon the embankment of pebbles
which the waves of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped around the
shore of the island - pebbles so clean that they would no more soil a
lady's white muslin gown than if they had been of newly polished
alabaster. The water at our feet was as transparent as the air around us.
On the main-land opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofs
were visible, with a background of woods behind them.
"There," said one of our party, "is the old Mission Church. It was built
by the Catholics in 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since. The
name of the spot is Point St. Ignace, and there lives an Indian of the
full caste, who was sent to Rome and educated to be a priest, but he
preferred the life of a layman, and there he lives on that wild shore,
with a library in his lodge, a learned savage, occupied with reading and
study."
You may well suppose that I felt a strong desire to see Point St. Ignace,
its venerable Mission Church, its Indian village, so long under the care
of Catholic pastors, and its learned savage who talks Italian, but the
time of my departure was already fixed. My companions were pointing out on
that shore, the mouth of Carp River, which comes down through the forest
roaring over rocks, and in any of the pools of which you have only to
throw a line, with any sort of bait, to be sure of a trout, when the
driver of our vehicle called out, "Your boat is coming." We looked and saw
the St. Louis steamer, not one of the largest, but one of the finest boats
in the line between Buffalo and Chicago, making rapidly for the island,
with a train of black smoke hanging in the air behind her.
