The Same Evening, At Twelve O'clock, We Were At Detroit.
"You must lock
your state-rooms in the night," said one of the persons employed about
the vessel, "for
Detroit is full of thieves." We followed the advice,
slept soundly, and saw nothing of the thieves, nor of Detroit either, for
the steamboat was again on her passage through Lake St. Clair at three
this morning, and when I awoke we were moving over the flats, as they are
called, at the upper end of the lake. The steamer was threading her way in
a fog between large patches of sedge of a pea-green color. We had waited
several hours at Detroit, because this passage is not safe at night, and
steamers of a larger size are sometimes grounded here in the day-time.
I had hoped, when I began, to bring down the narrative of my voyage to
this moment, but my sheet is full, and I shall give you the remainder in
another letter.
Letter XXXI.
A Trip from Detroit to Mackinaw.
Steamer Oregon, Lake Michigan, _July_ 25, 1846.
Soon after passing the flats described in my last letter, and entering the
river St. Clair, the steamer stopped to take in wood on the Canadian side.
Here I went on shore. All that we could see of the country was a road
along the bank, a row of cottages at a considerable distance from each
other along the road, a narrow belt of cleared fields behind them, and
beyond the fields the original forest standing like a long lofty wall,
with its crowded stems of enormous size and immense height, rooted in the
strong soil - ashes and maples and elms, the largest of their species.
Scattered in the foreground were numbers of leafless elms, so huge that
the settlers, as if in despair of bringing them to the ground by the ax,
had girdled them and left them to decay and fall at their leisure.
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