Some Forty Miles Beyond Chicago We Stopped For Half An Hour At Little
Fort, One Of Those Flourishing Little Towns
Which are springing up on the
lake shore, to besiege future Congresses for money to build their harbors.
This settlement
Has started up in the woods within the last three or four
years, and its cluster of roofs, two of the broadest of which cover
respectable-looking hotels, already makes a considerable figure when
viewed from the lake. We passed to the shore over a long platform of
planks framed upon two rows of posts or piles planted in the sandy
shallows. "We make a port in this manner on any part of the western shore
of the lake," said a passenger, "and convenient ports they are, except in
very high winds. On the eastern shore, the coast of Michigan, they have
not this advantage; the ice and the northwest winds would rend such a
wharf as this in pieces. On this side too, the water of the lake, except
when an east wind blows, is smoother than on the Michigan coast, and the
steamers therefore keep under the shelter of this bank."
At Southport, still further north, in the new state of Wisconsin, we
procured a kind of omnibus and were driven over the town, which, for a new
settlement, is uncommonly pretty. We crossed a narrow inlet of the lake, a
_creek_ in the proper sense of the term, a winding channel, with water in
the midst, and a rough growth of water-flags and sedges on the sides.
Among them grew the wild rice, its bending spikes, heavy with grain,
almost ready for the harvest.
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