region, was a man of remarkable strength, energy and commanding character; and I was advised by prominent citizens at Mackinac, like Mr. Samuel K. Haring, collector of the port, that the iron mountain country was likely to afford a fine opening for an energetic young man. Mr. Haring had always been very friendly in his attitude toward me, and his advice influenced me a great deal.

It required a good deal of faith for Mr. Kanter was paying me $35 a month, with board, and the coveted school privilege; and I was to have only $12 a month and board, for a year, with the expedition. Nevertheless, I joined willingly. Our trip up the lake and river from Mackinac to the Sault was a tedious and difficult one. We were in the old steamer Tecumseh,

a side wheeler, and a mere pigmy compared with the steamers which now ply the lakes. It took us eight days to make the trip, as the ice was only just beginning to break up, and side wheelers always made poor work of ice. A railroad in this country had never been thought of; indeed railroads were then in their infancy in the United States. Railroads in America are only about as old as I am. There were then only about 1,600 people in the whole northern peninsula-perhaps a thousand if we leave out the settlements at Mackinac Straits. I have no means of knowing how many Indians there

were.

Those Indians who came to Mackinac numbered about 10,000 each year,

but they came from south of the Straits as well as north, and from as lar away as the islands in Green Bay. They were migratory in their habits, ranging far and wide in search of game, fish and furs. There were of course a few Indian trails, but none of them led to the iron mountains of Lake Superior. The water route, I might say, the ice-water route, was all there was for us. The trip on the St. Mary's river, with all its remarkable beauty, is, of course, entirely familiar to all present. But beautiful as the river now is, it has changed immensely both for the better and for the worse since I first saw it. It has changed for the better, since it seems that the world was created for man, and man has now subdued, changed and possessed this stream for his residence, his solace, his recreation and his commerce. This was before the days of lights, dredges, buoys, ranges and channel improvements. I doubt if a draught of over 10 or 12 feet could have been successfully brought up to the foot of the rapids at that day.

The river has also changed for the worse, as its perfectly wooded banks were then absolutely unspoiled by the axe or devastating fire. The forest was unbroken, enormous, beautiful in the extreme. The river was leaping with fish, and the woods full of deer, bear and small game. The beaver were everywhere.

I do not remember all the stops we made, but the Sailor's Encampment. was one of them. When we reached the Sault we found also a place very few here would recognize, though many old landmarks persisted here not many years ago. The Rapids were the same as to the central fall, but the canals, and buildings have very much altered the appearance of things, and the Hay Lake cut, especially down by the Little Rapids, almost more than all. There were few wharves and almost no shipping. My recollection on the Canadian side is that only five or six small buildings made any show on the river. On the American side was old Fort Brady, by the water's edge, a few houses on the river bank below it; but the principal part of the town was above it. There was one wide street starting from the Fort grounds, and several very narrow little streets running out of it, as in all French towns. There may have been 500 people all told. Many were French, some were half breeds, some were Americans, some were the resident Indians. The first Jesuit explorers noted that the Sault Indians were not migratory like the others. Some stayed the year through, as fish could always be caught in the rapids, and it was a sort of neutral zone.

I

The houses were mostly small and low. I do not remember who the commander of the post was, unless it was Lieutenant Russell or Captain Clark. The garrison could hardly number 50 men besides officers. remember that there was a Baptist mission, presided over by a clergyman whom everyone called Father Bingham. I knew the family afterward quite well and nice people they were. One daughter, named Angeline, afterward

became the wife of Hon. Thomas D. Gilbert, at one time mayor of Grand Rapids, and a regent of the University. His widow, an estimable lady, still lives in Grand Rapids.* Capt. Sam Moody, one of our party, thought so much of Miss Bingham, that when he found a beautiful lake near Ishpeming, he called it Lake Angeline after her, and "thereby hangs a tale." The ore under Lake Angeline proved so much more valuable than the water in it, that no lake is there now.

There were several stores at the Sault then, and we purchased here the outfit for our expedition. For our prospective voyage on Lake Superior we

From a drawing by Wharton Metcalf, in Judge H. H. Steere's collection.

had a Mackinac boat between 35 and 40 feet long, which had to be hauled and poled up about a mile of rapids, near the shore. My recollection is that it took about three hours to get up past the swift water. Among those residing here then, with whom I became acquainted, was John Tallman Whiting, afterward of Detroit. Here he had charge of the warehouse and dock belonging to Sheldon McKnight, a warehouse and vessel-man, who owned in his time many steamers, among which were the London, Baltimore, General Taylor, Illinois, Pewabic, and Meteor. Mr. Whiting, a most intelligent and agreeable man, was long my correspondent and friend. The agent of the American Fur Company at the Sault was an autocrat named John R. Livingston, as Judge Abbot was at Mackinac.

*Mrs. Gilbert was in the audience who listened to Mr. White's address.

There were two hotels in those days at the Sault, the Van Anden and the Chippewa. Smith kept the Chippewa, bought the Van Anden also and kept it for many years. The Chippewa House, some of you remember, was not the original. That building burned down. Then Van Anden, who kept the Van Anden House, desiring to remove to Ontonagon to keep a new hotel there called "The Bigelow," sold out his hotel to Smith, who immediately rechristened it the Chippewa.

When we say there was no canal, we ought to add that there was then on the Canadian side of the Rapids a liliputian lock, where it may still be seen. It was said to belong to the Northwest Fur Company. It does not remind one of the present canal locks very much, but then Peter Cooper's iocomotive with a barrel for a water tank doesn't look much like a modern mogul but it is the same thing nevertheless. The number of real vessels, not counting craft like our own, then sailing the waters of Lake Superior, was very small, and none of them measured over 200 tons burden. As they had not been built on the big lake, you may wonder how they got over there. They were hauled over on wooden ways, very much as houses are now moved, with rollers and windlasses. The Julia Palmer, a side wheeler, and the Independence and Monticello, both propellers, came over the portage that way. The Napoleon was first a sail vessel, but metamorphosed into a propeller. It was said that in a heavy sea she would dip water with her smoke pipe and thus put out the fires. The side wheelers Sam Ward and Baltimore and propellers Manhattan, General Taylor, Peninsula and several more were brought over the portage in the same way.

A Parisian, once a passenger on the Baltimore, when she was making very slow progress up the lake against a heavy head wind, walked out on deck just before dark, took a look at the Pictured Rocks and was much pleased with the view. In the morning before breakfast, he again came out on deck and the panorama astonished him. He exclaimed: "Wat ees dis beautiful sight you have here?" He was told, "You are again looking at Pictured Rocks." He exclaimed, "Wat a great countree! Before you go to bed you walk on de deck. You have a grand view de Picture Rock, den you go to bed, you sleep well all night-de steamer is go ahead all the time you come out on de deck in de morning, you see de Picture Rock again. What big country you got and what big Picture Rock!" No one told him that the captain finding that he could make no headway against the wind and the waves had run back to Whitefish Point during the night, and that the Frenchman was now looking at the same rock pictures he had seen the previous evening.

Lake Superior was uncharted and only poorly lighted, and navigation was therefore quite as dangerous, or more so, for these steam craft of moderate power, as for our Mackinac boat.

A merchant citizen of the Sault, named Peter B. Barbeau, a very