Round Island forms a beautiful foreground, while the larger, Bois Blanc, with its light-house, stretches off to the east; and to the north are other islands at varying distances, which complete the archipelago.

"When the observer directs his eyes upon the waters more than the land, and the day is fair, with moderate wind, he finds the surface as variable in its tints as if clothed in a robe of changeable silk. Green and blue are the governing hues, but they flow into each other with such facility and frequency, that while still contemplating a particular spot, it seems, as if by magic, transformed into another. But these midday beauties vanish, before those of the setting sun, when the boundless horizon of lake and land seems girt around with a fiery zone of clouds, and the brilliant drapery of the skies paints itself upon the surface of the waters. Brief as they are beautiful, these evening glories, like spirits of the air, quickly pass away, and the gay mantle of night warns the beholder to depart for the village while he may yet make his way along a narrow and rocky path, beset with tufts of prickly juniper. Having refreshed himself for an hour, he may stroll out upon the beach and listen to the serenade of the waters. Wave after wave will break at his feet over the white pebbles, and return as limpid as it came. Up the straits, he will see the evening star dancing on the ruffled surface, and the loose sails of the lagging schooner flapping in the fitful land-breeze, while the milky way-DEATH'S PATH of the red man-will dimly appear in the waters before him!"

The following extracts are just to the point, and will meet with a hearty response from the thousands who have experienced similar sensations in visiting Mackinac :

"MACKINAW, MICH., August 7, 1856. "Yours of July 20th has been forwarded to me at this place, whither I have come in search of the fugitive, health-at least, to escape from the debilitations of our Summer heats. I wish you were here! It is a fortnight to-day since we arrived, and such paradisiacal weather as we have had just

warm enough not to be cold, and just cold enough not to be Only one thing is wanting to me, and I should thrive like a green bay tree; and that is the home diet.

warm.

"Last night we had some commotion among the elements, and to-day it is cloudy, and a fire is comfortable. But a few whiffs of this air would make your lungs give a hygienic laugh. I am sorry to hear there are any symptoms in your throat or elsewhere which give you present discomfort or forebodings. I am afraid of that Eastern climate for your lungs. I do not believe that air will ever agree with you. It requires a Boreas to blow it, and none but a Boreas can breathe it.

"HORACE MANN."

"MACKINAW, MICH., August 6, 1857.

"Here we all are at Mackinaw, and enjoying ourselves too well not to tell you about it, and to wish you were here with us. The climate, the air, etc., perform the promise made last year; and, as all the family are with me, I enjoy vastly more than I did last year. I never breathed such air before ; and this must be some that was clear out of Eden, and did not get cursed. I sleep every night under sheet, blanket, and coverlet, and no day is too warm for smart walking and vigorous bowling. The children are crazy with animal spirits, and eat in such a way as to demonstrate the epigastric paradox that the quantity contained may be greater than the container. I verily believe if you would spend one Summer here-say from about the middle of July to the middle of September-it would make your brain as good as Samuel Downer's brain ever was since it occupied its present cranium; and that is saying a great deal. HORACE MANN."

II

CHAPTER XI.

THE

MACKINAC CITY.

HE Straits of Mackinac, as we have seen, have been the theater of interesting and exciting events from the earliest times down to the present. While the whole southern portion of the State was yet a wilderness which no white man had ever penetrated, Mackinac was the home of the missionary, the trader, and the soldier, and the center of a valuable and fast increasing traffic with the Indians of the North-west.

And it was from Mackinac, as a center, that colonization spread through the surrounding country. Detroit was settled in 1701, by Cadillac, who for several years had commanded at Mackinac. The history of Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as other North-western States, must begin with a notice of this point, because the earliest settlers of these States started out from Mackinac, and the period is yet within the memory of many now living on this island when Chicago came to Mackinac for supplies.

These are significant facts. The early Jesuits and traders fixed upon Mackinac as a basis of their missionary and commercial operations, not by mere chance, but because of its natural advantages. Mackinac is a historical center because it is a geographical and commercial center. Nature alone has given it its advantages, and made it what it has been in history. For a series of years, however, its natural advantages seemed to be overlooked, and the surging wave of population rolled across Southern Michigan, and so on to the westward. Yet it has never been quite forgotten, and at the present time we believe it to be gradually rising into favor, owing to the

fact that it is better known and better appreciated than ever before.

But we do not propose to enter into any elaborate discussion of its merits. We wish simply to set forth a few facts relative to an enterprise just now attracting some attention. Ferris, in his " States and Territories of the Great West,' makes the following mention of the straits: "If one were to point out on the map of North America a site for a great central city in the lake region, it would be in the IMMEDIATE VICINITY OF THE STRAITS OF MICHILIMACKINAC. A city so located would have the command of the mineral trade, the fisheries, the furs, and the lumber of the entire North. It might become the metropolis of a great commercial empire. It would be the Venice of the Lakes." In 1853, Mr. Edgar Conkling, then of Cincinnati, with something of the same appreciation of this point, secured a large tract of land on the south side of the straits. In 1857-58, he surveyed the city site; but the financial revulsion at that time, and the war which soon followed, prevented further operations until the present. During the past Winter a good dock has been constructed, and preparations are fast being made to build up the new city. The streets, as surveyed, are eighty feet in width, and the avenues one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet, respectively, and are to be forever unobstructed by improvements of any kind, shadetrees alone excepted. The lots, with the exception of those in fractional blocks, are fifty by one hundred and fifty feet. Old Mackinac Point, where may still be seen the ruins of the old "Fort Michilimackinac," has been reserved for a park. It is now in a state of nature, but in this instance nature has done more, unassisted by art, than is often accomplished by both combined. A richer and more beautiful variety of evergreens can nowhere be found than here, and "when the skillful hand of the horticulturist has marked its outlines and threaded it with avenues and foot-paths, pruned its trees and carpeted ts surface with green, it will present the very perfection of all that constitutes a park delightful." Suitable blocks and lots

for county and city buildings, school-houses, churches, and institutions of learning and charity, will be donated for their respective purposes whenever the proper authorities are prepared to select suitable sites. There are three good harbors on the east, north, and west sides of the city, respectively. The soil is sandy, and the land sufficiently elevated above the level of the water to warrant an entire absence of mud forever. "There are no marshes, no tide-covered sands, no flood-washed banks, no narrow and isolated rocks or ridges, to intercept the progress of commercial growth and activity. On the contrary, the lake rises under the heaviest rains but little, and breaks its waves on a dry shore raised far above its level."

At a comparatively recent date, large additions have been made to this property; so that now the real estate interests of the enterprise cover an area of about thirty-five thousand acres, seven thousand of which lie on the north side, upon the upper peninsula. Much of this land abounds in the elements of wealth and prosperity. There may be found peat and hardwood suitable for smelting and manufacturing iron and copper, gypsum in abundance, "stone for water-lime, building-stone, and building-lime," while all geologists agree that the salt formation underneath its surface will richly reward all who turn their attention to the manufacture of that indispensable article.

The policy of the proprietor of this enterprise is at once liberal and enlightened. Every legal measure will be taken to exclude forever the sale of alcohol as a beverage, thus insuring the future inhabitants freedom from midnight brawls and drunken revels. The public wants are to be liberally provided for, and the whole property finally devoted to the building up and endowment of a "grand, national, unsectarian, Christian UNIVERSITY," and will be placed in the hands of responsible trustees whenever the public is ready to make the enterprise its own. Such are the facts as they have been communicated to us.

The idea of a university at the straits may strike some as premature and uncalled for: but two considerations are alone