The stream which came in here was too shallow for the steamer to
enter. When near the lower end of the lake we stopped at an island to
take on food and several cords of white birch wood. The next stopping
place was at Michilamackanac, afterward called Mackinaw. Here was a
short wharf, and a little way back a hill, which seemed to me to be a
thousand feet high, on which a fort had been built. On the wharf was a
mixed lot of people--Americans, Canadians, Irish, Indians, squaws and
papooses. I saw there some of the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.
They would weigh twenty pounds or more, and had bright red and yellow
spots all over them. They called them trout, and they were beauties,
really. At the shore near by the Indians were loading a large white
birch bark canoe, putting their luggage along the middle lengthways, and
the papooses on top. One man took a stern seat to steer, and four or
five more had seats along the gunwale as paddlers and, as they moved
away, their strokes were as even and regular as the motions of an
engine, and their crafts danced as lightly on the water as an egg shell.
They were starting for the Michigan shore some eight or ten miles away.
This was the first birch bark canoe I had ever seen and was a great
curiosity in my eyes.
We crossed Lake Huron during the night, and through its outlet, so
shallow that the wheels stirred up the mud from the bottom; then through
Lake St. Clair and landed safety at Detroit next day. Here we took the
cars on the Michigan Central Railroad, and on our way westward stopped
at the very place where we had worked, helping to build the road, a year
or more before.
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