"L'Arbre Croche Village is an old Indian town, situated about twenty-five miles southwest from Mackinaw, on the lower peninsula. It is composed mostly of Indians. It has a Catholic Church and a Home Mission Station, with a teacher and other assistants to instruct the Indians in the English language. It has extensive clearings for miles, along the banks of the lake shore, and extending from one to six miles back into the interior, indicating that once a large population must have inhabited this section of the country.
"The principal tributaries of Lake Michigan are the Manistee, Great Kalamazoo, and St. Joseph's rivers, from the southern peninsula of Michigan, the Des-Plaines, the O Plaines and Chee rivers, from Indiana, Illinois, and from the northern peninsula, the Menominee, Escambia, Noquet, White Fish and Manistee rivers. The lake is bounded to the eastward by the rich and fertile land of the southern peninsula, sending out vast quantities of all the cereal grains, equal if not superior in quality to any raised in the United States. It is bounded on the south and southwest by Indiana and Illinois, which supply corn and beef of the finest quality, in superabundance, for exportation. On the west it is bounded by the productive grain and grazing lands and lumber district of Wisconsin, and on the northwest and north by the invaluable and not yet half-explored mineral district of northern Michigan.
"The natural outlet of its commerce, as of its waters, is by the Straits of Mackinaw into Lake Huron, thence by the St. Clair River down to the lower marts. Of internal communications it already possesses many, both by canal and railroad, equal to those almost of any of the older States, in length and availability, and inferior to none in importance. First, it has the Green Bay, Lake Winnebago, and Fox River improvement connecting it with the Wisconsin River, by which it has access to the Mississippi River, and thereby enjoys the commerce of its upper valleys, and its rich lower lands and prosperous States;--and second, the Illinois and Michigan canal, rendering the great commercial valley of the Illinois tributary to its commerce. By railways, perfected and projected, it has, or will soon have, connection with the Mississippi in its upper tributaries and lead regions by way of the Milwaukee and Mississippi, and Chicago and Galena lines. To the eastward, by the Michigan Central and Southern Railroad, it communicates with the lake shore road, and thence with all the eastern lines from Buffalo to Boston. To the southward it will speedily be united by the great system of projected railroads.