As these boats are the only means of commerce and intercourse for the dwellers on the upper lakes above Detroit, very frequent are their stops and calls, taking and leaving much freight, consuming much time on their way. However, our voyage was speedy: we arrived at our distant terminus, Superior City, very early on the morning of the 5th of August, making the running time about seventy-five hours.
Leaving Ohio, one of the earliest settled States of the Western Valley, and organized sixty years since, our course from Cleveland stretched northwesterly across the wide lake, passing the island scene of Perry's splendid triumph, and thence northerly, by its river, to Detroit, a sail of one hundred and twenty miles, arriving early on the 1st of August.
The city lies extended along its beautiful river, at one extremity guarded by its old fort, and at the other are the extensive copper-smelting furnaces, where the ore from the Superior mines, brought by the steamers, flows in liquid copper. It is comparatively an ancient town, settled as early as 1701 as a French frontier post; and some of its land titles, always protected at each national change, with some of its old families, derive their origin from these early French pioneers.
Our afternoon sail was up Detroit River and the St. Clair, threading our way among its many verdant islands and rich shores graced with numerous pretty villages. At 9 p.m. we reached Port Huron and its Canadian opposite neighbor, Sarnia. At this point is the southern outlet of Lake Huron, distant seventy-three miles from Detroit. Sarnia is also the western depot of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, while Windsor, facing Detroit, terminates the Canadian Great Western. From Sarnia, passing old Fort Gratiot, over to Port Huron, the railway ferry boat, propelled by the current only, transfers its passengers to the cars of the Grand Trunk line, on Michigan soil, and by a short branch intersects the Michigan Central Railroad, a few miles west of Detroit. For over twelve hundred miles this iron road, fitly named the Grand Trunk, transports our Western products. Entering Lake Huron, with its innumerable islands and almost wilderness shores, our sail through it, of two hundred and seventy-five miles in all, brought us early, on the 2d of August, off Saginaw and Thunder Bays, its western arms, with Presque Isle, the Great Manitoulin Island, bearing north by east; and by noon, we reached Point de Tour, at the outlet of St. Mary's River, three hundred miles from Detroit, lying opposite to Drummond's Island.