Toward one of these grassy glades, which was spread on an almost
imperceptible acclivity, and which might have contained some fifty
or sixty acres of land, the reader is now requested to turn his
eyes. Far in the wilderness as was the spot, four men were there,
and two of them had even some of the appliances of civilization
about them. The woods around were the then unpeopled forest of
Michigan; and the small winding reach of placid water that was just
visible in the distance, was an elbow of the Kalamazoo, a beautiful
little river that flows westward, emptying its tribute into the vast
expanse of Lake Michigan. Now, this river has already become known,
by its villages and farms, and railroads and mills; but then, not a
dwelling of more pretension than the wigwam of the Indian, or an
occasional shanty of some white adventurer, had ever been seen on
its banks. In that day, the whole of that fine peninsula, with the
exception of a narrow belt of country along the Detroit River, which
was settled by the French as far back as near the close of the
seventeenth century, was literally a wilderness. If a white man
found his way into it, it was as an Indian trader, a hunter, or an
adventurer in some other of the pursuits connected with border life
and the habits of the savages.
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31