Thirty-five miles southwest of Cleveland, and some distance inland
from Lake Erie, is Oberlin, where, in a fertile and prosperous
district, is the leading educational foundation of Northern
Ohio--Oberlin College--named in memory of the noted French
philanthropist, and established in 1833 by the descendants of the
Puritan colonists, to carry out their idea of thorough equality in
education. It admits students without distinction of sex or color, and
has about thirteen hundred, almost equally divided between the sexes,
occupying a cluster of commodious buildings. To the westward is the
beautiful ravine of Black River, which gets out to the lake by falling
over a rocky ledge in two streams, and on the peninsula formed by its
forks is the town of Elyria. Maria Ely was the wife of the founder of
the settlement, who named it after her in this peculiar reversible
way. This romantic stream bounds the "Fire Lands" of the Western
Reserve, a tract of nearly eight hundred square miles abutting on the
lake shore, which Connecticut set apart for colonization by her
people, who had been sufferers from destructive fires in the towns of
New London, Fairfield and Norwalk on Long Island Sound. They secured
this wilderness in the early part of the nineteenth century, and their
chief town is Sandusky, with twenty-five thousand population. Here
lived most of the Eries, the Indian "tribe of the Cat," who fished in
Sandusky Bay, its upper waters being an archipelago of little green
islands abounding with water fowl. They were known to the adjoining
tribes as the "Neutral Nation," for they maintained two villages of
refuge on Sandusky River, between the warlike Indians of the east and
the west, and whoever entered their boundaries was safe from pursuit,
the sanctuary being rigidly observed. The early French missionaries
who found them in the seventeenth century speak of these anomalous
villages among the savages as having then been long in existence.
The name of Sandusky is a corruption of a Wyandot word meaning
"cold-water pools," the French having originally rendered it as
Sandosquet. The shores are low, but there is a good harbor and much
trade, and here is located the Ohio State Fish Hatchery. The railroads
are laid among the savannahs and lagoons, and one of the suburban
stations has been not inaptly named Venice. There are extensive
vineyards on the flat and sunny shores of the bay, and this is one of
the most prolific grape districts in the State. Sandusky Bay is a
broad sheet of water, in places six miles wide, and about twenty miles
long. Sandusky has a large timber trade, being noted for the
manufacture of hard woods. Out beyond the bold peninsula, protruding
into the lake at the entrance to the bay, is a group of islands
spreading over the southwestern waters of Lake Erie, of which Kelly's
Island is the chief, an archipelago formed largely from the _detritus_
washed out of the Detroit, Maumee and various other rivers flowing
into the head of the lake. Here the Erie Indians had a fortified
stronghold, whose outlines can still be traced. The most noted of the
group is Put-in-Bay Island, now a popular watering-place, which got
its name from Commodore Perry, who "put in" there with the captured
British fleet at the naval battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813. It
was from this place, just after his victory, that he sent the historic
despatch, giving him fame, "We have met the enemy and they are ours."
The killed of both fleets were buried side by side near the beach on
the island, the place being marked by a mound. The lovely sheet of
water of Put-in-Bay glistens in front, having the towns of
villa-crowned Gibraltar Island upon its surface. Vineyards and roses
abound, these islands, like the adjacent shores, being noted for their
wines.
The Maumee River, coming up from Fort Wayne, flows into the head of
Lake Erie, the largest stream on its southern coast. It comes from the
southwest through the region of the "Black Swamp," a vast district,
originally morass and forest, which has been drained to make a most
fertile country. This "miserable bog," as the original settlers
denounced it, when they were jolted over the rude corduroy roads that
sustained them upon the quaking morass, has since become the "prolific
garden" and "magnificent forest" described by the modern tourist. The
Maumee Valley was an almost continual battle-ground with the Indians
when "Mad Anthony Wayne" commanded on that frontier, he being called
by them the "Wind," because "he drives and tears everything before
him." For a quarter of a century border warfare raged along this
river, then known as the "Miami of the Lakes," and its chief
settlement, Toledo, passed its infancy in a baptism of blood and fire.
It was at the battle of Fallen Timbers, fought in 1794, almost on the
site of Toledo, that Wayne gave his laconic and noted "field orders."
General William Henry Harrison, then his aide, told Wayne just before
the battle he was afraid he would get into the fight and forget to
give "the necessary field orders." Wayne replied: "Perhaps I may, and
if I do, recollect that the standing order for the day is, charge the
rascals with the bayonets." Toledo is built on the flat surface on
both sides of the Maumee River and Bay, which make it a good harbor,
stretching six miles down to Lake Erie. There are a hundred thousand
population here, and this energetic reproduction of the ancient
Spanish city has named its chief newspaper the _Toledo Blade_. The
city has extensive railway connections and a large trade in lumber and
grain, coal and ores, and does much manufacturing, it being well
served with natural gas. A dozen grain elevators line the river
banks, and the factory smokes overhang the broad low-lying city like a
pall. To the westward, crossing the rich lands of the reclaimed swamp,
is the Indiana boundary, that State being here a broad and level
prairie, which also stretches northward into Michigan. The chief town
of Northern Indiana is South Bend, named from the sweeping southern
bend of St. Joseph River, on which it is built. This stream rises in
Michigan, and flows for two hundred and fifty miles over the prairie,
going down into Indiana and then back again to empty into Lake
Michigan. South Bend is noted for its carriage- and wagon-building
factories, and has several flourishing Roman Catholic institutions,
generally of French origin. To the westward spreads the level prairie,
with scant scenic attractions, though rich in agriculture, to the
shores of Lake Michigan, being gridironed with railways as Chicago is
approached.