Detroit means "the strait," and the original Indian names for the
river mean "the place of the turned channel." The early visitors who
reached it by boat at night or in dark weather, and were inattentive
to the involved currents, always remarked, as the Indians did before
them, that owing to these extraordinary involutions of the waters,
when the sun appeared again it always seemed to rise in the wrong
place. The French under La Salle were the first Europeans who passed
through the river, and in 1701 the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, who
received grants from Louis XIV., came and founded Fort Pontchartrain
there, naming it after the French Minister of Marine, around which a
settlement afterwards grew, to which the French sent colonists at
intervals. The British got possession in 1760, and it successfully
resisted the conspiracy and attacks of the Ojibway Indian chief
Pontiac for over a year, the garrison narrowly escaping massacre. The
United States, after the Revolution, sent out General St. Clair as
Governor, and his name was given the lake to the northward. Detroit
was a frontier post in the War of 1812, being alternately held by
British and Americans. In 1824 it had about fifteen hundred people and
became a city. It now has three hundred and fifty thousand population,
and its commercial importance may be estimated from the fact that the
whole enormous traffic of the Lakes passes in front of the city during
the seven months that navigation is open, the procession of craft
often reaching sixty thousand vessels in the season. Detroit also has
extensive and varied manufactures. It has a gradually rising surface
and broad and well-paved streets on a rectangular plan, with several
avenues radiating from a centre, like the spokes of a wheel. The
central square is the Campus Martius, an expansion, about a half-mile
from the river, of Woodward Avenue, the chief street. Here is an
elaborate City Hall, the principal public building, having in front a
magnificent Soldiers' Monument. The suburbs are attractive, and there
are various pleasant parks and rural cemeteries, the leading Park of
Belle Isle, covering seven hundred acres, being to the northeastward,
with a good view over Lake St. Clair. Fort Wayne, the elaborate
defensive work of Detroit, is on the river just below the city, and
has a small garrison of regular troops. It is yet incomplete, and is
designed to be the most extensive fortification on the northern
frontier, commanding the important passage between Lakes Huron and
Erie and the railway routes east and west.
The peninsula of Michigan was originally covered with the finest
forests, so that lumbering has always been a leading industry of the
people. The greater portion of its pine woods, however, has been cut
off, so that that branch is declining; but its ample supply of hard
woods has made the State a great manufacturer of furniture, which is
shipped all over the country. Thirty-eight miles west of Detroit, on
the Huron River, is the city of Ann Arbor, with a population of
fifteen thousand. Here are the extensive buildings of the University
of Michigan, the leading educational establishment of the northwest,
attended by over three thousand students, of whom a large number are
young women. It is richly endowed, and has departments of law and
medicine, as well as of literature and science, a large library and an
observatory. The State makes a liberal annual contribution for its
support, raised by taxation, it being governed by eight regents
elected by the people. At the northern extremity of the Michigan
Peninsula is the Strait of Mackinac, through which Lake Michigan
discharges into Lake Huron. This water way is about four miles wide.
In the strait is Mackinac Island, about nine miles in circumference,
which was early held by the French on account of its strategic
importance, but, being taken by the English in 1760, was captured by
Pontiac when he organized the Indian revolt against the British in
1763, and all its inhabitants massacred. It is now a military post and
reservation of the United States. This rocky and wooded island
contains much picturesque scenery, and is a favorite summer resort,
its weird legends, fresh breezes, good fishing and clear waters being
the attraction. It was an early post of the northwestern fur-traders,
and here was founded one of the frontier trading-stations of the Astor
Fur Company in the early nineteenth century by John Jacob Astor of New
York, the building in the little village being still known as the
Astor House.