Ascend the St. Clair
Leaving the channel of the river and the cluster of islands at its entrance, we stretched northward across Lake St. Clair. This beautiful lake, though three times the size of the Lake of Geneva, is a mere pond compared with the enormous seas in its neighbourhood. About one o’clock we entered the river St. Clair, (which, like the Detroit, is rather a strait or channel than a river,) forming the communication between Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron. Ascending this beautiful river, we had, on the right, part of the western district of Upper Canada, and on the left the Michigan territory. The shores on either side, though low and bounded always by the line of forest, were broken into bays and little promontories, or diversified by islands, richly wooded, and of every variety of form. The bateaux of the Canadians, or the canoes of the Indians, were perpetually seen gliding among these winding channels, or shooting across the river from side to side, as if playing at hide-and-seek among the leafy recesses. Now and then a beautiful schooner, with white sails, relieved against the green masses of foliage, passed us, gracefully curtseying and sidling along. Innumerable flocks of wild fowl were disporting among the reedy islets, and here and there the great black loon was seen diving and dipping, or skimming over the waters. As usual, the British coast is here the most beautiful and fertile, and the American coast the best settled and cleared. Along the former I see a few isolated log-shanties, and groups of Indian lodges; along the latter, several extensive clearings, and some hamlets and rising villages. The facility afforded by the American steam-boats for the transport of goods and sale of produce, &c., is one reason of this. There is a boat, for instance, which leaves Detroit every morning for Fort Gratiot, stopping at the intermediate “landings.” We are now moored at a place called “Palmer’s Landing,” for the purpose of taking in wood for the Lake voyage. This process has already occupied two hours, and is to detain us two more, though there are fourteen men employed in flinging logs into the wood-hold. Meantime I have been sketching and lounging about the little hamlet, where there is a good grocery-store, a sawing-mill worked by steam, and about twenty houses.
I was amused at Detroit to find the phraseology of the people imbued with metaphors taken from the most familiar mode of locomotion. “Will you take in wood?” signifies, will you take refreshment? “Is your steam up?” means, are you ready? The common phrase, “go ahead,” has I suppose, the same derivation. A witty friend of mine once wrote to me not to be lightly alarmed at the political and social ferments in America, nor mistake the whizzing of the safety-valves for the bursting of the boilers!