Part 7 (1/2)
”By those best acquainted with the value of these lands--and who are familiar with that portion of the State--they are estimated at $10 per acre, on the completion of the road. This will give the company the sum of $6,600,000. And if the road when fully equipped costs $30,000 per mile, then the gross cost will be $10,500,000; which by the proceeds of the land grant will be reduced to the sum of $3,900,000, and will reduce the actual cost of the road to $11,142,85 per mile. Anything like fair success in the construction of the road will enable the company to do it, after applying the proceeds of the land grant, for about _eleven thousand dollars per mile_. Such a result will not only give to the country all the advantages of this much-needed work; but when done the capital stock must prove to be a good paying investment.”
CHAPTER X.
Mackinaw, the site for a great central city -- The Venice of the lakes -- Early importance as a central position -- Nicolet -- Compared geographically with other points -- Immense chain of coast -- Future prospects -- Temperature -- Testimony of the Jesuit fathers -- Healthfulness of the climate -- Dr. Drake on Mackinaw -- Resort for invalids -- Water currents of commerce -- Surface drained by them -- Soil of the northern and southern peninsulas of Michigan -- Physical resources -- Present proprietors of Mackinaw -- Plan of the city -- Streets -- Avenues -- Park -- Lots and blocks for churches and public purposes -- Inst.i.tutions of learning and objects of benevolence -- Fortifications -- Docks and ferries -- Materials for building -- Harbors -- Natural beauty of the site for a city -- Mountain ranges -- Interior lakes -- Fish -- Game.
Ferris, in his ”States and Territories of the Great West,” says: ”If one were to point out, on the map of North America, a site for a great central city in the lake region, it would be in the immediate vicinity of the Straits of Mackinaw. A city so located would have the command of the mineral trade, the fisheries, the furs, and the lumber, of the entire North. It might become the metropolis of a great commercial empire. It would be the Venice of the Lakes.” Mackinaw, both straits and peninsula, was so naturally the key point of the great system of northern lakes and their connection with the Mississippi, that while the New England colonies were yet but infant and feeble settlements, the Indians of the northwest, the Jesuit missionaries, the French voyagers, all made Mackinaw the point from whence they diverged--in all directions. When Philadelphia and Baltimore had not begun, and when the sites of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis were unknown places in the wilderness, Nicolet took his departure from Quebec in search of the mysterious river of the west. In pa.s.sing to meet the Indians at Green Bay, he was the first to notice the Straits of Mackinaw. About thirty years after, James Marquette established, on the northern sh.o.r.e of the straits, the Mission of St. Ignace. Here, amidst the wilds and solitudes of the North American forests, and on the sh.o.r.es of its great inland seas, Marquette and Joliet planned their expedition as we have already described, and it was Mackinaw and not New Orleans or New York that the lines radiated from to the earliest settlements of the west.
Mackinaw presents one of the most remarkable geographical positions on the earth. Constantinople on the Bosphorus, the Straits of Gibraltar, Singapore on the Strait of Malacca, and the Isthmus of Panama, are the only ones which seem to present a parallel. The two former have been for ages renowned as the most important in the commercial world. Singapore has rapidly become the key and centre of Asiatic navigation, at which may be found the s.h.i.+pping and people of all commercial nations, and Panama is now the subject of negotiation among the most powerful nations with a view to the exceeding importance of its commercial position. Geographically, Mackinaw is not inferior to either. From the northwest to the southeast, midland of the North American continent, there stretches a vast chain of lakes and rivers dividing the continent nearly midway. This chain of Lakes and rivers is in the whole nearly three thousand miles long. At the Straits of Mackinaw the whole system of land and water centres. The three greatest lakes of this system, Superior, Huron, and Michigan, are spread around, pointing to the straits, while between them three vast peninsulas of land press down upon the waters until they are compressed into a river of four miles in width. On the north is the peninsula of Canada, on the south that of Michigan, and on the west that of the copper region, all of which are divided only by the narrow Straits of Mackinaw. Here are three inland seas of near eighty thousand square miles and about five thousand miles of coast. From coast to coast and isle to isle of this immense expanse of waters, navigation must be kept up, increasing with the ever-increasing population on their sh.o.r.es till tens of millions are congregated around. Of all this vast navigation and increasing commerce, Mackinaw is the natural centre around which it exists, and toward which it must tend by an inevitable law of necessity. Superior, Huron, and Michigan have no water outlet to each other but that which flows through the Straits of Mackinaw, and its geographical position is unrivaled in America. Whoever lives twenty years from this time will find Mackinaw a populous and wealthy city, the Queen of the Lakes.
If any serious objection be made to the site of a city at this place, it can only be that the climate is _supposed_ to be cold. But, what is climate? Climate is relative and composed of many elements. The first is temperature, as determined by lat.i.tude. The Straits of Mackinaw are in the _lat.i.tude_ of 45 46'. North of this lies a part of Canada, containing at least a million of inhabitants. North of this lat.i.tude lies the city of Quebec in America; London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, in Europe; Odessa and Astracan, in Asia. North of it, are in Prussia, Poland, and Russia, dense populations, and a great agricultural production. The lat.i.tude of Mackinaw, therefore, is in the midst of that temperate zone, where commerce, population, cities, and the arts have most flourished. The climate, however, is actually milder than the lat.i.tude represents. The isothermal line, which pa.s.ses through Mackinaw, also pa.s.ses in Wisconsin, nearly as low as 43, and in the east also deflects south. This is the true line of vegetation; and thus it appears that the actual climate of Mackinaw is about that of 43 30'.
The same isothermal line, pa.s.ses through Prussia and Poland, the finest grain countries of Europe. The climate of the straits is, therefore, as favorable as that of most civilized States, either for the production of food or the pursuits of commerce.
The Marquette Journal gives some items relative to the winter of that locality. The mercury was not below zero until the evening of January 8th, and then only 2 below. The highest point reached in January, was 20 above, and lowest 16 below zero. In February, the highest point was 55 above, the lowest 20 below zero. The average temperature for the three winter months had been about 15 above zero. In the ”Relations of the Jesuits,” 3d. volume, 1671, it is stated that the ”winter in Mackinaw is short, not commencing until after Christmas and closing the middle of March, at which time spring begins.”
The Lake Superior Journal for February 23, 1859, says:--
”We are now within five days of the first spring month, and have scarcely had a brush of winter yet. But very few days has the thermometer been below zero, and but a single day as low as ten degrees below. Most of the time it has been mild. For two weeks past, there has been a blandness and mellowness in the atmosphere, which was enough to cause the moodiest heart to sing for joy. There was a flare-up, however, for a single day (the 20th), when the storm descended, the wind blew, and there was great commotion in the elements, but the next day all was calm and delightful as before. We have quite a depth of snow on the ground, have had fine sleighing since the 10th of November. But our bay has not been closed more than a week at a time this winter, and but a few days in all. It is open now, and 'the stern monarch of the year,' seems to be melting away into spring.
”In regard to the healthfulness of Mackinaw, it may be remarked that the northern regions of the earth are everywhere the most healthy. Yet there are differences in situation and exposure which make differences in health. Mackinaw has now been known and settled for two hundred years, a period long enough to have both tested its healthiness, and created a permanent reputation. The Jesuit Missionaries, the frontier traders, and the French voyageurs, have lived and died there; yet we have never heard of any prevalent disease, or local miasm. It seems to have been the favorite resort of all the frontiers men, who inhabited or hunted in the region of the Northern Lakes. In recent years, it has been visited by men of science, and accomplished physicians, and their report has been uniformly in favor of its superior healthiness. Dr.
Drake, who visited Mackinaw in 1842, for the express purpose of examining the climate and topography, says, 'From this description, it appears, that the conditions which are held to be necessary to the generation of autumnal fever, are at their _minimum_ in this place; and when we consider this fact, with its lat.i.tude nearly 46, and its alt.i.tude above the sea, from six to eight hundred feet, we are prepared to find it almost exempt from that disease; and such from the testimony of its inhabitants is the fact, especially in reference to the intermittent fevers, which, I was a.s.sured by many respectable persons, never originated among the people, and would cease spontaneously in those who returned, or came with it from other places.'
”Speaking of this region as a place of resort for invalids, the same writer says:
”'The three great reservoirs of clear and cold water, Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, with the Island of Mackinac in their hydrographical centre, offer a delightful hot-weather asylum to all invalids who need an escape from the crowded cities, paludal exhalations, sultry climates and officious medication. Lake Erie lies too far south, and is bordered by too many swamps to be included in the salutiferous group.'
”'On reaching Mackinaw, an agreeable change of climate is at once experienced.' 'To his jaded sensibilities all around him is fresh and invigorating.'” Dr. Drake looked upon Mackinaw as one of the healthiest portions of the whole Northwest, and to which, in time, tens of thousands of persons, even from the furthest south, would resort to be reinvigorated in body, refreshed in mind, and delighted with the contemplation of the sublime and beautiful scenery in that region of expansive waters, of rocky coasts, of forest-bearing lands, and distant islands.
”Here the great currents, which are the natural lines of _movement_ for the people, commerce, and productions of half North America, concentrate around a single point. No other place has the same advantage of _radial lines_. Quebec is relatively on the Atlantic. The upper end of Lake Superior is comparatively on an inhospitable land.
Chicago is at a lateral point on the south end of Lake Michigan,--three hundred miles from the main channel of commerce. At Mackinaw concentrate all the radial lines of water navigation in the upper lakes. Which will be seen, if we take the following distances of direct navigation from this point to the princ.i.p.al points on the upper lakes:
”From Mackinaw to Fon du Lac (west end of Lake Superior), 550 miles; to Chicago, 350; to east end of Georgian Bay, 300; to Detroit, 300; to Buffalo, 700; to Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1,600.
”Here are two important points to be observed. Any city which, by compet.i.tion, or the rivalry of production, or the power of wealth, can be supposed to interfere with the growth of Mackinaw, must arise on Lakes Michigan or Superior; for _there_ only can be any commercial mart to receive and distribute the products around those immense bodies of water. But in consequence of the form and surface of those lakes, no lines of transit to the waters of the St. Lawrence can be made so short or cheap as the water transit through the Straits of Mackinaw. The concentration of products will, therefore, be ultimately made at Mackinaw, for all that immense district of country which lies around the upper lakes. Again, it will be seen that as the water transportation to that point is the best, so the radial line from that point to the Atlantic by water, is much the shortest. A steam propeller, leaving any one of the princ.i.p.al points on the upper lakes for either Buffalo or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, must, as compared with Mackinaw, pa.s.s over the following lines of transit, viz., From Fon du Lac (west end of Lake Superior) to Buffalo, 1,250 miles; Chicago, Ill., 1,000; Mackinaw, Michigan, 700; Fon du Lac to the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, 2,150; Chicago to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1,900; Mackinaw to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1,600.
”It must be granted, at once, that for any water communication with the ports of the Atlantic, Mackinaw has greatly the advantage over any commercial point in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Northern Michigan, or Northwest Canada. How great this advantage is, we shall see from the consideration of the surface drained by the water current of Mackinaw. An inspection of the map will show that from Long Lake, above lat.i.tude 50, to the south end of Lake Michigan, below lat.i.tude, 40, and from the Lake of the Woods, longitude 95, to Saginaw Bay, longitude 83, the country is entirely within the drainage of lakes and river whose currents concentrate at the Straits of Mackinaw. This surface comprehends a square of over six hundred miles on the side, or nearly four hundred thousand square miles.
Deducting the surface of the lakes, it is enough to make eight States as large as Ohio. In that whole surface, there is not a single point which can rival Mackinaw as a point of _distribution for the products of that country_. That the advantage by water lines is in favor of Mackinaw, we have shown. That it will be equally so by railroad, is evident, from the fact that Mackinaw city to Port Huron, and thence to Buffalo, need not exceed four hundred miles, while that from Chicago to Buffalo, in a direct line is five hundred and fifteen miles.
”From any other point of Lakes Michigan or Superior, where a city can be built, it is further. Mackinaw is, therefore, the natural centre of drainage and distribution for a surface equal to that of eight large States, and whose products, whether of field, fruit, or mines, are superabundant in whatever creates commerce, sustains population, or affords the materials of industry.
”We are now considering Mackinaw in a state of nature, and must look to its natural products as the first and greatest elements of success.
We have considered its climate, its water currents, its lines of navigation, and the surface drainage for its support. The latter within a s.p.a.ce where there can be no compet.i.tion, we have found to be but little less than 400,000 square miles. Vast as this is, it could not support a great commercial city, if that were a barren plain.
”Hence, we must now consider how far the products of the earth will sustain the city, which such lines of navigation, such means of commerce, and such an extensive, surface leads us to antic.i.p.ate.
”The soil is the first thing to be examined. The peninsula of Michigan--that of Wisconsin and the Copper region--of Minnesota and Canada, which make up the larger portion of surface drained by the currents of Mackinaw, has been supposed to be cold and wet. But is it more so than northwestern Ohio or northern Illinois, which, but twenty years since, were scarcely inhabited, but now are found to afford some of the richest lands in the country? On this point, we have numerous and competent witnesses, and whatever character they give to the country, we shall adopt as the true criterion of its producing resources.