V A ATB From the Library of William Neely of Negaunee Presented by his daughter, Mrs. Oscar Hanson of Bessemer >H der"a O0 > ODO (A0 zi 400 0 Lake Superior Region OF MICHIGAN. CHAPEL BEACH AT PICTURED ROCKS. NOWHERE does one feel more deeply the omnipotence, and majesty, of God, than when sitting on the shore of the Great Lake, and, whether it be wild or mild, gazing in silence across its limitless surface. At no time is one more permeated with the beauty of His creation, than when, in equal silence, one stands on a hilltop of the country, and sees the broad lake sweeping the horizon, the ranges of rugged hills, the narrow valleys dressed in many exquisitely blended shades of green, threaded by ribbon-like streams, and dotted by tiny lakelets. High along the crests of the hills, one may in places trace the ancient shore line, showing that the lake once held all. Everywhere the rocks bear the marks of the slow travels of the glaciers from northeast to southwest, these having in a great measure given form to the land as Sr ir I t i i. F\ I; '.tix I \t jI A j: I2 *A."INCIAV tý \1 V- 1. V.Aý - I V ýl -1, V ýqw:4 rv (I' ~'~A ~ '?-Nv""-I -V8(IC N\I 1-1 F 1 -1~ 11111, I\t(~) >14~ ~I EI>~IV A~ D)VJ>,I OJ DN)lNOIP(Y()IN?1~\ C) 0 C 7< C C if if if C Af0%t - * a S t Sc'' j,-.jJ =IC '~" ' " ~3~L. h;aP '~c~ ~L~i~-: ~~i:-. -*;~. Y~~Ol~a~; "-i; "`0~-J~ F~eE;LL; -~~t~a.Z.~thp-, nF iri it ~c~. ~- -~--.i'Z `~ ~c~ ~2~C~ ~~'":~:;hi' ~IL~ V L: \\ VFR)II EAG(LIL 1;\1AIRBC) R. /14 0 -I.' 0 Lz4 0 ----- ~--~,-~--- -c'/,;~ ~ - / 4/ It ( S(1 2 / ut VIEN OF\/ ): LKB FAN NNY-I1 ()OE-011kHAB. it now stands, and swept away the previously existing forms of life. The Archaeologist is busy tracing the faint signs of this previous existence, and the succeeding reign of a people and life now unknown. The Moundbuilders have left us relics. These, or some other prehistoric people, opened and worked the veins of native copper in many places, for ladders, chisels, hammers, and the distinct markings of old levels have been found in some parts of the country. Many believe the peculiar formation called The Natural Wall, near Lake Linden, is their work. In some ways it curiously resembles the stone work of the Aztecs in Mexico. They, and their greater civilization, went down before the more barbarous tribes, even as the Goths and Vandals overflowed, and swept away the greater civilization of Rome, with its greater degeneracy and vice. Archaeologists-some of them-believe that these were the people who are said to have crossed Behring Strait, and so identify them with the Mongolians. Why not rather believe that these were an earlier race, since here the very few records are ideographic, and there they are many and. show the later development of the hierogliph. Why not believe rather that here is the cradle of the world, and mortal man returns again to his own, to show his final triumph where he first fell, and so fulfill the ancient Aztec tradition of the return of the White Gods, in the perfect development of the white, or spiritual, man. Centuries passed after their time, unrecorded save by a few traditions of the poetic indian fancy. The early French explorers gave little attention to this peninsula, "where only furs and copper ores were found," beyond including it in their general claim of territory for the monarch they served. They only reported it as rich and valuable for future development. The early Missionaries established a mission at the Sault in the 17th century, but left the peninsula above unvisited. The Fur Traders had stations along the lake, and the picturesque class of French Canadians known as z'oyag-enrs, plied the paddle, and chanted their chansons along the rocky coast as early as 775. The v(o'a,'ur with his red blanket, or skin suit, his tassled cap, and the melodious chant with which he kept time to his vigorous paddle, has passed. There still lingers in Houghton County one old man who, long ago, followed the wild life of which the voyaycur was the most picturesque type. He saw the wild beauty of rock, wave, and plant, but was too ignorant, or too wise, to dissect it. His was not the critical, but the loving eye. He paddled blithely by the miles of Pictured Rocks, and looked fearlessly up their hundreds of feet of precipitous wall, where there was hardly landing for the sea fowl; he scanned the beautiful and grotesque shapes wrought by the washing waters; the varied schemes emblazoned upon them by the water colors of Nature; he saw the grandeur, the awful threatening beauty, but he cared not at all that it was a great outcrop of the magnificent sandstone underlying all that part of the peninsula, and forming for miles the shore which holds the mighty waters in bounds. He knew and cared nothing that here the world seems to have been born, and that the geologist of today would revel in abundant evidences of the azoic, carbonaceous, mesozoic, tertiary, and glacial periods; nothing that the great basin of the lake is lacustrine in character, as long as it furnished him with an abundance of planked white fish, and firm-meated trout. He rather shunned Marquette County with its huronian rocks filled with masses of iron, hematite, and magnetic ores. These hills were the home of evil spirits, and here, to his simple mind, the appalling thunder and lightning gave distinct evidence of God's wrath. He preferred rather the igneous rocks of the copper country, but they might be greenstone, basalt, amygdaloid, or any of the other forms of "trap" which sweeps around the great curve called Keeweenaw Point, if they gave harbors to shelter his boat, and the waves washed up agates and opals for his amusement. The dense forests satisfied his love for color, but these he scanned with a keener eye, as the home of the animals whose pelts he sought. Here he found the large white birch from whose bark he formed his canoe. He marked the maple which gave sweetness to his frugal home fare, and any driftwood furnished his fire. Only his commercial successor looked with covetous eyes on the forests of pine, and calculated the value of the birds-eye maple, cherry-birch, hemlock, oak, and cedar. Both left to the botanist, and the lover of beauty for its own sake, the enumeration of the many varieties which are purely ornamental, including maple, mountain ash, pin-cherry, spruce, and balsam. The botanist gloats over the flora, which owing to the broken character of the country is greatly varied. Keeweenaw County alone has more than an hundred varieties of sedges and rushes, many of them uncommon, including the coppercolored Eriophorum, and the Corex Exilis, found only here and in western New York. There are many sorts of orchids, including the very rare and beautiful Calypso; more of ferns, embracing the Ostrich fern, and the Aspodium Fragrans; there are a couple of rare primulas, and the ground is covered with the fragrant, and rapidly disappearing Trailing Arbutus, besides hundreds of the commoner shrubs and flowers which give color, and beauty to the forest. Many native growths have now disapeared, and new ones, like the Clematis, Virginia Creeper, and Blackberry have followed civilization. But the (voyagc'ur cared for none of these. His interest centered in the Kinnikinnik, with which he smoked the pipe of peace with each tribe, and the Rhus Glabra whose berries furnished saline flavoring for the aboriginies. He sought the wild strawberry, rasberry, blue-berry, high-bush whortle-berry, thimble-berry, and other wild fruits to add to his limited fare, and there his interest ended. He looked across the waters to the hills where "Red granite and quartz in the alchemic sun Fused their splendors of crimson and crystal in one" and admired the glory of color, and the sparkle of quartz crystals, but could he have known, he would have had a sincere contempt for the future mineralogist who would find his paradise among these hills, and think a lifetime too short for the study of the wealth of crystals and minerals, found here. Had he known that the ground was filled with gold, silver, copper, and iron it would not have drawn him from his wild life. He sought the denizens of the hills, not what lay hidden within them. The grouse, pigeon, duck, wild goose, and sometimes a wild turkey furnished his table, but the many birds were seldom tuneful, or brilliant in plumage, so he --~ii-T;---l ENT::: _R:-h -iTER~ r'.RSa ~' SEER7 Att 2As o 2 - 42-.;; ~ ~.2.. '2 -_ "- "-WI4'I ~: I 1i