mountain; its limestone cliffs impending over the water seemed larger; the white fort—­white as snow—­built from the quarries of the island, looked more commanding, and the rocky crest above it seemed almost to rise to the clouds.  There was a good deal of illusion in all this, as we were convinced as we came nearer, but Mackinaw with its rocks rising from the most transparent waters that the earth pours out from her springs, is a stately object in any condition of the atmosphere.  The captain of our steamer allowed us but a moment at Mackinaw; a moment to gaze into the clear waters, and count the fish as they played about without fear twenty or thirty feet below our steamer, as plainly seen as if they lay in the air; a moment to look at the fort on the heights, dazzling the eyes with its new whiteness; a moment to observe the habitations of this ancient village, some of which show you roofs and walls of red-cedar bark confined by horizontal strips of wood, a kind of architecture between the wigwam and the settler’s cabin.  A few baskets of fish were lifted on board, in which I saw trout of enormous size, trout a yard in length, and white-fish smaller, but held perhaps in higher esteem, and we turned our course to the straits which lead into Lake Michigan.

I remember hearing a lady say that she was tired of improvements, and only wanted to find a place that was finished, where she might live in peace.  I think I shall recommend Mackinaw to her.  I saw no change in the place since my visit to it five years ago.  It is so lucky as to have no back-country, it offers no advantages to speculation of any sort; it produces, it is true, the finest potatoes in the world, but none for exportation.  It may, however, on account of its very cool summer climate, become a fashionable watering-place, in which case it must yield to the common fate of American villages and improve, as the phrase is.

Letter XXXII.

Journey from Detroit to Princeton.

Princeton, Illinois, July 31, 1846.

Soon after leaving the island of Mackinaw we entered the straits and passed into Lake Michigan.  The odor of burnt leaves continued to accompany us, and from the western shore of the lake, thickly covered with wood, we saw large columns of smoke, several miles apart, rising into the hazy sky.  The steamer turned towards the eastern shore, and about an hour before sunset stopped to take in wood at the upper Maneto island, where we landed and strolled into the forest.  Part of the island is high, but this, where we went on shore, consists of hillocks and hollows of sand, like the waves of the lake in one of its storms, and looking as if successive storms had swept them up from the bottom.  They were covered with an enormous growth of trees which must have stood for centuries.  We admired the astonishing transparency of the water on this shore, the clean sands without any intermixture of mud, the pebbles of almost chalky whiteness, and the stones in the edge of the lake, to which adhered no slime, nor green moss, nor aquatic weed.  In the light-green depths, far down, but distinctly seen, shoals of fish, some of them of large size, came quietly playing about the huge hull of our steamer.