On one side of this island of wood lies the little village or large hamlet of Schoolcraft.  Here we were most cordially welcomed by General Boden, and all of his fine descendants.  The head of this family is approaching seventy, but is still hale and hearty.  His head is as white as snow, and his face as red as a cherry.  A finer old man one seldom sees.  Temperance, activity, the open air, and a good conscience, have left him a noble ruin; if ruin he can yet be called.  He owes the last blessing, as he told us himself, to the fact that he kept clear of the whirlwind of speculation that passed over this region some ten or fifteen years since.  His means are ample; and the harvest being about to commence, he invited me to the field.

The peculiar ingenuity of the American has supplied the want of laborers, in a country where agriculture is carried on by wholesale, especially in the cereals, by an instrument of the most singular and elaborate construction.  This machine is drawn by sixteen or eighteen horses, attached to it laterally, so as to work clear of the standing grain, and who move the whole fabric on a moderate but steady walk.  A path is first cut with the cradle on one side of the field, when the machine is dragged into the open place.  Here it enters the standing grain, cutting off its heads with the utmost accuracy as it moves.  Forks beneath prepare the way, and a rapid vibratory motion of a great number of two-edged knives effect the object.  The stalks of the grain can be cut as low or as high as one pleases, but it is usually thought best to take only the heads.  Afterward the standing straw is burned, or fed off, upright.

The impelling power which causes the great fabric to advance also sets in motion the machinery within it As soon as the heads of the grain are severed from the stalks, they pass into a receptacle, where, by a very quick and simple process, the kernels are separated from the husks.  Thence all goes into a fanning machine, where the chaff is blown away.  The clean grain falls into a small bin, whence it is raised by a screw elevator to a height that enables it to pass out at an opening to which a bag is attached.  Wagons follow the slow march of the machine, and the proper number of men are in attendance.  Bag after bag is renewed, until a wagon is loaded, when it at once proceeds to the mill, where the grain is soon converted into flour.  Generally the husbandman sells to the miller, but occasionally he pays for making the flour, and sends the latter off, by railroad, to Detroit, whence it finds its way to Europe, possibly, to help feed the millions of the old world.  Such, at least, was the course of trade the past season.  As respects this ingenious machine, it remains only to say that it harvests, cleans, and bags from twenty to thirty acres of heavy wheat, in the course of a single summer’s day!  Altogether it is a gigantic invention, well adapted to meet the necessities of a gigantic country.