The first impression a man has of the North-west is like Pats in St. Patrick's Cathedral,—"Begorra, it's bigger inside than out."

Take the map, and see what a little thin strip the upper peninsula of Michigan makes. Now start on the best train at St. Ignace in the morning, and it is eight at night before you reach the copper regions or the Gogebic Range. When I lived in St. Ignace, and the connections were poor, it took two days to travel from that port to Calumet. If we went by water we had to sail forty miles east before we doubled Point Detour; and then we threaded our way among scenes of beauty equal to the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence. Every mile of the way is alive with historic interest. In St. Ignace lie the bones of Father Marquette; across the Straits, Mackinaw City, where the terrible massacre occurred, spoken of by Parkman; midway, is Mackinaw Island, called by the Indians The Great Turtle.

Here to-day on the Island are the old block forts, and here the little iron safe in which John Jacob Astor kept his money when in the fur-trade. Full of natural beauty, to-day the past and present crowd one another. Here are Indians, half-breeds, and Americans, and modern hotels. There are no mosquitoes; for the Island is but three miles in diameter, and the wind blows too strong for them. Here you may find the lilac in full bloom on the Fourth of July, and in the fall delicious blue plums that have not been hurt by the black knot. The daylight is nearly eighteen hours long in midsummer. The people are sowing oats when the southern farmers in the State are thinking of cutting theirs. In April, near Grand Rapids, I picked the arbutus. In early May, at Vanderbilt, I picked it again, and saw pure white snow in patches in the woods. Later in May I saw it again north of the Straits of Mackinaw, and in June I found it in the Keweenak Peninsula. At Hancock I saw a foot of snow compressed under the cordwood, and some between buildings not exposed to the sun. On account of the lateness of the season, pease escape the bugs, which are elsewhere so destructive; and thousands of bushels of seed are sent every year to the upper Peninsula.

But to return to St. Ignace. It is so unlike any other American town, that I did not wonder at an old lady of over ninety, who was born there, speaking of her visit to Detroit as the time when she went to the States. Here the old Catholic church dates back to the early days of French settlement. The lots run from the water-front back. Your Frenchman must have a water-front, no matter how narrow. So the town was four miles long, and composed mostly of one street, which followed the water-front; and although there were four thousand people living there in 1884, and we had a mayor, the primeval forest came right into the city.

The only house I could get was new,—so new that we moved in while the floors were still wet. The lumber in it was green, and we could not open the sashes for months; but before winter came, the shrinkage caused the windows to rattle like castanets. To get our furniture there, we had to cross the railway tracks twice,—once the regular road, and then the branch which ran to the great furnace at the point. And yet so new was everything in this old town, that our street had not been graded, and our wagons had to cross land where they sunk up to the axles. A few miles up the road the deer, the wolves, and black bear lived; and no less than eleven deer were seen in the road at one time near Allenville. We moved in the month of June, and put up our base-burner, and started the fire.The climate is delicious from June to October; the air and waters are as clear as crystal. You can see fish forty feet below you, and the color of the pebbles at the bottom. There is an indescribable beauty about these northern shores; the tender green of the larch-fir, or tamarack, the different shades of blue-green among the cedars, the spruce, hemlock, and balsam, mixed with the lovely birch, and multi-colored rocks, make up some of the loveliest scenery on the continent. Little islands, so small that but one or two trees can find root, up to the islands that take hours to steam by, while the streams team with trout and grayling, the lakes with white-fish, muskalonge, and mackinaw trout and herring. Thousands of men are engaged in the fisheries, and millions of dollars are invested.

You sit at your door, and can see the home and people of old France, with their primitive canoe, and at the same time see propellers of three thousand tons' burden glide stately by.