The whole voyage, from Buffalo and Detroit, had indeed been a novel and fairy scene.

We were now some 350 miles north-west of the latter city.

We had been a couple of days on board, in the area of the sea-like Huron, before we entered the St.Mary's straits.

The Superior, being the second steamer built on the Lakes,[14] had proved herself a staunch boat.
[Footnote 14: The first steamer built on the Lakes was called the "Walk-in-the-Water," after an Indian chief of that name; it was launched at Black Rock, Niagara River, in 1818, and visited Michilimackinack in the summer of that year.] The circumstances of this trip were peculiar, and the removal of a detachment of the army to so remote a point in a time of profound peace, had stimulated migratory enterprise.

The measure was, in truth, one of the results of the exploring expedition to the North-West in 1820, and designed to curb and control the large Indian population on this extreme frontier, and to give security to the expanding settlements south of this point.