CHEMICAL. DEPARTMENT. 408 



THE SOILS OF MICHIGAN. 



No. 99. — Chemical Department. 



No state in the union has suffered more in reputation from false state- 

 ments and ignorant misrepresentation than Michigan. At the time of its 

 first settlement, to the popular apprehension the far-off and unknown 

 Michigan was only, and would forever remain, the home of the wolf, the 

 Indian and ague. By the white man it was uninhabited and uninhabit- 

 able^. In a report made to a religious body in regard to the feasibility of 

 establishing missionary stations in order to christianize this heathen wild, 

 it was stated that the project was impracticable, " because only a narrow 

 strip along the border of the territory was inhabitable, the interior being a 

 vast and impenetrable swamp." 



In his address at the laying of the corner stone of the new capitol in 

 1872, Hon. W. A. Howard made the following extract from the report of 

 the surveyor general of Ohio, bearing date November 30, 1815: "The 

 country on the Indian boundary line, from the mouth of the great 

 Auglaize river and running thence for about fifty miles is (with few excep- 

 tions) low, wet land, with a very thick growth of underbrush, intermixed 

 with very bad marshes, but generally very heavily timbered with beech, 

 Cottonwood, oak, etc.; thence continuing north and extending from the 

 Indian boundary eastward, the number and extent of the swamps increase, 

 with the addition of numbers of lakes from twenty chains to two or three 

 miles across. Many of the lakes have extensive marshes adjoining their 

 margins, sometimes thickly covered with a species of pine called tamarack, 

 and other places covered with a coarse, high grass and uniformly covered 

 from six inches to three feet (and more at times) with water. The mar- 

 gins of these lakes are not the only places where swamps are found, for 

 they are interspersed throughout the whole country, and filled with water, 

 as above stated, and varying in extent. The intermediate space between 

 the swamps and lakes, which is probably near one-half of the country, is 

 with a very few exceptions a poor, barren, sandy land, on which scarcely any 

 vegetation grows, except very small scrubby oaks. In many places that 

 part which may be called dry land is composed of little short sand hills, 

 forming a kind of deep basins, the bottoms of many of which are composed 

 of marsh, similar to the above described. The streams are generally 

 narrow and very deep, compared with their width, the shores and bottoms 

 of which are (with a very few exceptions) swampy beyond description; 

 and it is with the utmost difficulty that a place can be found over which 

 horses can be conveyed. 



"A circumstance peculiar to that country is exhibited in many of the 



