THE UPPER PENINSULA. 399 



or granite systems, has a soil by no means naturally fertile, and that under 

 unfavorable circumstances, so much has been accomplished in that 'land of 

 gray rock aud shaggy wood,' is due to the energy, enterprise and free labor 

 of its population." 



Comparing these with the soils of Michigan and the Mississippi valley, he 

 remarks: "On the other hand, the States comprised within the immense 

 valley of the Mississippi have a soil unexcelled for fertility in the world. It 

 is composed, in great part, of drift and alluvium, not directly derived from 

 the rocks lying below. Commencing at the chains of trap and primary rocks 

 which bound the shores of Lake Superior, and extending southerly, we find a 

 deep mass of sands, gravels and clays spread, as by some deluge, over the 

 whole country, often deeply covering and concealing the underlying rocks, 

 and composed of the fragments of a great variety of rocks, among which 

 limestone and trap are conspicuous. The immense belt of limestone which 

 nearly surrounds our peninsula, and the great abundance of trap rocks further 

 north, have furnished largely to the soil those mingled and fertile materials 

 which have constituted it one of the best in the Union, and especially suited 

 to the production of wheat." 



The bearing of these facts upon the constitution, and upon the horticultural 

 as well as the agricultural capacity of the arable soils of the upper peninsula 

 is too obvious to require either comment or explanation. 



Alexander Campbell of Marquette, in an address delivered in Kepresenta- 

 tive hall, Lansing, February 6th, 1861, says: " The far-seeing sage and 

 philosopher, Dr. Franklin, when, as an American minister in Paris, he 

 was fixing the boundary line between the United States and Great Britain, 

 saw something of the importance of this country in the future. At that 

 time he had access to the journals and charts of a corps of French engineers, 

 who had sloops and were exploring Lake Superior when Quebec fell to the 

 British ; from which charts, he tells us, he ' drew the line through Lake Su- 

 perior to include the most and the best of the copper to the United States.' 

 *And,' says he, * the time will come when drawing that line will be considered 

 the greatest service he ever rendered to his country.' " 



In describing the climate, he in effect, says that while a common impres- 

 sion respecting the winters is that they are frigid and severe beyond endurance, 

 and while the average yearly temperature is seven degrees lower than that of 

 Detroit or Chicago, aud while it is also true that the winters are longer and 

 the snows deeper, such is the bracing and life-giving power of the summer 

 air that it has become more than a Saratoga for the jaded business man and 

 the invalid ; while among its most valued citizens, are hundreds who owe their 

 lives to the recuperating agencies of the climate, and their experience is that 

 the winters are the pleasantest part of the year; that the vitality they impart 

 is a positive luxury, raising them above the debility and the feverish colds 

 and coughs so common in lower latitudes. 



"It embraces an area of 16,237 square miles — territory sufficient for a 

 State — the coast of which is washed by the waters of Lakes Michigan, Huron, 

 the St. Mary's river and Lake Superior, in all a coast border of nearly one 

 thousand miles, and enriched with some of the finest natural harbors in the 

 world." 



While the mineral deposits are of primary importance, the country is by 

 no means without advantages as an agricultural region. It cannot be ex- 

 pected to prove as well adapted to such pursuits as are Illinois or lower Michi- 



