Lake St. Clair. 155 



alone. In the township of Sarnia is a settlement of Chip- 

 pewa Indians, who reside in small log or bark houses of their 

 own erection, and employ their time, when not engaged in 

 lumbering or rafting, in the more precarious pursuit of game 

 and furs. 



LAKE ST. CLAIR. 



Lake Huron pours out its surplus waters at this southern 

 extremity, carrying in that direction the great chain of com- 

 munication by the River St. Clair. This river, which has 

 nothing remarkable about it, except the fertility of the 

 country through which it flows, expands into Lake St. Clair, 

 is about 26 miles long, and nearly the same in breadth. It 

 is a very shallow lake, but through it a ship-channel is cut, 

 and kept clear yearly, by dredging machines, from the 

 quickly accumulating alluvial deposit the river brings down. 

 The river discharges itself into the lake through six mouths, 

 each of them running lazily through long flats of mud, 

 clothed with a thick growth of every kind of aquatic and 

 swamp plant, whose roots, matting together, hold the mass 

 fast, and just make a consistency sufficient for the sportsman 

 to stand on, though the whole quivers and shakes with every 

 step. As may be inferred, the St. Clair flats afford one of, 

 if not the finest duck-shooting ground in the world ; there, 

 also, may be found the trumpeter swan, the teal, the mallard, 

 the canvass-back, the wood-duck, curlew, snipe, plover, and 

 the birds of prey that invariably hover round these delicious 

 morsels. But, as the best shooting is to be had when the 

 stormy weather has set in, the hunter must be a true disciple 

 of St. Hubert ; must be fortified against malaria, ague, and 

 swamp fever ; must be prepared to see no bed and enter no 



