540 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



And now the bull, not Irish, of "all ashore that are 

 going, and all aboard that ain't," and after an enormous 

 quantity of bell-ringing, duly answered by sundry other 

 outward bound boats, and enough to prevent every body 

 but the ringers from knowing what they ring for, and 

 after dodging, scolding, swearing, shoving, steaming, 

 puffing, squeezing, we squeeze out of this tight squeezed 

 harbor, and are afloat on Lake Erie. 



To the dinner, such as Western boats only furnish for 

 Western appetites, all come with the relish of a pure 

 Lake Erie breeze, which before night grew so much 

 fresher, that, as your reporter sometimes might remark, 

 "there was near the close of the day less doing in the 

 provision line, while that operated upon in the middle of 

 the day showed an evident tendency to rise; at supper 

 time the demand was limited." So our prudent captain 

 sought the snug harbor of Erie, and waited the going 

 down of the wind. In the meantime I communed with 

 myself that this was the eleventh anniversary since I 

 became the first settler in the northwest county of Indi- 

 ana, at which time Chicago, to which we are now bound 

 with all this host of living beings, was a small pocket 

 edition, and all the country round but blank leaves. 

 Change — ho — presto, what a change in these few years. 



At evening we were at Cleveland, which will be quite 

 a respectable suburb to Cincinnati when you get the 

 couple of hundred miles of Rail Road now talked of be- 

 tween you. 



On Sunday morning we waked up at Detroit, some of 

 whose wide-awake citizens are conspiring with some of 

 Queen Victoria's subjects, to annex Canada to Michigan, 

 by means of a Rail Road to Niagara River. At Detroit 

 a good many of our passengers discovered that a voyage 

 to Mackinaw in November might be more unpleasant to 

 encounter than the mud of Michigan. They had a taste 

 of one on Lake Erie, and before this they have tasted 

 the other — and I am inclined to think the remembrance 

 of the latter will stick to them the longest. 



