14 RURAL Michigan 



wassee and the Tittabawassee, drains the largest land 

 area in Michigan — 6,250 square miles. ^ It reverses 

 the direction of stream-flow, formerly debouching 

 from old Lake Saginaw at this point. Even in flood 

 time, the Saginaw may steal away some of the over- 

 flow from its rival, the Grand River system, which 

 leaves the Maple Kiver in the vicinity of Bannister 

 and Ashley, Gratiot County, and makes an overland 

 current into the Bad Eiver of the Saginaw basin. 

 The Grand River drainage basin is put by Leverett 

 at some 5,600 square miles, while the Muskegon 

 drains 2,700; the Huron, 1,050; the Kalamazoo, 

 Manistee and Au Sable, 1,000 square miles each. In 

 the Upper Peninsula, the Manistique, an affluent of 

 Lake Michigan, has the largest drainage basin, 1,400 

 square miles, chiefly in Schoolcraft County and in- 

 cluding the great Seney Swamp. Of the Lake Su- 

 perior streams, the Ontonagon, with a drainage area 

 of 1,250, and the Taquamenon, v/ith 800 square miles, 

 including another large swamp area, are the most 

 considerable. Michigan is charged with being the 

 fifth wettest state in the Union.^ 



Michigan possesses a very large number of inland 

 lakes, and formerly the numerous marshes and 

 swamps gave the State a sinister reputation — not 

 without cause — although it was their mosquitoes, 

 and not their "miasmatic exhalations," that were 

 responsible for the bone-racking ague of the early 

 settlers. Here rise the streams and streamlets of 



* Leverett. 



''Miller and Simons: "Drainage in Michigan," 



