PHYSICAL AXD CLIMATIC SETTING 15 



the State, if not in one or another of the thousands 

 of limpid springs that are derived from the copious 

 subterranean waters of certain sections. 



Together, these interior water-courses have been 

 intimately associated with the economic and social 

 development of Michigan. They were the first and 

 natural means of penetrating the inner fastnesses of 

 the region. The early territorial and State statutes 

 referred to them as "navigable/' and required that 

 dams should include locking facilities for the passage 

 of commerce up and down stream. Most of them 

 would hardly warrant the designation, "navigable," 

 today, for the effect of deforestation on "run-off" 

 and stream-flow has been to flood the river valleys 

 for a short season and then to leave them scant of 

 water for the balance of the year. Nevertheless, 

 steamers did run up the St. Joseph River to Niles, 

 up the Grand River to Grand Rapids, and still ply 

 the Saginaw for a few miles inland and on at least 

 one ill-fortuned occasion sought a more interior point 

 up the Shiawassee and Bad rivers. In the pioneer 

 period there was much canoeing on all these streams, 

 connected at intervals by portage paths where the 

 Indians had showed the way to the incoming whites. 

 There was much rafting of supplies, of logs and of 

 lumber — a process which moved progressively north- 

 ward as the lumberman's frontier receded from decade 

 to decade. 



