TEE ISFLUE^'CE OF SOILS 37 



Detroit was said to be "foimded in an ancient 

 mudhole." ^ The road from Detroit to Dearborn, 

 says William C. Hoyt, "was the worst probably over 

 which man and beast ever traveled." A. L. Driggs 

 describes Michigan in 1835 as "a howling wilderness." 

 There were fact and fancy in these allusions to the 

 Michigan of the pioneer; and it was only gradually 

 that surveyors, travelers and settlers made the true 

 character of the country known. Indeed, even today, 

 in the absence of any comprehensive soil survey 

 and classification, there is much ignorance of surface 

 conditions in the less developed areas of the State; 

 and this ignorance has been taken advantage of in 

 full measure by dishonest land sharks both within 

 and without the State, to the detriment of its good 

 reputation. 



There is in reality extraordinary variation in 

 soil, as well as climatic conditions throughout the 

 two peninsulas. Clays, sands, gravels, loams al- 

 ternate with muck and marsh lands, with lakes and 

 swamps, in some localities within very narrow limits, 

 so that a description applicable to one parcel of 

 land would be wholly inapplicable to an adjacent 

 tract. With this condition, the repeated glaciation 

 of the region within the Great Lakes has had much 

 to do. Glaciation has created morainic ridges and 

 eskers, usually of sand and gravel, drumlins and 

 kames and ancient lake beaches, once wave-swept 

 but now many miles inland, producing at the same 

 time deposits of lake clays occasionally of great 



^Ibid., y, 01. 



59711 



