THE INFLUENCE OF SOILS 41 



THE LOWER PENINSULA 



In the Lower Peninsula, agriculture began in the 

 southern area adjacent to Lake Erie and the water- 

 way connecting Lake Erie with Lake Huron. Here 

 the elevation was normally low with poor drainage. 

 The soils, composed mainly of glacial and lake clays, 

 retained moisture with extreme tenacity, but with 

 proper drainage became highly productive. The 

 finely divided lake clays about Detroit, if excellent 

 for truck-gardening, were also poor road material; 

 and the narratives of the pioneers are replete with 

 accounts of harrowing and disastrous experiences in 

 their progress from the metropolis westward. In 

 hot dry weather, these clays became hard and ex- 

 tremely difficult to manage; yet they produced a 

 primeval forest of elm, soft maple, basswood and 

 black ash with some beech, hard maple, oak and 

 whitewood on the higher and better drained por- 

 tions. Under drainage, they have yielded wheat, 

 corn, oats and hay and sugar-beets. Along the rivers 

 were silt soils, very fertile but suffering from over- 

 flow, furnishing luxuriant meadow grasses and a 

 timber growth of ash, basswood, elm, walnut and 

 butternut, willow, cottonwood and other varieties of 

 trees. In the depressions were muck soils, and back 

 from the shore were sandy lake-beds with some loams, 

 as, for example, in the Pontiac area and in Northville 

 and Plymouth townships of Wayne County. 



In Monroe County to the southward, the south- 



