THE OCCUPATION OF THE LAND 135 



section of fertile soil — its fertility attested by the 

 vigorous growth of stalwart trees that only time and 

 prodigious labor could remove? In the great specu- 

 lative year of ISSG more than four million acres of 

 these Michigan lands were sold by the Government, 

 computed to be one-fifth of the total United States' 

 sales of that year. The panic of 1837 brought punish- 

 ment to many who had speculated too wildly in 

 Michigan real estate, particularly the purchasers of 

 town sites in platted cities which, it was hoped, were 

 destined to make their buyers rich out of their rapid 

 increment of value. Eventually, however, most of 

 Michigan's 36,000,000 acres passed out of public 

 into private ownership, much of it by sale, 2,551,000 

 acres by homestead entry, and still other large quan- 

 tities by grants of various sorts; 1,021,000 acres to 

 the State for the benefit of its primary schools; 750,- 

 000 acres to the State and thence to the corporation 

 which constructed St. Mary's Ship Canal; 500,000 

 to the State itself for internal improvements (1841) ; 

 nearly 400,000 to the company which built the canals 

 joining Portage Lake with Lake Superior; 100,000 

 acres for the construction of the ship canal con- 

 necting Lake La Belle on the Keweenaw Peninsula 

 with Lake Superior (1866). 



Land, also, was forthcoming for the construction 

 of the "military" road from Fort Wilkins on Ke- 

 weenaw I'oint to the Wisconsin-Michigan line by 

 way of Houghton. At a time when it was thought 

 necessary that capital should be interested in rail- 

 wad building through large grants of lands by the 



