CHAPTER VII 



TRANSPORTATION AND MARKETING 



In the annals of the pioneers of Michigan, an 

 ever-recurring note is the remoteness of the settler's 

 market, the difficnlty of getting there and the reac- 

 tion of this situation on prices and production. Ob- 

 viously, roads when they existed were bad, excep- 

 tionally so in a country of swamps, bogs and marshes. 

 The rivers were useful, but, although early territorial 

 and state statutes dignified most of them by the 

 designation "navigable," it made considerable dif- 

 ference what vessels sought to navigate them and 

 how far one ventured up their tortuous channels. 

 Daniel Ball endeavored to transport flour regularly 

 from Owosso to the mouth of the Saginaw by water, 

 but was not long in relinquishing the attempt. The 

 Grand, Saginaw, Huron, St. Joseph and Kalamazoo 

 served well the first inhabitants of the State, when 

 /oads were fathomless in mud and the rail head was 

 at Pontiac, Ann Arbor and Hillsdale. The Upper 

 Peninsula streams were little used save for lofirijinff 

 operations, since most of them were short and rapid, 

 particularly on the Lake Superior side of the divide. 

 In south Michigan, ])efore the middle of the last 

 century, the patient slow-moving oxen commonly 



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