SOUTHERN SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR 317 



very seldom, if ever, had any serious trouble with them. 

 And frightful as it may seem to read of wholesale slaughter- 

 ing of women and children, this fiendish crime was not 

 confined to red savages ; it would be interesting to know 

 if it originated with them. If so, the early settlers re- 

 taliated in kind, and with no slack hand. A great many 

 of these men were fellows whom their native land must 

 have been mighty glad to get rid of. They resembled those 

 bandits who, three thousand years ago, joined themselves 

 to King David the Hebrew. He who had a creditor whom 

 he could not pay, he who had committed an offence against 

 the laws of his country and feared the consequences, and 

 he who was naturally of a discontented temperament, be- 

 came " a pilgrim father," and went to America for liberty 

 of conscience, and liberty to steal and murder and burn 

 witches, as they termed several poor imbecile women 

 whom they sent to the stake after torturing them into a 

 confession of witchcraft. 



I do not wish it to be supposed that I do not think 

 that many of the founders of America were great and good 

 men, but it has always been the misfortune of that 

 country, down to quite modern times, to be a city of 

 refuge for political agitators, religious impostors, and all 

 sorts of scamps and reprobates who had made their own 

 countries too hot to hold them. 



Only a few days after my arrival at Marquette the 

 winter set in with great vigour, and I was thus prevented 

 from making any long excursions about the neighbour- 

 hood as I had wished to do. The country seemed, as 

 far as I had yet seen it, to be far less desolate than that 

 on the north side of the lake, but the winter was quite as 

 severe; indeed, I think I felt the cold more than I did 

 north of the Red River Settlement. The Great Lakes 

 never freeze over, as I have already said, but there was 

 a broad fringe of ice right along the coast, on which 

 people sleighed to their heart's content all through the 

 winter; and though channels were on several occasions 



