232 WILD SPORTS ON THE FRONTIER. 



often literally almost no limit to the supplies of game 

 of every kind, both of fur and feather : splendid sport 

 with rod and line was also to be had at their very 

 doors, without trouble or expense, such as the modern 

 angler would now-a-days deem to be altogether 

 fabulous. * 



Let us take for instance the case of this very place, 

 Fort Detroit, whose history has been already selected 

 as furnishing a picturesque and important incident in 

 Indian frontier annals ; and make a brief retrospect of 

 its famous past from a sportsman's point of view. Its 

 position, as a glance at the map will show, was a 

 noble one: the old fort stood upon the very bank of 

 the Detroit River, some seven miles below its point of 

 exit from Lake St. Clair; and the American historian 

 Bancroft thus speaks of it : " It was, " he says, 



" the largest and most important of the North Western settle- 

 ments. The deep, majestic river, more than half-a-mile wide, 

 carrying its vast flood calmly and noiselessly, imparted grandeur 

 to a country whose meadows and plains festooned with wild 

 vines, woodlands, brooks and fountains were so mingled 

 together as to leave nothing to desire. The forests were a 

 natural park, stocked with buffaloes, deer, quails, partridges, 

 and wild turkeys. Wild fowl of delicious flavour hovered 

 along its streams, which yielded an astonishing variety of 

 fish, especially white fish, the richest and most luscious of 

 them all. Every luxury of the table might be enjoyed at 

 the sole expense of labour (for gardens, it seems, yielded 

 splendid crops of every kind), and from its battlements it 

 commanded a noble panorama embracing a wide prospect 

 for 9 miles, above and below." f 



* See our section on " Fistfing" for further accounts of the sport still 

 to be had in some of these wild retreats. 



\History of the United States, by George Bancroft, 1876, Vol. iii, p. 376. 



