NARRATIVE. 21 



Cleveland at half past ten P. M., and spent there some hours. It Is 

 a thrivmg town, 'and a regular stopping place for steamers, but like 

 almost all the towns on this lake, is without a natural harbor, the 

 only shelter to vessels being a long pier stretching into the Lake. 



June 21st. — Weather fine and warm, with smooth water. Arrived 

 at Detroit at half past eleven, and left at three P. M. • Near 

 the entrance of Lake St. Clair we were surrounded by numbers of 

 black terns, (^Sterna nigra,^ which, at a moderate distance, were 

 distinguishable from the swallows by Avhich they were accompanied, 

 only by their superior size. Numbers of slender gauze-win^^ed in- 

 sects, (Upkemera, Fhrt/ganea,} with long antennse, and some with two 

 long filaments projecting behind like the tail feathers of the Tropic 

 bird about the boat, and on the water. In the St. Clair straits 

 there were a few ducks, even at this season, though nothing like the 

 vast flocks to be seen here a little later in the season. 



We were sounding constantly through these straits, having on an 

 average about three feet below the keel in the channel, our boat 

 drawing seven feet. The shores are low, marshy and aguish, with 

 woods at a distance, and scattered log-houses. ,This remarkable 

 extent of mud-flats, (some twenty miles across,) is covered with 

 only a foot or two of water in most parts, and even the channel is so 

 shallow that the larger boats have to discharge a part of their cargo 

 into lighters while passing it, and are often delayed here many hours. 

 Even our boat continually touched, as was evident from the clouds 

 of mud she stirred up. To make and maintain a proper channel for 

 such a distance, is an undertaking much called for, but not to be 

 expected of single States, nor is there any one State principally 

 interested in it. One would hope, therefore, that the General Gov- 

 ernment may before long do something about it. 



The water over these fiats is still as green as that of Lake Erie, 

 and not more turbid. About 10 P. M. we put in to wood, and re- 

 mained'until 7 A. M., taking in sixty-four cords of wood. 



June 22d. — We entered Lake Huron about breakfast time ; the 

 weather calm, and what the sailors call " greasy," the water darker 

 than in Lake Erie, partly owing, no doubt, to the greater depth of 

 water, and partly to the cloudy sky. The dark sullen water, and 

 the unbroken line of forest, retreating on either hand as we issued 



