260 OCtJAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK, 



the Indiaus had been provided for west of the Mis- 

 sissippi, that the Cincinnati Company laid out a town 

 on the present site and called it Port Lawrence, 

 after the famous flag-ship in which Perry met the 

 British on Lake Erie. Later, Major Stickney, a his- 

 toric pioneer, whose sons, " One " and " Two '^ Stickney 

 are equally immortal, laid out Vistula, which after- 

 wards joined Port Lawrence, under a name destined to 

 become a power in the State — Toledo. 



The fortunes of the new town were fluctuating as 

 April weather, and the faith of property-holders must 

 have grown weak through wavering. Most of these 

 hard times were due to malaria, which was bred in 

 the neighboring swamps and forests, and which was an 

 ever-present menace; yet when the cloud of contention 

 lowered over the tract of land lying between the 

 territory of Michigan and the State of Ohio, Toledo, 

 the very centre of the trouble, being claimed by both, 

 was animated enough, although her neighbor, Monroe, 

 was wont to vex her with such taunts as this : 



"The potatoes they grow small, on Maumee, 

 And they eat them, tops and all, on Maumee.** 



Potato-tops must have possessed singular virtue, for 

 there was no want of spirit when the test came " On 

 Maumee." 



The "Toledo War," much talked of and laughed 

 over in its day, is passing slowly into oblivion, and 

 now only an occasional grey-beard brings its scenes 

 back with amusing reminiscence. The cause of the 

 trouble lay in a mistake of Congress, which estab- 

 lished an impossible boundary line between Michigan 

 and Ohio, so that the " bone of contention " was a 



