310 Notice of the Peninsula of Michigan. 
stitute their beds. Ornamented dresses, and implements of 
war and hunting, were displayed. The females are com- 
fortably clad, and some much decorated with silver. Indians 
were seen navigating and fishing in the adjacent waters. 
This remnant of the aboriginal proprietors, will soon be 
driven from their native lakes, their orchard, and favourite 
isle, by swarms of emigrant pioneers. 
Some of the lakes have no apparent outlet, but their wa- 
ters derived from springs are pure and contain fish. 
The western declivity is much less known than the eastern, 
but is supposed to have fewer lakes. Not many were past in 
surveying the western section of the Chicago road. 
Though there is a deficiency of small rivulets and springs 
in parts of the territory, rendering some sections, otherwise 
good, undesirable for settlement, yet valuable streams often 
occur, and there are many rivers that derive a peculiar ad- 
vantage from having their sources in numerous large and 
deep reservoirs, making the quantity discharged much less 
variable than from most streams of the west. The waters 
slowly drain from the lakes, swamps, and flat country of 
Michigan, filling the river channels in rainy seasons, but rare- 
ly overflowing the banks, which are almost invariably higher 
than the adjacent district, and seldom fail in any season of 
affording a sufficiency for navigation, mills, and manufac- 
tures. The rivers St. Clair and Detroit seldom vary a foot 
in altitude. In the Ohio the variation is in many places forty 
feet, and this stream is annually for months fordable, and too 
low for navigation—some rivers west of the Mississippi that 
in winter wind several hundred miles with full banks, are 
often dry in summer. The St. Joseph and Grand river, are 
the principal streams of the western declivity of the peninsu- 
Ja that discharge their waters into lake Michigan. The St. 
Joseph has its origin in the rolling country of the interior of 
the peninsula and in Indiana. It is navigable 150 miles for 
large boats. The portage between the waters of the St. Jo- 
seph and the Maumee, is but a mile and a half in width, at 
which place the former river, though narrow, is not fordable, 
as experienced by Mr. Risden: he remarked that the 
western part of the course of the St. Joseph is through a 
beautiful, fertile, and healthy valley; the ground on each 
side rising with a gentle acclivity to a considerable elevation, 
presenting hickory and oak openings, coppice, prairies, and 
natural meadows. In fertility, it has been compared to the 
