148 LOWER PENINSULA. 



have stone, lime, and sand enough to build our edifices ; our grind- 

 stones have acquired fame over all the country adjoining us. Can 

 we claim more for our peninsula, whose principal pride it is to pro- 

 duce the best wheat and the finest apples grown anywhere ? If we 

 had more, I fear it would demoralize us. But this is not all ; we 

 have our mining country set apart from this lower Arcadian land 

 by a broad, intervening lake, where, to compensate for the scarcity 

 of metal in the other part, nature has deposited its metallic 

 treasures in an exuberance that challenges the competition of any 

 other spot on the globe. Mountains of iron ore of the better kind 

 are passed by unnoticed, because we find there plenty of it of a yet 

 richer quality. Copper in malleable metallic condition lies there 

 in blocks heavy enough to load down a three-master to a sinking 

 condition, while, in finer granular condition, it is disseminated, 

 in incredible quantities, through mighty sedimentary sand-rock 

 masses and conglomerates forming a mountain range of over one 

 hundred miles in length. Silver in pure metallic state is also found 

 in no small quantity, and daily there are fresh discoveries of it. 



Nature has well equalized the division of its gifts. The broken, 

 hilly character of the mineral district, and its northern climate, al- 

 though rendering it healthy and pleasant as a place of habitation, 

 do not recompense the farmer as well for his labor as they do the 

 miner, and, therefore, all industrial efforts in this region are direct- 

 ed to mining. The population of a district congenial for agricul- 

 ture throws all its energy into the tillage of the land ; another 

 finds itself predestined for a manufacturing district by some 

 natural advantages offered, such, for instance, as our lumbering 

 districts. Each one of these will dispose of the surplus of its pro- 

 ducts to the other in exchange for its surplus ; and only by such a 

 division of occupation and interests, in accordance with external 

 climatic and geological conditions, can the necessary life and circu- 

 lation come into the social organism, and secure its healthy and 

 durable existence. It would not add to our prosperity if all the 

 natural advantages possessed by a single part of the State were 

 to be equally distributed over the whole. The two peninsulas, 

 united into a twin 'State, form the happiest union that could be 

 made ; both have their great advantages — one upholds the other; 

 but if I were asked to say, which is the best, my choice would fall 



