By will LARRYMORE SMEDLEY 
Illustrations by the Author 
is more than two hundred years 
since the eyes of the white man 
first beheld the vacillating coun¬ 
tenance of Lake Erie—a lake 
upon whose broad bosom opal and 
turquoise burn by day and the 
sapphire plays with mysteries 
nocturnal. 
Since that time, changes, both 
physical and historic, have taken 
place with such great rapidity 
and variation as to fill one with wonder in comparing 
the present with the past. The original Americans 
who once pushed the noses of their canoes through 
the clear waters of Erie and its crystal tributaries, 
exist no longer save in very small groups on still 
smaller reservations which we have so generously 
allowed them; and, just as one day the endearments 
of our civilization will pass, so have passed the hunt¬ 
ing song and war cry from where the blue smoke has 
ceased to curl upward through the foliage of once 
beautiful forests, and the picturesque wigwam has 
been removed in the perspective of time from fact to 
legend; scarcely a trace remains to tell us of the Eive 
Nations, the Iroquois, and the Senecas, who were the 
immediate predecessors of the white man in this part 
of the country and much less is there left to indicate 
that the region was at one time the home and play¬ 
ground of an unknown race—a strange and primitive 
people whose individuals were of gigantic stature, as 
the unearthed skeletons show. The land had been 
cleared by them and that they were an ancient race 
is evidenced by the fact that trees at least three 
hundred years old have since grown upon the soil 
they tilled. 
As we advance from that remote age, the first 
glimmering of historic light concerning the region 
around Lake Erie appeared in the early part of the 
seventeenth century; a few decades following this 
Robert Cavelier de la Salle floated his little bark, 
“Le GriflFon;” it was a vessel of, perhaps, sixty tons 
burden, armed with five small cannon and two or 
three arquebuses, and on that memorable occasion 
were the first Europeans to behold the rugged hills 
and magnificent trees that rise backward and up¬ 
ward seven hundred feet from this old inland port— 
Basse-a-Loin—the subject of our sketch. 
The first cruise of La Salle, although disastrous to 
him, was the beginning of the present lake traffic. 
The Erench, therefore, were the foremost in estab¬ 
lishing themselves upon the lakes and in obtaining 
friendly relations with the Indians with whom the 
colonists carried on a large fur trade which, at that 
time, was the most extensive interest in America. In 
the scheme for the occupation of the Great West, 
originated by La Salle, the French were more success¬ 
ful than their English rivals. Under the direction ot 
the Governor General of Canada, Marquis du 
Quesne established a chain of military posts from 
Presque Isle to the Allegheny river; a portage road 
was built from the mouth of the creek near Basse-a- 
Loin, over the great water-shed to the head of Lake 
Chautauqua, and thus communication was opened 
between the Great Lakes and the headwaters of the 
Ohio. 
It was autumn when I first visited Basse-a-Loin 
and yet another autumn when I found myself there 
again. As an old man sits and dreams of youth and 
life and conquests past, so this little village, one time 
the dream of an inland sea, blinks and dozes in the 
September sun on the southern shore of Lake 
Erie. 
Coming from the hustle and drive and impetuous 
rush of the metropolis where one has scarcely time 
to eat or sleep, this quiet spot and its refreshing 
lake breezes will be found a tonic worthy of a larger 
notice. 
To thoroughly appreciate the atmosphere of the 
place, one must not visit there after a meteoric 
fashion, but rather take it as a musician takes a 
crescendo; the qualities given a place by time and 
history cannot be comprehended at a glance, and so, 
if one can find it convenient, the greatest satisfaction 
is to be derived by taking the village as a center of 
oscillation from which to make little excursions on the 
lake and into the surrounding country, which is most 
picturesque. If one’s legs are what they should be, 
a climb to the top of the water-shed, which separates 
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