es of Cincinnati for manufactures.
It not only has iron and coal, but copper and lead, near enough for
all the purposes of successful manufacture. Favorable indications of
coal exist within fifty miles south of the Straits, and indications
also exist of lead. When we consider these facts, and the vast extent
of country, of inland oceans, and of streams around it, why should not
Mackinaw be a point of concentration for manufactures, as well as of
distribution for commerce?

Mackinaw is centrally situated in the mineral region, and with coal
and hard wood for charcoal in perpetual abundance, and the cheapest
possible mode of transportation, will become a great manufacturing
point, and be able to manufacture innumerable articles, which are now
made in Europe, and which our people have been compelled to import for
use, simply because the material hitherto employed has been of a
quality unsuitable for such purposes. Besides the healthful and
bracing temperature of this locality, when compared with Ohio and
Pennsylvania, whose summers are found to be exceedingly enervating,
especially to those employed in the manufacture of iron, affords
advantages, and offers inducements which cannot be overlooked, since
in the physical strength and comfort of the workmen, is involved the
all-important question of economy. If it should be asked, is the site
such that a great city can be built upon it, without imperial wealth,
like to that of St. Petersburg, or with the artificial foundations
like to those of Chicago, or bankrupting successive companies like
Cairo on the Ohio,--the answer is at hand and decisive. At Mackinaw
there are no marshes to fill up or drain, no tide sands, no
flood-washed banks, no narrow and isolated rocks or ridges, to
intercept the progress of commercial growth and activity. On the
contrary, the lake rises under the heaviest rains but little, and
breaks its waves on a dry shore rising gradually far above its level.
There is no better natural site for the foundation of a city in the
world, nor one possessing more inviting or beautiful surroundings, and
when we consider its available resources, it is evident that nothing
can prevent its rise and progress. The straits are so completely the
key of the Upper Lakes, Mackinaw must, as in the days of the fur
trade, unlock the vast treasures of the entire northwest. The shore of
Lake Superior, being but about fifty miles north of Mackinaw and
dependent on a canal navigatio