but when done the capital stock must prove to be a
good paying investment."

CHAPTER X.

Mackinaw, the site for a great central city -- The Venice of
the lakes -- Early importance as a central position --
Nicolet -- Compared geographically with other points --
Immense chain of coast -- Future prospects -- Temperature --
Testimony of the Jesuit fathers -- Healthfulness of the
climate -- Dr. Drake on Mackinaw -- Resort for invalids --
Water currents of commerce -- Surface drained by them -- Soil
of the northern and southern peninsulas of Michigan --
Physical resources -- Present proprietors of Mackinaw -- Plan
of the city -- Streets -- Avenues -- Park -- Lots and blocks
for churches and public purposes -- Institutions of learning
and objects of benevolence -- Fortifications -- Docks and
ferries -- Materials for building -- Harbors -- Natural
beauty of the site for a city -- Mountain ranges -- Interior
lakes -- Fish -- Game.

Ferris, in his "States and Territories of the Great West," says: "If
one were to point out, on the map of North America, a site for a great
central city in the lake region, it would be in the immediate vicinity
of the Straits of Mackinaw. A city so located would have the command
of the mineral trade, the fisheries, the furs, and the lumber, of the
entire North. It might become the metropolis of a great commercial
empire. It would be the Venice of the Lakes." Mackinaw, both straits
and peninsula, was so naturally the key point of the great system of
northern lakes and their connection with the Mississippi, that while
the New England colonies were yet but infant and feeble settlements,
the Indians of the northwest, the Jesuit missionaries, the French
voyagers, all made Mackinaw the point from whence they diverged--in
all directions. When Philadelphia and Baltimore had not begun, and
when the sites of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis were unknown
places in the wilderness, Nicolet took his departure from Quebec in
search of the mysterious river of the west. In passing to meet the
Indians at Green Bay, he was the first to notice the Straits of
Mackinaw. About thirty years after, James Marquette established, on
the northern shore of the straits, the Mission of St. Ignace. Here,
amidst the wilds and solitudes of the North American forests, and on
the shores of its great inland seas, Marquette and Joliet planned
their expedition as