d slain a hundred of their enemies whose residence
was here, yet it was not in the town that they were slain. No blood
was ever shed by Indian hands within its precincts up to this period,
and had it remained in possession of the French the terrible scenes
subsequently enacted within its streets would in all probability
never have occurred, and Old Mackinaw would have been a city of
Refuge to this day.

The English, excited by the emoluments derived from the fur trade,
desired to secure a share in this lucrative traffic of the
northwestern Lakes. They, accordingly, in the year 1686, fitted out an
expedition, and through the interposition of the Fox Indians, whose
friendship they secured by valuable presents; the expedition reached
Old Mackinaw, the "Queen of the Lakes," and found the El Dorado they
had so long desired.

The following interesting description, from Parkman's "History of the
Conspiracy of Pontiac," of a voyage by an English merchant to Old
Mackinaw about this time, will be in place here: "Passing the fort and
settlement of Detroit, he soon enters Lake St. Clair, which seems like
a broad basin filled to overflowing, while along its far distant verge
a faint line of forests separates the water from the sky. He crosses
the lake, and his voyagers next urge his canoe against the current of
the great river above. At length Lake Huron opens before him,
stretching its liquid expanse like an ocean to the furthest horizon.
His canoe skirts the eastern shore of Michigan, where the forest rises
like a wall from the water's edge, and as he advances onward, an
endless line of stiff and shaggy fir trees hung with long mosses,
fringe the shore with an aspect of desolation. Passing on his right
the extensive Island of Bois Blanc, he sees nearly in front the
beautiful Island of Mackinaw rising with its white cliffs and green
foliage from the broad breast of waters. He does not steer toward it,
for at that day the Indians were its only tenants, but keeps along the
main shore to the left, while his voyagers raise their song and
chorus. Doubling a point he sees before him the red flag of England
swelling lazily in the wind, and the palisades and wooden bastions of
Fort Mackinaw standing close upon the margin of the lake. On the beach
canoes are drawn up, and Canadians and Indians are idly lounging. A
little beyond the fort is a cluster of white Canadian houses roofed
with bark and protected by fences of strong round pickets.