s with schooners and brigs.
Landed on the lake shore near some little stream, the immigrants would
build flatboats, and painfully pole their way into the interior to some
spot that took their fancy. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois thus
filled up, towns growing by the side of streams now used only to turn
mill-wheels, but which in their day determined where the prosperous
settlement should be.

The steamboat was not slow in making its appearance on the lakes. In 1818,
while it was still an experiment on the seaboard, one of these craft
appeared on Lake Erie. The "Walk-in-the-Water" was her name, suggestive of
Indian nomenclature and, withal, exceedingly descriptive. She made the
trip from Buffalo to Detroit, not infrequently taking thirteen days. She
was a side-wheeler, a model which still holds favor on the lower lakes,
though virtually abandoned on the ocean and on Lake Superior. An oil
painting of this little craft, still preserved, shows her without a
pilot-house, steered by a curious tiller at the stern, with a smokestack
like six lengths of stovepipe, and huge unboxed wheels. She is said to
have been a profitable craft, often carrying as many as fifty passengers
on the voyage, for which eighteen dollars was charged. For four years she
held a monopoly of the business. Probably the efforts of Fulton and
Livingstone to protect the monopoly which had been granted them by the
State of New York, and the determination of James Roosevelt to maintain
what he claimed to be his exclusive right to the vertical paddle-wheel,
delayed the extension of steam navigation on the lakes as it did on the
great rivers. After four years of solitary service on Lake Erie, the
"Walk-in-the-Water" was wrecked in an October storm. Crowded with
passengers, she rode out a heavy gale through a long night. At daybreak
the cables parted and she went ashore, but no lives were lost. Her loss
was considered an irreparable calamity by the settlers at the western end
of the lake. "This accident," wrote an eminent citizen of Detroit, "may
be considered one of the greatest misfortunes which has ever befallen
Michigan, for, in addition to its having deprived us of all certain and
speedy communication with the civilized world, I am fearful it will
greatly check the progress of immigration and improvement."

It is scarcely necessary to note now that the apprehensions of the worthy
citizen of Michigan were unfounded. Steam navigation on the lakes was no