[462] Silas Farmer, _History of Detroit and Michigan_, p. 346.
The places of deportation remaining to be mentioned are four, along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, namely, Milwaukee, Racine, South Port and Chicago. Of these the last-named was, doubtless, the most important, since through it chiefly were drained off the fugitives that came from Missouri over the routes of Iowa and Illinois. A single operator of Chicago, Mr. Philo Carpenter, is said to have guided not less than two hundred negroes to Canada-bound vessels.[463]
[463] Edward G. Mason, _Early Chicago and Illinois_, p. 110.
The lines of boat-service to the Canadian termini require a few words of comment. The longest line of travel on the lakes was that connecting the ports of Wisconsin and Illinois with Detroit or Amherstburg,[464] and was only approached in length by the route from Chicago to Collingwood, Ontario.[465] Five hundred miles would be a minimum statement of the distance refugees were carried by the boats of abolitionist captains from these westernmost ports to their havens of refuge. On Lake Erie the routes were, of course, much shorter, and ran up and down the lake, as well as across it. Important routes joined Toledo, Sandusky and Cleveland to Amherstburg and Detroit at one end of the lake, and Dunkirk, Ashtabula Harbor, Painesville and Cleveland with Buffalo and Black Rock at the other end of the lake. Certain boats running on these routes came to be known as abolition boats, with ample accommodations for underground passengers. Thus, we are told, such passengers "depended on a vessel named the _Arrow_, which for many years plied between Sandusky and Detroit, but always touched first at Malden, Canada, where the fugitives were landed."[466] Frequent use was also made of scows, sail-boats and sharpies, with which refugees could be "set across" the lake, and landed at almost any point along the shore. Small vessels, a part of whose "freight" had been received from the Underground Railroad, were often despatched to Port Burwell in the night from the warehouse of Hubbard and Company, forwarding and commission merchants of Ashtabula Harbor.[467] Similar enterprises were carried on at various other points along the lake.[468] So far as known, Lake Ontario had only a few comparatively insignificant routes: at the upper end of the lake were two, one joining Rochester and St. Catherines, the other, St. Catherines and Toronto; at the lower end of the lake, Oswego, Port Ontario and Cape Vincent seem to have been connected by lines with Kingston.