"In the brief review of the agricultural advantages of that great northwestern region, whose centre of commerce must ever be at Mackinaw; we have arrived at the certain fact, that except small portions of the Superior country, where mining and mines absorb all other interests, no country in the northern part of America or Europe, has greater advantages. It is filled with inexhaustible springs, and streams; fertile in soil, rich in production, and only needs the cultivating hand of man, to render it capable of sustaining such dense populations as now inhabit the same isothermal parallel in Prussia and Poland.
"Let us now turn to its forests, mines, fisheries and resources, which though not bread, are those from which the implements, conveniences, and much of the wealth of civilization is derived. Of forests, furnishing almost illimitable quantities of timber and lumber--this is the very centre. Of this, we have evidence in the wharves of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and far down the lakes. The testimony of actual observers on this point, is so strong as to seem almost incredible. We shall cite but two or three unquestionable authorities. The peninsula, of Michigan is at the present moment, one of the greatest depositories of lumber in the world. Mr. Ferris says: 'On going toward the north, the lumber becomes more and more plentiful. Beeches begin to mingle with the oaks, and in a day or two beeches and maples will predominate over other varieties of timbers; large white-woods and bass-woods will be seen towering above the forest. The white ash, the shag bark, the black cherry, will have become abundant. The woods will seem to have been growing deeper and denser every mile of the way. Soon the traveler will doubt, whether Omnipotence himself could have planted the trees larger, taller, and thicker together, than they are.'
"Pressing still forward, the emigrant will enter the great pine woods of the north. For a while, however, before reaching them, he will have been wandering through groves of oak, and along the borders of natural meadows, and through clumps of beech and maple. But soon, as with a single step, the timber has become all pine--yellow pine, moaning overhead, darkening all the ground, shutting out the sun, shutting out the wind." The tall trunks support the dark green canopy full fifty feet above the earth. This belt of pine woods, stretches across the peninsula of Michigan from Saginaw Bay. After a while as you proceed further to the north, the pine grows thinner, and is succeeded by other timber. "The level lands again become covered with beech and maple, of a full and convenient growth, with here and there a gigantic Norway pine, six feet through without limb, till it begins to stretch up half its length above the surrounding trees.