On the wharf was a mixed lot of people--Americans, Canadians, Irish, Indians, squaws and papooses.

I saw there some of the most beautiful fish I had ever seen.
They would weigh twenty pounds or more, and had bright red and yellow spots all over them.

They called them trout, and they were beauties, really.

At the shore near by the Indians were loading a large white birch bark canoe, putting their luggage along the middle lengthways, and the papooses on top.

One man took a stern seat to steer, and four or five more had seats along the gunwale as paddlers and, as they moved away, their strokes were as even and regular as the motions of an engine, and their crafts danced as lightly on the water as an egg shell.
They were starting for the Michigan shore some eight or ten miles away.
This was the first birch bark canoe I had ever seen and was a great curiosity in my eyes.
We crossed Lake Huron during the night, and through its outlet, so shallow that the wheels stirred up the mud from the bottom; then through Lake St.Clair and landed safety at Detroit next day.