Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/157



HEN lake people have occasion to voyage from the Straits of Mackinac to the great city which lies near the southern end of Lake Michigan, they say they are going "up" to Chicago. Their custom of thought is contrary to the habit of ordinary travelers by railroad who consider that they are journeying "up" when headed north and "down" when speeding south; for the instinct of the lake people is to follow the course of water as it flows and, since Lake Michigan empties through the Straits into Huron, obviously Chicago is "up lake" from Mackinac.

Railroaders and those new settlers coming into the countries served chiefly by the roads are beginning to break down the old way of thinking and speaking; but railroads in the peninsulas are affairs of the last generation and a half; men are still hearty and strong who drove the old stages into Traverse upon the State "roads" slashed through primeval forests of the white and the Norway pine, the tamarack, spruce and balsam when the earliest predecessor of the Père Marquette had stretched its steel only to White Cloud, and when the right of way upon which the G. R. and I. now operates had its northern end at Big Rapids. And in the upper peninsula it was 1885 when the first locomotive thrust its pilot toward the waters of St. Mary's River. During the decades which are clearly in the