Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/219

Rh city first founded by the French upon that narrow strait between the Lakes Erie and St. Clair, which separates Michigan from Canada. The shores as seen from the vessel appeared to be laid out in small farms consisting of regular allotments, surrounded by plantations. The land seemed to me low but fertile, undulating hill and valley. Detroit is, like Buffalo, a city where business-life preponderates, yet still it looked to me pleasanter and more friendly than Buffalo. I saw at the hotel some tiresome catechisers, and also some very agreeable people, people whom one could talk well and frankly with, and whom one could like in all respects. Among these I remember in particular the Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, a frank, excellent, and intellectual man; and a mother and her daughters. I was able to exchange a few cordial words with them, words out of the earnest depths of life, and such always do me good. The people of Detroit were for the rest pleased with their city and their way of life there, pleased with themselves, and with each other. And this seems to me to be the case in most of the places that I have been to here in the West.

The following evening we were at Anne Arbour, a pretty little rural city. Here also I received visitors, and was examined as usual. My good old pioneer did not approve of travelling incognito, but insisted upon it that people should be known by people, and could not comprehend how any one could be tired, and need a cessation of introductions and questions. In Anne Arbour also the people were much pleased with themselves, their city, its situation, and way of life. The city derived its name from the circumstance that when the first settlers came to the place they consisted principally of one family, and whilst the woods were felled and the land ploughed, the labourers had no other dwelling than a tent-like shed of boughs and canvas, where the mother of the family, “Anne,” prepared the