Great Cities of the United States: Historical, Descriptive, Commercial, IndustrialSouthworth, Gertrude Van Duyn
History
Great Cities of the United States: Historical, Descriptive, Commercial, Industrial
Southworth, Gertrude Van Duyn
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
10. Why is Pittsburgh called the "workshop of the world"?
11. Name two famous men of Pittsburgh and tell what they have done for
the city and for the world.
12. Examine a map and find what shipping ports are within easy access of
Pittsburgh.
13. Find by what route ore and other material shipped by way of the Great
Lakes reach Pittsburgh.
DETROIT
In population, Detroit is the ninth city of the United States.
In the value of its manufactured products, it is fifth.
In the value of its exports, it is the leading port on the Canadian
border.
With these facts in mind it will be interesting to learn something of the
history of Detroit; something of the goods it manufactures and the
reasons for its growth and prosperity.
During the years when the French governed Canada, manufacturing and
agriculture played a very small part in their affairs. Their business men
were chiefly interested in the fur trade; their governors were interested
mainly in extending the territory over which floated the banner of their
king; and the teaching of Christianity to the hordes of Indians who
inhabited the country seemed of the greatest importance to their priests
and missionaries.
So, because it served the purpose of each, all three classes--the fur
traders, the crown officers, and the missionaries--worked hand in hand in
exploring and in penetrating the wilderness in every direction. They
suffered every hardship, endured every privation, and very often fell
victims to the cruelty of the savages.
[Illustration: THE GREAT LAKES]
In those days of French rule, railroads were unheard of, and wagon roads
were almost as scarce. Travel was sometimes through the woods, along the
trails made by the Indians; but usually it was by the water courses, over
which the Indian canoes carried furs to be traded for the goods of the
French.
Now if you will look at a map which shows the Canadian border of the
United States and follow the course of the Great Lakes, you will see that
at four places their broad waters narrow into rivers or straits. These
places are first, the Niagara River; second, where the waters of Lake
Huron pass into Lake Erie; third, at the Sault Ste. Marie; and fourth, at
the Straits of Mackinac.
Between the East and the West, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River
formed the main artery of travel. To control the narrow rivers and
straits that connect the Great Lakes was to control the travel over
them, and as the French extended their rule from Quebec to the West, they
fortified these narrow places one by one.
Fort Niagara was built at the mouth of the Niagara River. Then on July
24, 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed on the banks of the Detroit
River and began the work of building a palisade fort, almost where the
river widens into Lake Saint Clair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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