Ocean to Ocean on Horseback: Being the Story of a Tour in the Saddle from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with Especial Reference to the Early History and Development of Cities and Towns Along the Route; and Regions Traversed Beyond the Mississippi; Together with Incidents, Anecdotes and Adventures of the JourneyGlazier, Willard W.
History
Ocean to Ocean on Horseback: Being the Story of a Tour in the Saddle from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with Especial Reference to the Early History and Development of Cities and Towns Along the Route; and Regions Traversed Beyond the Mississippi; Together with Incidents, Anecdotes and Adventures of the Journey
Glazier, Willard W.
United States -- Description and travel
Along this shore more than a century ago, General Bradstreet, with three
thousand men, sailed to the relief of Fort Junandat, while Pontiac, the
great Ottawa warrior, was besieging Detroit. Reaching Fort Sandusky he
burned the Indian villages there and destroyed the cornfields; passed on
up to Detroit to scatter the threatening savages, and returning went
into the Wyandot country through Sandusky Bay. To have attempted to ride
alone on horseback in those days would have been a foolhardy, if not a
fatal undertaking. Now the screech of an engine-whistle announced the
approach of a train on the Lake Shore Road, the great wheels thundered
by, and _Paul_, alert and trembling, was ready to dash away. How
different it would have been in those old pioneer times! The horseman
would have been the one to tremble then, his hand reach for his rifle,
his eyes strained towards the thicket from whence the expected yell of
the savage was to come.
Among the first proprietors of this section were the Eries. These were
followed by the resistless Iroquois, and after them the Wyandots and
Ottawas, who seem to have left the strongest impress upon the hills and
valleys of Ohio. One of these tribes, the Wyandots, called the bay near
which they built their wigwams Sæ-san-don-ske, meaning "Lake of the Cold
Water," and from this the present name of the city comes. In the early
days it was called Ogontz, after a big chief of that name who lived
there before the year 1812. All about were rich hunting-grounds, which
accounts for its having been chosen by the Indians in times of peace;
and even now Sandusky is held to be one of the greatest fish-markets in
America.
The place was bound to be attractive to the white man, and any one might
have safely prophesied that a city would rise here. The ground slopes
gradually down to the lake, the bay forms an ideal harbor, and looking
off upon the boats and water, the eye rests upon a scene picturesque and
striking.
My attention was called to Johnson's Island, which was used for the
confinement of Confederate officers during the late war. I learned that
they were allowed the luxury of an occasional bath in the lake, under
guard, of course, and in squads of a hundred men--a luxury which the
boys in Libby and Charleston and Columbia would have thought "too good
to be true."
Under the city are the limestone quarries, which furnish an
inexhaustible supply of building-material and which give an added
distinction to this bright little city of the lakes.
On the evening of my arrival I spoke in Union Hall and was introduced by
Captain Culver, who referred to my military record and the object of my
lectures. Captain Culver is a comrade in the G. A. R. and was a
fellow-prisoner at Libby and other prisons. He did much towards making
my stay at Sandusky most agreeable.
Sixty-fourth Day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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