Michilimackinac is a name associated with our earliest ideas of history in the upper lakes. How so formidable a polysyllabic term came to be adopted by usage, it may be difficult to tell, till we are informed that the inhabitants, in speaking the word, clip off the first three syllables, leaving the last three to carry the whole meaning. The full term is, however, perpetuated by legal enactment, this part of Michigan having been organized into a separate county some time, I believe, during the administration of Gen. Hull. The military gentlemen call the fort on the cliff, "Mackin[=a]," the townspeople pronounce it Mackinaw; but if a man be hauled up on a magistrate's writ, it is in name of the sovereignty of Michilimackinac. Thus law and etymology grow strong together. Commerce, we observe, is beginning to show itself here, but by the few vessels we have met, while traversing these broad and stormy seas, and their little tonnage, it seems as if they were stealthily making their way into regions of doubtful profit at least. The fur trade employs most of these, either in bringing up supplies, or carrying away its avails. La Salle, when, in 1679, he built the first vessel on the lakes, and sent it up to traffic in furs, was greatly in advance of his age; but he could hardly have anticipated that his countrymen should have adhered so long to the tedious and dangerous mode of making these long voyages in the bark canoe. It is memorable in the history of the region, that last year (1819) witnessed the first arrival of a steamer at Michilimackinac. It bore the characteristic name of Walk-in-the-water,[147] the name of a Wyandot chief of some local celebrity in Detroit, during the last war. [147] So called from the water insect, called _Miera_ by the Wyandots, one of the invertebrata which slips over the surface of water without apparently wetting its feet.--Vide _Ethnological Researches_, vol. ii. p. 226. The astonishment produced upon the Indian mind by the arrival of this steamer has been described to us as very great; but, from a fuller acquaintance with the Indian character, we do not think him prone to this emotion. He gazes on new objects with imperturbability, and soon explains what he does not understand by what he does. Perceiving heat to be the primary cause of the motion, without knowing how that motion is generated, he calls the steamboat Ishcoda Nabequon, _i. e._ fire-vessel, and remains profoundly ignorant of the motive power of steam. The story of the vessel's being drawn by great fishes from the sea, is simply one of those fictions which white loungers about the Indian posts fabricate to supply the wants of travellers in search of the picturesque.