Such an opening up of country as came in this decade between 1830 and 1840 attracted many travellers to the lake region. By picturing from their various accounts a “Grand Tour” of the lakes as it was taken by many a person between 1837 and 1843, we can get the best idea of the various settlements. The traveller usually came up the Erie Canal and started from Buffalo, taking from there one of the well-appointed steamers of from four hundred to seven hundred tons which left in the morning and evening for Detroit. This trip would always be taken in the summer, for during the four or five months when the lake was closed Detroit could only be reached by a stage journey of three hundred and seventy miles along the shore of Lake Erie. The towns of Erie, Cleveland, and Sandusky were the main stops between Buffalo and Detroit, but between them was a succession of villages which were just beginning to give signs of their future importance as the terminus of some railroad or canal. The steamer sailed along the southern edge of the lake, keeping always in sight of land, and gave the passengers a good view of Dunkirk, a little village which was waiting for the completion of the New York and Erie Railroad, and of the towns of Portland and Erie. This last-named had always been the point at which to turn southward into Pennsylvania, and was now made all the more important by the termination there of the Pennsylvania and Erie Canal, which connected Lake Erie with Pittsburg. Between Erie and Cleveland, Conneaut, Ashtabula, and Grand River were the principal settlements. Cleveland had been incorporated as a city in 1836, and was rightly considered one of the most attractive cities of the West. Standing on a plain eighty feet above the surface of the lake, from the steamer’s deck it made a beautiful picture. Above the roofs of the well-built brick blocks and the residences in their carefully laid-out rows, towered the white dome of the court-house, four church spires, and the turrets of its hotels. The hotels of the city were particularly praised by travellers. On the roofs of the two principal ones, the “American” and the “Franklin,” were towers in which sentinels stood on watch day and night, keeping a lookout for vessels and notifying those below of their approach in time to send runners to the wharf to meet the guests. The remarkable growth of the town in the last few years was particularly attributed to its being the terminus of the Ohio and Erie Canal, making it one of the principal routes of trade and travel from the Ohio. Along this canal a side excursion to Cincinnati and Columbus was often made.