the interior, until the exceeding richness and great agricultural value of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan was established. But another event was to exercise a most important influence upon the future State. In 1817 the first steamer upon the Northern lakes, the "Ontario," was launched, and, amid bonfires, illuminations and most lively demonstrations of joy, made her first trip upon Lake Ontario. This heralded the dawn of a material revolution. One year later, on the 27th day of August, 1818, the "Walk-in-the-water," the first steamer launched above Niagara Falls, came up to the wharves of Detroit after a passage of forty-four hours from Buffalo. This vessel, of only 340 tons, and lost three years later, was a puny affair, but wise men saw in her advent the promise of a future which time has more than realized. Then in the wake of the steamer, Congress (1819) ordered the public lands of Michigan placed in the market for sale. At this time Detroit contained 250 houses, 1,415 inhabitants, and the entire territory a population of 8,896. In 1825 the Erie canal was completed, and its far-sighted projector, De Witt Clinton, sailed amid national acclamations from Lake Erie to tide-water. It completed the link of direct water communication with Michigan, and the stream of Western emigration was quickly swollen to a torrent. Mr. Chandler first came to Michigan in 1833. Three years before (1830) the census of the entire territory, as it was constituted when Illinois was admitted to the Union, was 32,531. The growth during the preceding decade had been steady, not immense; that was to come after. It was in the year of 1833 that the first settlement was made in the present State of Iowa. And in that fall (September) the people of Detroit were rejoicing that "arrangements were in train for the establishment of a new stage-line route to Chicago, by which travelers can go from one place to the other in five days." There was not then a mile of railroad in the territory, and not until five years after (1838) was the first twenty-nine miles completed to Ypsilanti. Detroit was still a frontier post numbering less than 4,000 inhabitants. On all the Western lakes at the beginning of that year there were but eighteen steamers, ranging from fifty to 395 tons in burden, and aggregating but 3,710 tons, and with the best of these a voyage of thirty-nine hours from Buffalo to Detroit was a remarkable passage. All this was improvement; yet the Detroit merchant in that year could not expect to receive his purchases made in New York within less than from three to six months after the time of setting out to procure them. During the winter steamboats and river craft were ice-bound, and the settlements at Detroit, the River Raisin and elsewhere throughout the broad peninsula, were shut out from the Eastern world, except as travelers braved the tedious and painful staging through Canada to Buffalo, with its week of continuous day and night journeying.