For this work the circumstances of our position and exclusion from
society was very favorable. The world, with all its political and
commercial care, was, in fact, shut out with the closing of the river.
Three hundred miles of a waste, howling wilderness separated us
south-easterly from the settlements at Detroit. Ninety miles in a
south-westerly direction lay the island and little settlement and
mission of Mackinack.
In addition to the exertions of Mr. Porter, who was our pastor, the
winter had enclosed, at that point, a zealous missionary of the American
Board, destined for a more northerly position, in the person of Mr.
Boutwell, who with the person, Mr. Bingham, in charge of the Indian
mission at the same point, maintained by the Baptist Convention,
constituted a moral force that was not likely to be without its results.
They derived mutual aid from each other in various ways, and directed
their entire efforts upon a limited community, wholly excluded from open
contact with the busy world, and having, by their very isolation,
much leisure.
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