It is intended to exhibit a picture of men and things,
immediately surrounding a person isolated from the world, on an island
in the wide area of Lake Huron, at the point where the current, driven
by the winds, rushes furiously through the straits connected with Lake
Michigan. Where the ice in the winter freezes and breaks up continually,
where the temperature fluctuates greatly with every wind, and where the
tempests of snow, rain and hail create a perpetual scene of changing
phenomena.
Society here is scarcely less a subject of remark. It is based on the
old French element of the fur trade--that is, a commonalty who are the
descendants of French or Canadian boatmen, and clerks and interpreters
who have invariably married Indian women. The English, who succeeded to
power after the fall of Quebec, chiefly withdrew, but have also left
another element in the mixture of Anglo-Saxons, Irishmen or Celts, and
Gauls, founded also upon intermarriages with the natives. Under the
American rule, the society received an accession of a few females of
various European or American lineage, from educated and refined circles.
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