Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Gazetteer of the St. Joseph Valley, Michigan and Indiana: With a View of Its Hydraulic and Business Capacities
Much doubt and uncertainty hang around many of the events which go to make up the early history of a new country. The solitary wilds of an unexplored continent afford few opportunities for making those notes and records which, as time advances, be come precious to the seeker after historical truths; and, as a general thing, the explorers and settlers of our Great West have been men little accustomed to literary pursuits and less desirous of literary honors. Besides, the arduous labors and engrossing duties of pioneer life leave little room or opportunity for that quiet and leisure indispensable to scholarly habits. Thus it is, that a considerable portion of the interesting events of our first settlements, and of the discovery of the country itself, have faded from the memory of man or are only handed down as traditions, distorted by the uncertain medium or mystified by the lapse of time. True, occasionally men of learning and taste have wandered into the Very heart of the continent and, with fertile pens, have recorded what they did, and saw and suffered. Especially is this true of those adventurous French explorers who first penetrated the un broken forests and traversed the almost boundless prairies of the West; yet, even they left much for doubt and more for conjecture. Their relations are frequently little more than skeletons around.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
