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FORTY YEARS AGO (1833) BY REV. ELIJAH H. PILCHER
the next branching from this at Ypsilanti along the old territorial road, through to the center of the second counties; the third running northwest through Pontiac, and so on to Grand Rapids. There were no cross-roads for a long time. My course lay along the territorial road from Ann Arbor to Marshall. The question then was how to get across to the Chicago road at Coldwater, which as yet had but two houses in it. I could find no one who had ever been through the woods to act as guide. But it must be done, so I hired a man to go with me and work our way. After spending the Sabbath at Marshall, on Monday morning I emptied my saddle-bags of clothes and books and filled them with oats for the horses and raw pork and a bread-loaf for ourselves; then, being armed with a gun and ax, we set forth. This was in the month of October, 1831. An unusual amount of rain had fallen this season, so that all the marshes and streams were full. We took our course, being diverted sometimes by what appeared to be impassable marshes. With the ax we marked or blazed the trees on the south side, so that we could follow the way back without trouble. In this way we continued until late in the afternoon, without any serious difficulty, when we reached the St. Joseph river. This we found to be full banks. We apprehended, what we afterwards found to be true, that it was too deep to be forded well. We found a tree near the bank, leaning over. This we felled with the ax, and crawled over on it, as it reached nearly to the shore. One went over to take the horses when they came, while the other drove them through the river and then went over on the tree. Night soon overtook us,
MICHIGAN
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