The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-19
A WEEKS OUTING.
Second Day Continued.

| of departure. we reach the City of the l Straits La vile detroit, as the early French explorers called it when they I took possession just two hundred years I ago. 1t certainly occupies command
 ing position, "beautiful for situation the l joy of the whole earth.'' The Detroit l River. the strait of the explorers. con- 1 meets the great lake Erie with small \ Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River connects with Lake Huron. So all the l traffic of these great inland fresh water seas passes by Detroit. More vessels pass through this river yearly than enter the port of London. Chicago. with her two millions of inhabitants, looks down on Detroit as a village of only a, quarter of a million. But the citizens of Detroit are very proud of their beautiful clean city and do not envy the smoky metropo- \ lis her glories.
 Detroit is the most exquisitely clean city
 have ever seen except perhaps Toronto | and the resident portions of St. Paul. f By the time the citizens have had their | breakfast and started out to business, every street is as clean as the floor | of my lady's parlor; and all day long d,lieent scavengers uniformed in white duck are seen passing through the streets with their wheeled buckets removing any soil that may be contracted during the | day.
 There is all the time breeze from the river. cool with fresh airs from 1 Parasidse; the streets are bedecked with beautiful trees. at short intervals I the avenues widen into open spaces-not always strictly ssquares''-and well-tend- | ed flowers brighten the broad expenses of | grass kept to the highest emerald hue l by constant watering. In almost every I enc of these spaces a sparkling fountain
 is ieaping, In the sunlight Comfortable tenches are scattered around under the | trees, and the weary workman sitting on l them has before his eyes as restful a picture as though he were a millionaire
 surveying his own grounds. The trees most frequent are the elm, the maple, the horse chestnut and the siiver-leaf pop lar, first cousin of the Tight quivcriEs | aspen"
 A Detroit lady tells me that many per- | sons here object to the poplar because It is such a noisy tree" On investigation l find this expression refers to the fact that the leaves of the silver-leaf poplar
 like those of the aspen, are in constant
 motion. justifying the poets simle.
 'Uncertain varying as the shade.
 By the light quivering aspen made"
 The ieaf-stem of most trees is fattened
 in the same plane with the blade of the
 leaf That of the aspen family is fiat
 tened at right angles with the blade.
 and 1t Is this arrangement which keeps
 the leaves ever rustling even when there
 seems not a breath of air stirring. The horse chestnut trees remind me of the
 streets of Paris I used to think when I | read of the chestnut trees of the Paris
 boulevards that these were the nut bear
 ing chestnut trees of our woods,
 and it was & surprise and a | IaIf m see the magnificent avenues of horse chest nut trees lifting up their tall pinnacles of | bloom like giant candelabra. In Alabama the horse chestnut, which we call the buckeye, is only a shrub. In the West it is a noble tree. However. the weird
 crimson blossoms and broad palmate | leaves of the buckeye beautify our
 spring woods as do few other shrubs: and in autumn the large brown nuts look | ing out from their inclosing huils like the
 round bright eye of a deer, justify the name of 'buck-eye" Perhaps many Ala | bamians have never met one of our most
 beautiful shrubs-the white-frnged buck | eye. It is worthy of place in any land 1 scape garden.
 The Detroit River is in many respects the | most remarkable in the world. It is only | twenty seven miles icng. measuring from | the point where It issues from Lake St. | | and it's average width is only one mile, | yet 1t carries towards the ocean the wa | ters of Lakes Superior. Michigan, Huron
 and St. Clair of Green. Saginaw and | Sengian Bays, and of thousands of | streams. It is the natural drain for S2000 l square miles of water and i25.Cn0 square
 miles of land. No river in tho world, ex- cept the St. Lawrence and Niagara. car | ries such a volume of waters seaward. | v-ity fn t,, tint and sleighs passed over it to Canada, but | the ferry steamboats now keep the ice | broken up. There are two large islands | above the city. one belongs to Canada and was once the home of Pontiac, the | famous and redouhtab ble chief of the Ot- | tawas
 The other. Belle Isle belongs to the city | and has been transformed into the most enchanting park imaginable, nearly 700 | acres of beautiful groves of forest trees,
 oaks. hickories. maple and elms alternat-
 ing and well-kept natural lawns where | all kinds of games are played. Then l most delightful feature of all, 1t is firing | ed with boat houses an1 bath houses. | where all the delights of the seashore cah he had without it's danger, for tlte | Detroit River is no treacherous stream,
 but exceptionally smooth and safe for
 boats. row-toats. and even for the | nRht canoe or the deScendant or tns
 "voga germ"
 Six miles below the city are twenty | more islands-the "Nenice of America"- | where the beautiful summer villas of | wealthy citizens alternate with the rich | farms and orchards of sturdy Western farmers. On one of these is lands the l prophet and warrior Tecur1seh encamred with his savage tribe until Perry's vic-
 tory drove the enemies of the United States from the shores of the lakes
 !, On the whole this city deserves the en- thusiasm to which 1t moved one of it's
 English visitors-the celebrated authoress, 1 Mrs. Jameson. She wrote:
 l AS the sun went down in his glory | the breeze freshened and the spires and towers of the city of Detroit were seen ! against the Western sky. The schooncrs
 at anchor. or just dropping into the riv- | er the little canoes fitting lightly across ] from shore to shoe. the enormous steam | ships soemnly puffing Jnt their mighty I breath the noisy port and the bustling | streets all bathed in the light of a sum- | set such as I had never seen. even in Italy. turned me gi1dy with pleasurahle | excitement" J. S. T. Circulation Managers.