quette Railroad, triangulating the peninsula by running from St. Ignace at the straits to Marquette on Lake Superior, a hundred and fifty miles distant, was opened to travel, and now tourists follow the iron horse through the heart of the hitherto mysterious woods, and from the new towns, fairly bristling with the stumps of recently-felled trees, that are here and there met with on the way, they can make little side-journeys to limpid streams, clear lakes, or gloomy woods, where trout, bass, or deer may often be found in astonishing numbers.
It was over this road that the Judge, the Greek Professor, and the writer hereof were whirled on a sunny day in June, 1883, on their way to find the ideal land for the summer resting. At St. Ignace we had heard that mosquitoes and other insects were uncommonly bad in the interior, by reason of the unprecedented rainfall of the season; and so, at the Judge's suggestion, we determined to go to the region of the Pictured Rocks and tarry on some wind-swept bit of highland till the insect season was fairly over, when we would return to the interior and carry out our original purpose of spending some weeks fishing in the numerous trout-streams there to be found.
At Munising Station our party left the train for a four-mile ride down to another Munising, which is on Munising Bay. The Judge, who has an aptitude for getting names wrong, had inquired of the conductor the distance to "Moneysing," whereat the Professor laughed immoderately, and even the oaken countenance of the conductor puckered into a grin as he gave the required information; but by the time we returned to the station the joke ceased to amuse. The Munisingers found more music in our money than was good for our pockets, and not even the Professor found any fun in the Judge's Moneysing.
The south shore of Lake Superior for a great distance is walled in with a soft friable sandstone which the early geologists assigned to the Potsdam period. This wall stood out to sea much farther at one time than it does now, and has been weathered back to its present line. In the progress of this weathering, an island, eight miles long and half as many wide, has been left standing out in the lake, and a narrow, irregularly-shaped bay curves between it and the mainland. To this island the Ojibwas applied their generic Munesink, "the island," doubtless because it was by all odds the largest island in that region. For a like reason the early French discoverers named it and the two or three islets in its vicinity "Les Grandes Isles," and Grand Island the large one is to this day. The Munesink of the red man, softened into Munising by the white, has been found a convenient name for all the villages in that immediate neighborhood. As we have seen, the railroad-station is Munising, though the post-office, transferred from Munising on the bay to this place while we were at the Rocks, was burdened with the meaningless name of Floeter. Think of it! Such a name to be given, when the very streams and rocks and trees of the region are redolent of aboriginal names!
The first of the Munisings is the one established by the Indians, and it still survives. It is on the bay shore, and a mile and a half east of it is "Old Munising,"—old mainly because no one makes a permanent home within its precincts. A mineral spring gushing from the hill-side hinted to some one, in the early ages of Munising history, that there would be money in a summer resort located there, and so that Some One built houses and advertised the healing properties of the waters, the excellent fishing and hunting, to say nothing of the grand scenery and the salubrity of the summer climate; but guests came not, and the place was abandoned. Of late years a party of Chicagoans have taken possession during the summer months, and find rest and recreation; but on their departure the doors are nailed fast, and the place is left in possession of the village cows and the wild deer that go there to lick. Between this "Old Munising" and the Indian town, a mile from the former and half that distance from the latter, is Muni-
