On the borders of Lake Huron, where its, waters dash up against the thickly wooded shores of the State of Michigan, is an inlet known as Saginaw Bay. Visit this inlet any time before the long winter sets in, and you will see the bay dotted over with innumerable small fishing-boats, whose white sails resemble so many graceful sea-gulls skimming over the water; in these boats are the fishermen dragging their nets for Mackinaw trout.
Hundreds support themselves in this way through the season when the lake and bay are free from ice; but a time soon comes when, for twenty miles out from the shore, an ice bridge forms thick enough to sustain a whole village. When the mercury seldom rising above zero from the last of November until the first of March, the fishermen and their families would be quite destitute as soon as the bleak Winter commences, had not a mode been established whereby they could fish all the Winter through. As there was no work to be accomplished, there was, of course, much suffering, and an opportunity offered to prove the proverb that “necessity is the mother of invention.”
Many ways were devised, and much cogitating racked the brains of the poor until they, at last, concluded to try the experiment of each man building himself a house and moving on to the lake, directly the ice formed.
A Winter Settlement on the Ice In Saginaw Bay, on Lake Huron…
Read the original post from this excerpt on Thumbwind.com published at https://thumbwind.com on January 25, 2019.
