Letters from America by Alexis de Tocqueville

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville [Tocqueville, Alexis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2010-11-30T07:00:00+00:00

Tocqueville to abbé Lesueur, Detroit, Michigan, August 3, 1831

You will perhaps be surprised, my good friend, by a letter dated Detroit. There are several reasons for our having come this way. We were very keen to see a region in which man has only recently conquered the wilderness. At Buffalo, we learned that we could witness such a spectacle in the territory of Michigan. We found a steamboat that shuttles every day between Buffalo and Detroit, cities situated about a hundred leagues apart, and generally makes the crossing in two days and one night. So we embarked for Detroit instead of heading straightaway for Niagara Falls, as we originally intended to do. We sailed the length of Lake Erie, which is so like the ocean that I felt a little seasick our first day out. The day after our arrival in Detroit, we hired horses and rode to a place called Pontiac, twenty-five miles northwest of Detroit.15

I am forced to stop here as I am coming to the bottom of the page and would rather not continue on another for fear of costing you a fortune in postage.16 We returned from Saginaw without incident. Tomorrow we leave for Buffalo, where I hope finally to collect our mail. I’m dying to see all of your scripts. If time allows, I shall write an account of this little voyage and read it to you upon my return. It would have been altogether agreeable were it not for mosquitoes. You can’t imagine how these little beasts torment one in the backwoods. It is indescribable. Adieu. I must conclude. I embrace you as I love you, with all my heart.

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