The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

162 | THOMPSON'S COAST PILOT. able little bands gaining the mouth of some fair river, have thence radiated over the wide spread domain from which their descendants are now pouring down upon the trusting bosom of the lake, the abundant products of an almost inexhaustible fertility. "Great as has been the change since the country was first ex- plored, it has almost wholly taken place since the year 1800, The pop- ulation of Ohio in that year was only 45,365; and that was the only State, with the exception of New York and Pennsylvania, of all those bordering upon the great lakes, which contained any consider- ' able settlements, or in which any enumeration of the people was taken. Hven Ohio was not then admitted into the Union; and the commercial advantage of Lake Erie were scarcely begun to be devel- oped till twenty-five years afterward. 'The first vessel bearing the | American flag upon Lake Erie was the sloop Detroit, of seventy tons, which was purchased of the Northwest Fur Company, by the Gen- eral Government, 1796. She was, however, soon condemned as un- 'seaworthy, and abandoned. Up to the time of the declaration of war in 1812, the whole number of vessels of all descriptions on these lakes, did not exceed twelve, and these were employed either in the fur trade, or in transporting to the West such goods and merchandise as were required for the scattered population that had found their way there. A few vessels were built during the war, but, probably, as many or more were destroyed. And during the three years of its continuance, as all emigration to the West, if any had before existed, must have ceased, there cannot be said to have been any commerce on the lakes. : | In March, 1791, Col. Thomas Proctor visited the Senecas of Buffalo Creek, and from him the first authentic: notice of Buffalo is given. He mentions a store house kept by an Indian trader named Winne, at Lake Erie. } fy «In June, 1795, a French nobleman, named La' Rochefoucauld Liancourt, visited Buffalo and the neighboring Indian villages. At this place there were then but few houses, He mentions an inn, where he was obliged to sleep on the floor in his clothes. "In August, 1795, Judge Porter, accompanied by Judah Colt, went to Presque Isle, now Erie, through Buffalo. J udge Porter makes mention 'that one Johnson, the British Indian interpreter,