SLATE.

It is well known that we possess in the vicinity of Huron Bay extensive deposits of slate that afford this material for roofing and other purposes, of an excellence that is not excelled by any produced in the United States or elsewhere. In color and texture this slate leaves nothing to be desired, and it undoubtedly exists in unlimited quantity. There is no dissenting opinion from the judgment expressed by all who are qualified to determine, that the rock is adapted to the manufacture of not only the best roofing slate, but for such other purposes as the superior grades of this mineral are elsewhere employed. The deposits are contiguous to Lake Superior, thus giving the advantage of cheap water transportation to the important cities of the country. Thus far but a single quarry is worked, which produces about 5,000 squares per annum.

GOLD.

From time to time in the history of our northern peninsula public interest has been awakened in reputed discoveries of gold and silver; but while nothing of apparently much importance has grown out of these discoveries, they have kept alive a slight degree of expectation, a belief in the possibility of the existence in our rocks of veins of quartz which carry gold and silver in paying quantities. Indeed, the recent results attained at the gold mine now working in the vicinity of Ishpeming (the Ropes), indicates, as do many other facts which have come to light in the past, that the hope is well founded.

We e regard Michigan as a great agricultural State. We speak with pride of the leading rank which it holds for the production of wheat, of wool, of fruit and many other articles of argiculture for the production of which it is noted; but the average farmer, while congratulating himself upon the amplitude and variety of the production of the fruits of his calling, may overlook the fact that it is for its minerals, and not for its agriculture, that our State is chiefly remarkable. That it is only as a mining State that Michigan ranks first in the Union.

Our mineral interests are the greatest of which our State can boast. They probably contribute more largely to the sum of human prosperity than do any other of the products of the State. Our annual production of iron, of copper, and of salt bear a

larger proportion to the total of the world's supply of these minerals than does the yield of our farms to a like aggregate of agricultural production. It is safe to assume that the loss of all the grains and fruits which our soil so bountifully supplies would be less seriously felt by the world at large than would the extinction of the product of our mines. Mining is the chief industry of a large section of our State; of an area comprising more than onethird of its territory and occupied by more than 120,000 of its people. It is here an industry which is comparatively new, but what wonderful progress it has made! To what a position it has attained and to what a future it is destined!

During the brief period of the third of a century there has been accomplished a development in our mining region which may well excite our wonder and admiration. And when we consider the magnitude of the industry that has caused it, its apparently unlimited capacity for enlargement, and the effect which this increase must occasion in the growth and importance of the country, we may well view with complacency the past and be pardoned for entertaining seemingly extravagant hopes of the prosperity which the future has in store for it. The early missionaries who first traversed the coast of our mineral peninsula, encountered much at which they marevelld; but more than two centuries have elapsed since its wonders were first described, and it is marvellous and wonderful still. The reality of its resources transcend the most sanguine conjectures of the early travelers, and this "fag end of creation," as Baron L'Hontan epitomizes it in 1688, stands among mineral districts as does the great lake, whose waves it limits, among fresh waters, the Superior. The Upper Peninsula is no longer an isolated, dependent region; it is now accessible by numerous lines of boats in summer, which regularly ply between its harbors and the ports of the east, and by railway thoroughfares which at all seasons afford direct and rapid communication with the country. Its position as a mining region is established, and the reputation of its great mines is world-wide. It is a region which has developed a great prosperity and has still greater possibilities. Its mining resources are permanent, and anon in the future must be added a diversity of other interests for the conduct of which there is every inducement. The basis of all its growth and prosperity must be in the future as it has been in the past,its mines and minerals.

Its deposits of iron and copper are so extensive, so phenomenally rich and pure, the region is possessed of such cheap water communication, has such an abundance of timber, is so elevated and healthy, as to place it far in the van with the chief mining regions of the world.

This northern peninsula of Michigan, from its great extent of coast line of navigable waters, from its accessibility and the ease with which it may be reached and traversed, from the coolness and salubrity of its air and climate, from the extent and richness of its mineral deposits, stands pre-eminent among mineral districts. Its deposits of iron and copper are nowhere surpassed, and from no other region can these minerals with less difficulty, or with greater economy, be mined and transported to the markets of

the country.

ADDRESSES IN THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES.

HON. HENRY CHAMBERLAIN, PRESIDING.

MEN AND WOMEN OF MICHIGAN: We have assembled to-day to celebrate the semi-centennial anniversary of the admission of Michigan into the Union of States.

The large number of persons present, and the intense heat, I am certain will not prevent you from listening to the able men who have consented to address you on this occasion.

Remember, if you are crowded and the heat is oppressive, that our fathers on a hot June day, more than a hundred years ago, fought the battle of Bunker Hill.

I take pleasure in presenting to you (he needs no introduction), ex-Chief Justice Thomas M. Cooley.

THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF MICHIGAN.

HON. THOMAS M. COOLEY.

Generations of men come and go, ripening with years for the inevitable harvest; but institutions in harmony with eternal laws may expand and strengthen as the cycles of time roll on, and with every passing century strike their roots deeper, and take on some new form of perennial youth.

It is the founding of a new commonwealth we celebrate to-day; one of a mighty family, whose founders accepted equality as the true germinal principle of States, and trusted, by just and equal laws to ensure, as far as government may do so, the general happiness of all. Availing themselves freely of the wisdom of past ages, but relying mainly on the results worked out in the crucible of experience, they seemed to strike the true mean between the conservatism that blindly and reverently follows the past, and the wild and restless radicalism that still more blindly attempts to anticipate the future, so that they had the unique fortune to be

the founders of institutions which other nations at first despised, then distrusted, then came gradually to respect, and at last to admire and to imitate, until the mother country herself crowns with her praises the memory of Washington, thankful that through the overthrow of her armies there was given to the world the priceless boon of American liberty.

It was certain from the beginning of time that a notable commonwealth would some day grow up between the great lakes. The abundant provision which nature had here made for the wants of man was prophecy for it. Such fertility of soil, such wealth of forest and stream and lake and mineral deposit were certain, when the sun-light of discovery made them known to the world, to attract a colonization intent on their development. And if the lower peninsula in respect of natural resources left anything to be desired, the upper peninsula more than made good any deficiency; for its inexhaustible mineral stores only awaited the magic touch of skilled industry to be converted into productive wealth for the enjoyment of such fortunate people as should possess them.

A panoramic historical view of this region, beginning with the first meager accounts we have of it, would be of intense interest, and give us many startling surprises. First, we should see on a background of almost total darkness the desperate struggles of powerful tribes of Indians contending in their savage way for its possession. Then a day of promise seems to dawn when the Jesuit fathers come, inspired with the purpose to convert the wandering tribes of savages to the true faith, but destined to give tireless labor for a harvest which seems but scanty when they come bringing in their sheaves. Not altogether in vain, however, do they labor, for on the picture we trace how the gleam of their mission fires lights the way for trade and settlement, and how the early commerce finds protection in the rude cross planted at the missions, about which the Indians gather with their furs and peltry for barter. Shortly appears upon the canvas the venerated figure of Father Marquette, who in 1668 plants at the Sault Ste. Marie the first permanent settlement in Michigan, and three years later founds the mission of St. Ignatius on the Straits of Mackinaw. Thirty years more roll on, and the Chevalier la Motte Cadillac is seen to select with unerring sagacity as the site for his town the commanding position now held by the commer