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Title: The Great Lakes
       The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors,
       and Their Cargoes

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release Date: September 4, 2016 [EBook #52976]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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[Illustration: The Fountain of the Great Lakes

Lorado Taft, Sculptor]




  The Great Lakes

  The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners,
  Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes

  Together with
  A Brief History of Our Inland Seas

  By
  James Oliver Curwood

  _With 72 Illustrations and a Map_

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons
  New York and London
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1909




  COPYRIGHT, 1909
  BY
  JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




  TO HIS
  FATHER AND MOTHER
  WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND FAITH IN HIM HAVE BEEN UNFAILING,
  THE AUTHOR
  AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES THIS BOOK




Preface


In this volume, it has been my object to tell of the people and of
the picturesque life of the Great Lakes, and to set before my readers
actual facts about the cities, the commerce, and the future of the
greatest fresh-water seas in the world. For some unaccountable reason,
the Great Lakes, notwithstanding the fact that more than thirty million
people live in the States bordering their shores, and in spite of the
still more remarkable fact that they are doing more than anything else
on the American continent for the commercial progress of the nation,
have been almost entirely neglected by writers. To-day there are but
few people who know that one of the three greatest ports and the
largest fleet of freighters in the world are on these unsalted waters;
and I mention the fact in this particular place simply to bring home
to the casual reader how little is known by the public at large about
our Inland Seas. For this reason, I have not dealt with any single
side of Lake life, but have attempted to present as many phases of it
as I could; and, for the same reason, I have added a brief historical
account of the Lakes at the end of the book. It has been my desire,
too, that these pages, from the beginning, should prove of especial
value to those many thousands all over the world who are, or may in the
future be, directly interested in the Lakes in a business way; and a
great deal of attention has, therefore, been given to the commercial
side of my subject--statistics and facts regarding Lake commerce, the
opportunities of the present day, and a forecast of what the coming
years hold in store for the men who have investments, or who plan to
invest in business enterprises, on or about the Great Lakes.

While dwelling upon the importance of the commercial life of the Inland
Seas, I wish also to emphasise the fact that I have kept always in
mind another large class of people who are keenly interested in my
subject, though not from a commercial standpoint. The present volume is
designed to interest this latter class by portraying another side of
Lake life--the human side, the romance and the tragedy that have played
their thrilling parts upon these waters; the wonders of their progress;
the story of their ships, their men, their wars, for of all the pages
in the history of the North American continent none are more thrilling,
or more filled with the romantic and the picturesque, than those which
tell the story of our fresh-water seas.

In conclusion, I wish to say that I owe a great debt of gratitude to
the scores of Lake “owners,” ship-builders, and captains who have
aided me, in every way possible, in the preparation of this volume, and
without whose personal co-operation the writing of it would have been
impossible.

            J. O. C.

  DETROIT, MICHIGAN, 1909.




Contents


                                                                    PAGE
  PART I
  THE SHIPS, THEIR OWNERS, THEIR SAILORS, AND THEIR CARGOES

    I--THE BUILDING OF THE SHIPS                                       3

   II--WHAT THE SHIPS CARRY--ORE                                      25

  III--WHAT THE SHIPS CARRY--OTHER CARGOES                            46

   IV--PASSENGER TRAFFIC AND SUMMER LIFE                              68

    V--THE ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY OF THE INLAND SEAS                     89

   VI--BUFFALO AND DULUTH: THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF THE LAKES          113

  VII--A TRIP ON A GREAT LAKES FREIGHTER                             137


  PART II
  ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE LAKES

    I--ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY                                      159

   II--THE LAKES CHANGE MASTERS                                      175

  III--THE WAR OF 1812 AND AFTER                                     194


  INDEX                                                              223




Illustrations


                                                                  _Page_

  _The Fountain of the Great Lakes_                _Frontispiece_
          _Lorado Taft, Sculptor._

  _The First Step in the Making of a Ship--Laying the “Keel Blocks”_   4

  _Second Step--Laying the Keel, or Bottom of the Ship, on the
      “Keel Blocks”_                                                   6

  _The Growing Ship_                                                   8

  _Vessel Almost Ready for Launching_                                 10

  _A Monster of Steel and Iron Ready to be Launched_                  12
          _Weight 9,500,000 lbs._

  _The Launching_                                                     14

  _The “Thomas F. Cole,” 11,200 Tons, Being Fitted with Engines
      and Boilers after her Launching_                                16
          _The “Cole” is the largest ship on the Lakes. Length,
            605 feet 5 inches._

  _Her First Trip--Off for the Ore Regions of the North_              18

  _This Shows Some of the 800,000 Rivets that Go to the Making
      of a 10,000-Ton Leviathan of the Inland Seas_                   22

  _Ice-Bound. Thirty-two Boats Tied up in the Ice at the Soo_         26
          _From a Photograph by Lord & Thomas, Sault Ste. Marie,
            Mich._

  _A Network of Tracks Running through the Ore Lands_                 28

  _Captains of the Vessels of the American Steamship Company_         30

  _The “Montezuma”_                                                   32
          _The largest wooden ship on fresh water being towed
            out of the Maumee River, Toledo._

  _A Coal Dock at Superior, Wisconsin_                                34
          _The pile of coal is 1400 feet long and 30 feet high._

  _The Record Load Hauled by One Team out of the Michigan Woods,
      20,000 Feet_                                                    36

  _One Steam Shovel Keeps Three Locomotives and Trains Busy_          38

  _Steamers at a Modern Ore Unloading Plant at Conneaut_              40

  _The Main Slip in the Harbour of Conneaut_                          42
          _Conneaut is the second largest ore-receiving port on
            the Lakes._

  _One of the Huge Open Pits of the Mesaba Range_                     44

  _A Raft of Five Million Pulp Logs on the North Shore of Lake
      Michigan_                                                       48

  _Scooping up Ore from the Mahoning Mine at Hibbing_                 52
          _The largest open pit mine in the world._

  _A Mining Town on the Mesaba Range, where a Few Years ago the
      Deer and Bear Roamed Undisturbed_                               54

  _Harbour View at Conneaut, Ohio, Showing Docks and Machinery_       56

  _A Steam Shovel at Work_                                            58
          _This removes from 4000 to 8000 tons of ore a day._

  _The Old and the New_                                               62
          _A modern freight carrier passing one of the old
            schooners._

  _A Shaft on One of the Ranges_                                      66

  _The “North West”_                                                  68
          _One of the finest passenger steamers on the Great
            Lakes._

  _The Stop at Tashinoo Park, St. Clair Flats_                        70

  _The Landing at Mackinac Dock, Michigan_                            72

  _Hickory Island at the Mouth of Detroit River_                      74
          _From a Photograph by Manning Studio, Detroit._

  _The “City of Erie”_                                                76
          _The fastest steamer on the Lakes, holding a record of
            22.93 miles per hour._

  _Little Venice, St. Clair River_                                    80
          _Showing the type of “Inns,” where people may pass
            their holidays at small expense._
            _Courtesy of Northern Steamship Co._

  _A Scene on Belle Isle, Detroit River_                              82

  _Steamer “Western States”_                                          84
          _One of the largest and fastest boats on the Lakes.
            Carries 2500 people and her fastest speed is 20 miles
            an hour._
            _From a Photograph by Detroit Photographic Co._

  _Steamship “North West” in American Lock_                           86

  _Cottages Built at Small Expense along the St. Mary’s River_        88

  _A Steamer Stripped by a Tow-line by Running between a Steamer
      and her Consort_                                                90
          _From a Photograph by Lord & Rhoades, Sault Ste. Marie,
            Mich._

  _A Remarkable Photograph Showing the Big Freighter “Stimson”
      in a Holocaust of Smoke and Flame_                              94

  _After a Fierce Night’s “Late Navigation” Run across Lake
      Superior_                                                       96

  _A Ship that Made the Shore before she Sank. The Work of
      Raising her in Progress_                                       100

  _A Treacherous Sea in its Garb of Greatest Beauty_                 102
          _One phase of Lake navigation._

  _A View of the “Zimmerman”_                                        104
          _After a collision with another freighter._

  _The Steamer “Wahcondah_”                                          108
          _One of the Lake grain carriers which was caught in a
            storm late in the season after being buffeted by the
            waves of Lake Superior for about fourteen hours._

  _This is One of the Most Remarkable Photographs Ever Taken on
      the Lakes. It Shows a Sinking Lumber Barge just as She Was
      Breaking in Two_                                               110
          _The photograph was taken from a small boat._

  _The Residence of Ansley Wilcox at Buffalo_                        114
          _Where President Roosevelt took the oath of office._
            _Copyright 1908 by Detroit Photographic Co._

  _A Bird’s-eye View of the Harbour of Duluth, Taken from the
      Hill_                                                          116
          _From a Photograph by Maher, Duluth._

  _The Ship Canal and Aërial Bridge, Duluth, Minn._                  118
          _Copyright 1908 by Detroit Photographic Co._

  _Fleet of Boats in Duluth Harbour Waiting to Unload_               122

  _View Looking South-west from the New Chamber of Commerce
      Building, Buffalo_                                             124

  _Unloading at One of the Coal Docks at Duluth_                     126

  _A Fleet of Erie Canal Boats--Capacity of Each 150 Tons_           128
          _The boats on the new canal will be 1000 tons each._

  _The Jack-Knife Bridge at Buffalo_                                 132

  _A Scene on Blackwell Canal_                                       134
          _The winter home of big boats in Buffalo._

  _Some of the Grain Elevators at Duluth, which Have a Combined
      Storage Capacity of 35,550,000 Bushels_                        136

  _The Mesaba Ore Docks_                                             138

  _From the Deck of the Ship the Tug Looks Like an Ant Dragging
      at a Huge Prey_                                                142

  _Observation Room on the “Wm. G. Mather”_                          144
          _Which gives an idea of the luxuriousness of the guests’
            quarters on a Great Lakes freighter._

  _The Luxurious Dining-room on the 10,000-Ton Steamer “J. H.
      Sheadle”_                                                      146

  _Tugs Trying to Release Boats Held in the Ice at the Soo_          150
          _Copyright 1906 by Young, Lord & Rhoades, Ltd._

  _Whaleback Barges Preparing for Winter Quarters at Conneaut,
      Ohio_                                                          152
          (_The Whaleback is a type of vessel that has been tried
            and found wanting. They are going out of use._)

  _Ashore_                                                           154

  _Arch Rock, Mackinac Island_                                       160
          _One of the natural wonders of the world._

  _Fort Mackinac_                                                    168

  _Marquette’s Grave, St. Ignace, Michigan_                          174

  _Monument at Put-in-Bay in Memory of the British and Americans
      who Died in the Battle of Lake Erie_                           182

  _Old West Blockhouse, Fort Mackinac_                               186
          _Built by the British, about 1780._

  _The Monument Erected to those who Fought and Died on Mackinac
      Island_                                                        190

  _Mackinac Island, Showing Old Fort Mackinac_                       194

  _Once the Scene of Bloodshed and Strife, these Old Trees Stand
      where French, Indian, and British Fought Years ago_            200

  _A View of the Historic Battle-ground on Mackinac Island_          206

  _An Old British Gunboat Discovered in the River Thames_            212

  _Scene when Admiral Dewey Passed through the Soo Locks_            216

  _Map_                                                         _At End_




PART I

The Ships, their Owners, their Sailors, and their Cargoes




I

The Building of the Ships


Not long ago, I was on a Lake freighter pounding her way up Huron on
the “thousand-mile highway” that leads to Duluth. Beside me was a man
who had climbed from poverty to millions. He was riding in his own
ship. His interests burned ten thousand tons of coal a year. He was one
of the ore kings of the North--as rough as the iron he dug, filled to
the brim with enthusiasm and animal energy of the Lake breed; a man who
had helped to make the Lakes what they are, as scores of others like
him have done. Before and behind us there trailed the smoke of a dozen
of the steel leviathans of the Inland Seas. I had asked him a question,
and there was the fire of a great pride in his eyes when he answered.

“It would make a nation by itself--this Lake country!” he said. “And it
would be America. It’s America from Buffalo to Duluth, every inch of
it, and the people who are in it are Americans. That’s American smoke
you see off there, and American ships are making it; they’re run by a
thousand or more American captains, and they’re Americans fore ’n’
aft, too. We’ve got only eight States along the Lakes, but if we should
secede to-morrow the world would find us the heart and power of the
nation. That’s how American we are!”

This is the patriotism one finds in the Lake country, from the
roaring furnaces of the East to the vast ore beds of Minnesota. It
is representative of the spirit that rules the Inland Seas; it is
this spirit that has built an empire, and is building a vaster empire
to-day, along the edges of the world’s greatest fresh-water highways.

[Illustration: The First Step in the Making of a Ship--Laying the “Keel
Blocks.”]

With more than thirty-four millions of people living in the States
bordering on them, possessing one third of the total tonnage of North
America, and saving to the people of the United States five hundred
million dollars each year, or six dollars for every man, woman, and
child in the country, one of the most inexplainable mysteries of the
century exists in the fact that the Great Lakes of to-day are as little
known to the vast majority of Americans as they were a quarter of a
century ago. While revolutions have been working in almost all lines of
industry, while States have been made and cities born, America’s great
Inland Seas have remained unwatched and unknown except by a comparative
few. Upon them have grown the greatest industries of the nation, yet
the national ignorance concerning them can hardly find a parallel in
history. Were they to disappear to-morrow the industrial supremacy of
the republic would receive a blow from which it could never recover.
The steel industry, as a dominant commercial factor, would almost cease
to exist. One half of the total population of the country would be
seriously affected, and America would fall far behind in the commercial
race of the nations.

Notwithstanding these things, not one person in ten knows what the
Great Lakes stand for to-day. While a thousand writers have sung of the
greatness and romance of the watery wastes that encircle continents,
none has told of those “vast unsalted seas” which mean more to
eighty-five millions of Americans than any one of the five oceans.
What has been written has been for those who find their commerce upon
them; for the owners of ships and the masters of men; for the kings of
ore and grain--a little statistical matter here and a little there,
but nothing for the millions who are not at hand to feel the pulse of
traffic or to see the great commercial pageant as it passes before
their eyes. Even of those who live in the States bordering the Great
Lakes but few know that these fresh-water highways of traffic possess
the greatest shipping port in the world, that upon them floats the
largest single fleet of freighters in existence, that in their great
construction yards shipbuilding has been reduced to a science as
nowhere else on earth, and that in their life the elements of romance
and tragedy play their parts even as on the big oceans that divide
hemispheres.

In a small way the general lack of knowledge of the Great Lakes is
excusable, for their development has been so rapid and so stupendous
that people have not yet grasped its significance. Within the last
quarter of a century or less they have become the industrial magnets
of the nation. Along their shores have sprung up our greatest cities,
with populations increasing more rapidly than those of New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, or San Francisco. In the eight States which have
ports on them is more than one third of the total population of the
North American continent. Along their three thousand three hundred and
eighty-five miles of United States shore line will be built this year
more than one half of the tonnage constructed in America, and over
their highways will travel at least six times as much freight as all
the nations of the world carried through the Suez Canal in 1908.

Just what this means it is hard for one to conceive when told only in
figures. Perhaps in no better way can the immensity and importance of
their traffic be described than by showing briefly one of the ways in
which they earned a “dividend” of six dollars for every person living
in the United States in 1907. This immense “dividend” did not go into
the coffers of corporations, but actually, though indirectly, into the
pockets of the people.

[Illustration: Second Step--Laying the Keel, or Bottom of the Ship, on
the “Keel Blocks.”]

It is only fair to the Lakes and the vast interests upon them to use
the figures of 1907 instead of those of 1908. In the following pages
it is the author’s intention to paint conditions as they actually
exist upon our Inland Seas _under normal conditions_. During 1908,
the financial depression that swept over the entire country produced
conditions upon the Lakes which, in the author’s opinion, will not
be seen again for a great many years to come. “Panic figures” give a
wrong impression. Those of 1908 would show a falling off of business in
various branches of Lake traffic of from twenty to sixty per cent. As
one of the best known vessel-men in Duluth said to me recently, “We can
count that the Lakes have lost just one year of progress because of the
panic.” In other words, it is highly probable that the business of the
Lakes will in this year of 1909 be just about what it should have been
under normal conditions in 1908, and there are many who believe that
within the next two years the loss of the “panic year” will be more
than discounted.

For this reason, in order to show how the Lakes earn their tremendous
dividend for the people of the United States, we use the figures of
1907, when traffic was normal. In that year, for instance, it cost a
little over ten cents to ship a bushel of grain from Chicago to New
York by rail, and only five and one half cents by way of the Lakes and
the Erie Canal. This saving on transportation of five cents a bushel
is divided between the producing farmer and the consuming public.
It is a “nickel on which no trust can place its hands”--and this
nickel, when multiplied by the number of bushels of grain produced in
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan, reaches the
stupendous figure of ninety-eight million dollars! In the matter of
iron ore the saving is still greater. Were it not for this saving all
steel necessities, from rails to common kitchen forks, would advance
tremendously in price, and the United States would not be able to
control the steel markets of the world. To-day you can ship a ton of
ore from Duluth to Ashtabula, Conneaut, or Cleveland, a distance of
nearly one thousand miles, for less than you can send by rail that
same ton from one of these ports to Pittsburg, a distance of only one
hundred and thirty miles. In other words, while it costs about eighty
cents to send a ton of ore from the vast ranges of the North to an Erie
port by ship, the rail rate is seven times greater, which means that
the vessels of the Great Lakes saved in 1907 on ore alone no less than
one hundred and seventy-three million dollars!

[Illustration: The Growing Ship.]

In another way than in this annual saving in cost of transportation
are the Lakes fighting a great and almost unappreciated battle for
the people. They are to-day the country’s greatest safeguard against
excessive railroad charges. They are the governors of the nation’s
internal commerce, and will be for all time to come. There is not a
State north of the Ohio River and east of the Rocky Mountains which
is not affected by their cheap transportation, and the day is not
distant when hundreds of millions of bushels of grain raised in the
Canadian west will go to the seaboard by way of the lake and canal
route. At the present time there are about two hundred and forty
thousand miles of railroad in the United States, constructed and
equipped at a cost of more than thirteen billion dollars; yet, on the
basis of ton miles, the traffic on the Lakes will in 1909 be one sixth
as great as on all the roads in the country.

These facts are given here to show in a small way the gigantic part
the Great Lakes are playing to-day in the industrial progress of the
nation. Yet, as paradoxical as it may seem, the nation itself has
hardly recognised the truth. The “helping” hand that the Government
has reached out has been pathetically weak. In history to come it must
be recorded that great men--men of brain and brawn and courage--have
“built up” the Lakes, and not the Government. And these men, scores and
hundreds of them, are continuing the work to-day. Since the dawn of
independence to the present time, the United States has expended for
all harbours and waterways on the Great Lakes above the Niagara Falls
less than ninety million dollars, yet each year this same Government
hands out one hundred and forty million dollars to the army and navy
and one hundred and twenty-seven million dollars to the postal service!
In the face of this is the astonishing fact that, in 1907, the saving
in freight rates on Lake Superior commerce alone exceeded by a million
dollars the total sum expended by the Government on the Inland Seas
since the day the first ship was launched upon them!

In this building of the “greater empire” of the Lake country there
is now no rest. Wherever ships are built the stocks are filled. From
the uttermost end of Erie to the shipyards of the north--in Buffalo,
Lorain, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, West Superior, Chicago, and
Manitowoc--the making of American ships is being rushed as never
before. In the larger yards powerful arc-light systems allow of work
by night as well as by day. The roaring of forges, the hammering of
steel, the tumult of labouring men, and the rumbling of giant cranes
are seldom stilled. With almost magical quickness a ten-thousand-ton
monster of steel rises on the stocks--and is gone. Another takes its
place, and even as they follow one another into the sea, racing to fill
demands, there still comes the cry: “Ships--ships--we want more ships!”

[Illustration: Vessel Almost Ready for Launching.]

In the year 1908, it is estimated that very nearly three fifths of
the total ship tonnage built in the United States was constructed in
these busy yards of the Great Lakes. As early as January they were
choked with orders for 1908 delivery, and even that early a number of
them had orders running well into 1909. A brief glance at the vessel
construction of the Lakes during the six years up to and including
1907 will give a good idea of the rapid growth of this industry along
the Inland Seas. In 1902, the product was forty-two vessels, thirty-two
of them being bulk freighters. In 1903, forty-two of the fifty vessels
built were bulk freight steamers, with a carrying capacity of 213,250
tons. In 1904, the output was only thirteen vessels, but in 1905
twenty-nine bulk freighters with a carrying capacity of 260,000 tons
were built. In 1906, there were turned out from the Great Lakes yards
forty-seven vessels, of which forty were bulk freighters, and in 1907,
the total was fifty-six vessels, including forty bulk freighters, three
package freighters, and one passenger steamer. The early months of
1908 saw contracts in force for the construction of twenty-five bulk
freighters for delivery before 1909.

Taking the forty bulk freighters built in 1907, one gets a fair idea
of the immensity of Lake traffic. They are but a drop in the bucket--a
single year’s contribution to the great argosies of the Inland Seas;
yet these forty ships have a carrying capacity of three hundred and
sixty thousand tons. In other words, within four days after loading at
Duluth they could be discharging this mountain of ore at Erie ports. To
carry this same “cargo” by rail would require over three hundred trains
of thirty cars each, or a single train seventy miles in length!

But this is not particularly astonishing when one is studying the
commerce of the Great Lakes. True, it represents considerably over a
half of the tonnage built in the United States during 1907, but even
at that it “isn’t much to shout about,” as one builder of ships said
to me. These men of the Lakes never express surprise at the wonders
of the Inland Seas. They are used to them. They meet with them every
day of their lives. On either coast these same “wonders” would be
made much of. But the Lake breed is not the breed that boasts--unless
you drag opinions from them. Why, over in Cleveland there is one man
who directs the destinies of twice as many ships as the forty-eight
mentioned above--a single commercial navy that can move six hundred and
forty-eight thousand tons of ore in one trip, or enough to “make up” a
train of sixteen thousand two hundred cars, which train would be one
hundred and twenty miles in length! This man’s name is Coulby--Harry
Coulby, President and General Manager of the Pittsburg Steamship
Company, Lake arm of the United States Steel Corporation. There was
a time when Coulby was a poor mechanic, working his ten hours a day.
Then he developed “talent” and went into a shipyard draughting-room.
Now he is undeniably the king of Lake shipping. His word is law in the
directing of more than a hundred vessels, the greatest fleet in the
world; and it is law in other ways, for it is common talk in marine
circles that he (with the trust behind him) is responsible for nearly
every important move on the Great Lakes. He is the eye and the ear
and the mouth of the trust, and it is the trust that practically fixes
the ore rates for each season, and does other things of interest. If
these ships of Coulby’s were placed end to end they would reach a
distance of eight miles! During the eight months of Lake navigation
they can transport as much freight over the “thousand-mile highway”
as the combined fleets of all nations take through the Suez Canal in
twelve! Yet who has heard of Coulby? How many know of the gigantic
fleet he controls? A few thousand Lake people, and that is all. A
magnificent illustration is this of the national ignorance concerning
the Great Lakes.

[Illustration: A Monster of Steel and Iron Ready to be Launched.

Weight 9,500,000 lbs.]

And Coulby is only one of many. The fleet he controls is only one of
many. The Lakes breed great men--and they breed great fleets. How
many of our millions have heard of J. C. Gilchrist and the Gilchrist
fleet?--a man in one way unique in the marine history of the world, and
a fleet which, if plying between New York and Liverpool, would be one
of the present-day sensations. Gilchrist, like Coulby, “worked up from
the depths,” and to-day, as the head of the Gilchrist Transportation
Company, he holds down seventy-five distinct jobs! Seventy-five owners
have placed seventy-five ships under his generalship, and from each
he receives a salary of one thousand dollars a season, or a total of
seventy-five thousand dollars. He is one of the Napoleons of the Lakes.
He handles ships and men like a magician; his holds are never empty;
his dividends are always large. There was a day when one thousand
dollars looked like a fortune to Gilchrist, and when eight dollars a
week was an income of which he was mightily proud. That was when, from
away down in Michigan, he turned his face northward toward the Lakes,
filled with big ambition and a desire for adventure, but with little
more than what he carried on his back. He got work as a sailor before
the mast at forty dollars a month and board. From there he graduated
to “bell hop” on a passenger steamer, and continued to graduate until
the owners of great ships began to see in him those things which they
themselves did not possess, and so handed over to him the destiny of
the second greatest fleet of freight carriers in the world.

Such men as Coulby and Gilchrist and the ships they have would make the
fame of any nation on the high seas. They and men like Captain John
Mitchell, who is the head of a fleet of twenty ships, J. H. Sheadle, G.
Ashley Tomlinson, and G. L. Douglas, are of the kind that are choking
the Great Lakes shipyards with orders, while along the ocean seaboards
stocks are rotting and builders of ocean marine are starving. Cleveland
claims the headquarters of both of these immense fleets--and Cleveland
is fortunate in many other things. She counts her strong men of the
Lakes by the score. She is a great owner of ships, a great buyer of
ships, and a great builder.

[Illustration: The Launching.]

But when it comes to the production of “bottoms,” Cleveland and
all other Lake cities must give way to Detroit. There was a day when
Detroit was one of the important ports of the Lakes, but that day is
long past. Now she is the centre of shipbuilding. In 1907, there was
built at Detroit more tonnage than in any other city in the United
States. Of the vessels launched, twenty-one of the largest took their
first dip in or very near Detroit. The tonnage of these vessels
aggregated over one half of the total tonnage of the forty freighters
constructed for the season’s delivery.

It has been said that Detroit is a great shipbuilding city by accident,
and there is a good deal of truth in the assertion. Six years ago the
American Shipbuilding Company, the greatest trust of its kind in the
world, held undisputed sway over the Lakes. It knew no competition. No
combination of capital had dared to grapple with it. With eleven huge
construction yards strung along the Lakes between Buffalo, Duluth, and
Chicago, it held a monopoly of the shipbuilding industry. It was at
this time that one of the country’s great industrial generals sprang up
in Detroit. Then he was practically unknown; now as a leader and master
of men, he is known in every city of this country where iron and steel
are used. His name is Antonio C. Pessano. Detroit must always be proud
of this man. He must count in the history of her future greatness, and
always her citizens should be thankful that he and his indomitable
courage did not first appear in Buffalo, Cleveland, or some other Lake
city. Mr. Pessano’s ambition was to build at Detroit the most modern
shipbuilding plant in the world. Some people laughed at him. Others
pitied him. The trust twiddled its fingers, so to speak, and smiled. In
the face of it all Mr. Pessano won the confidence of such Gibraltars of
industrial finance as George H. Russel, Colonel Frank J. Hecker, Joseph
Boyer, William G. Mather, Henry B. Ledyard, and others--won it to the
extent of raising one million five hundred thousand dollars, with which
he built the greatest shipbuilding yards on the Lakes and which have
developed since then into the greatest in America, employing more than
three thousand men.

Mr. Pessano’s shipbuilding rival is the president of the trust. His
name is Wallace, “son of Bob Wallace, the elder,” Lake men will tell
you, for Robert Wallace, the father, was a shipbuilder himself for a
great many years. He is very proud of his boy.

“I had three boys,” said he. “Two of ’em went to college, but Jim _he_
wanted an education, so he didn’t take much stock in books, but got out
among men. That was what made Jim!”

[Illustration: The “Thomas F. Cole,” 11,200 Tons, Being Fitted with
Engines and Boilers after her Launching.

The “Cole” is the largest ship on the Lakes. Length, 605 feet 5 inches.]

To-day it is “Jim,” or James C. Wallace, of Cleveland, as he is better
known, who is the champion shipbuilder of the world. He is President
of the American Shipbuilding Company. Probably in no other part of the
world is the romantic more largely associated with modern progress than
on the Great Lakes, and in these two men--Wallace and Pessano--it is
revealed in a singular way. Together they govern shipbuilding on the
Inland Seas. Both of these great men began in the dinner-pail brigade.
They worked in overalls and grease, not for “experience,” but because
they had to; they pulled and heaved with common labourers; they rose,
step by step, from the lowest ranks--and to-day, monuments to courage
and ambition, they are the earth’s two greatest builders of ships. In
a novel such characters would be declared almost impossible. But the
Lakes breed such as these. There are others whose careers have been
even more remarkable, and I will tell of these later--men whose rise
from poverty to wealth and power rivals in romance and adventure the
most glowing stories of the Goulds and Astors.

Mr. Pessano, “the independent,” does not entirely monopolise Detroit
shipbuilding, for Wallace was there ahead of him with one of the
trust’s big yards, which is known under the name of the Detroit
Shipbuilding Company. It materially assists in the city’s greatness,
and will continue to do so more and more each year. During 1907, it
launched six big freighters in Detroit, and that city, together with
eight other Lake cities, heaps blessings on the trust. For the trust
is most generous and unprejudiced in its distribution of yards. It
builds ships in one huge yard at Superior, in two at Chicago, two
at Cleveland, and in one at Lorain, Buffalo, Wyandotte, Detroit,
and Milwaukee. Among these cities it has distributed over fifteen
million dollars in capital, and it is estimated that it affords a
livelihood for between fifty and sixty thousand people. In 1907,
the different yards built twice the tonnage of the next two largest
shipbuilding concerns in the world combined--those of Doxford and Sons,
of Sunderland, and Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, whose aggregate
tonnage was not over one hundred and fifty thousand. The astonishing
rate at which Lake shipbuilding is increasing is shown in the fact
that the trust’s production for 1907 was twice that of 1905, which
was 117,482 tons, divided among twenty vessels. A new factor has come
into Lake shipbuilding which will count considerably in the future.
This is the Toledo Shipbuilding Company, which purchased the Craig
yards in 1906, and which has expended a great deal of money since that
time in perfecting its plant, until now it has one of the most modern
construction yards on the Lakes.

[Illustration: Her First Trip--Off for the Ore Regions of the North.]

It would seem that this activity in Lake shipyards must soon supply
demands, but such will not be the case for many years to come. While
the depression of 1908 has cast its gloom, Lake men cannot see the end
of their prosperity. They are in the midst of fortune-making days on
the Inland Seas. To-day one of the steel ships of the Lakes is as good
as a gold mine, and will continue to be so for a quarter of a century
to come. The shipyards are growing each year, but the increase of
tonnage is outstripping them, and until cargo and ships are more evenly
balanced the owners of vessels on the Great Lakes must be counted
among the most fortunate men in the world.

It is only natural that these conditions should have developed
shipbuilding on the Lakes to a science unparalleled in any other part
of the earth. I once had the good fortune to talk with a shipbuilder
from the Clyde. He had heard much of the Lakes. He had built ships for
them. He had heard of the wonders of shipbuilding in their cities. So
he had come across to see for himself.

“I had thought that your ships would not compare with ours,” he said.
“You build them so quickly that I thought they would surely be inferior
to those of the Clyde. But they are the best in the world; I will say
that--the best in the world, and you build them like magicians! You lay
their keels to-day--to-morrow they are gone!”

This is almost true. A ten-thousand-ton leviathan of the Lakes can
now be built almost as quickly as carpenters can put up an eight-room
house. Any one of several shipyards can get out one of these monsters
of marine commerce within ninety days, and the record stands with a
ten-thousand-ton vessel that was launched fifty-three days after her
keel was laid! One hardly realises what this means until he knows of
a few of the things that go into the construction of such a vessel.
Take the steamer _Thomas F. Cole_, for instance, launched early in 1907
by the Great Lakes Engineering Works. This vessel is the giant of the
Lakes, and is six hundred and five feet and five inches long. She is
fifty-eight feet beam and thirty-two feet deep, and in a single trip
can carry as great a load as three hundred freight cars, or twelve
thousand tons. In her are nine million five hundred thousand pounds of
iron and steel! What does this mean? It means that if every man, woman,
and child in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota were to join
in carrying this material to a certain place, each person would have
to transport one pound. In the mass would be eight hundred thousand
rivets, ranging in size from five eighths of an inch to one and one
eighth inches in diameter.

One who is investigating Lake shipbuilding for the first time will
be astonished to discover that the modern freighter is in many ways
a huge private yacht. They are almost without exception owned by men
of wealth, and their cabins are fitted out even more luxuriously than
those of passenger boats, for while these latter are intended for the
use of the public, the passenger accommodations of freighters are
planned for the friends and families of the owners. So above the deck
which conceals ten thousand tons of ore the vessel may be a floating
palace. The keenest rivalry exists between owners as to who shall
possess the finest ships, and fortunes are expended in the fittings of
cabins alone. Nothing that money can secure is omitted. In the words of
a builder: “The modern freighter is like a modern hotel--only much more
luxuriously furnished.” There is an electric light system throughout
the ship; the cabins are equipped with telephones; there is steam heat;
there are kitchens with the latest cooking devices, elegantly appointed
dining-rooms; there are state-rooms which are like the apartments in a
palace, and other things which one would not expect to see beyond the
black and forbidding steel walls of these fortune-makers of the Lakes.

With the first peep into modern methods one realises that the romantic
shipbuilding days of old are gone. No longer does the shape, beauty,
and speed of a vessel depend upon the eyes and hands of the men who are
actually putting it together. For the ship of to-day is built in the
engineering offices. In the draughting-room skilled men lay out the
plans and make the models for a ship just as an architect does for a
house, and when these plans are done they go to a great building which
reminds one of a vast dance hall, and which is known as the “mould
loft.” Seemingly the place is not used. Yet at the very moment you are
looking about, wondering what this vacancy has to do with shipbuilding,
you are walking on the decks of a ship. All about upon the floor, if
you notice carefully, you will see hundreds and thousands of lines,
and every one of these lines represents a line of the freighter which
within three or four months will be taking her trial trip. Here upon
the floor is drawn the “line ship” in exactly the same size as the
vessel which is to be built. Over certain sections of this “line ship”
men place very thin pieces of basswood, which they frame together
in the identical size and shape of the ship’s plates. By the use of
these moulds, or templates, the workman can see just where the rivet
holes should be, and wherever a rivet is to go he puts a little spot
of paint. These model plates are then numbered and sent to the “plate
department,” where the real sheets of steel are made to conform with
them and where the one million five hundred thousand or more rivet
holes are punched. With the plates ready, the real ship quickly takes
size and form.

Some morning a little army of men begins work where to the ordinary
observer there is nothing but piles of steel and big timbers. From a
distance the scene reminds one of a partly depleted lumber yard. On one
side of this, and within a few yards of the water of a slip, are first
set up with mathematical accuracy a number of square timbers called
“keel blocks.” Upon these blocks will rest the bottom of the ship, and
from them to the water’s edge run long shelving timbers, or “ways,”
down which she will slide when ready for launching.

[Illustration: This Shows Some of the 800,000 Rivets that Go to the
Making of a 10,000-Ton Leviathan of the Inland Seas.]

Children frequently play with blocks which, when placed together
according to the numbers on them, form a map of the United States.
This is modern shipbuilding--in a way. It is on the same idea. There
is a proper place for every steel plate in the yards, and the numbers
on them are what locate them in the ship. A giant crane runs overhead,
reaches down, seizes a certain plate, rumbles back, to hover for
a moment over the growing “floor,” lowers its burden--and the iron
workers do the rest. Within a few days work has reached a point where
you begin to wonder, and for the first time, perhaps, you realise what
an intricate affair a great ship really is, and what precautions are
taken to keep it from sinking in collision or storm. You begin to see
that a Lake freighter is what might be described as two ships, one
built within the other. As the vessel increases in size, as the sides
of it, as well as the bottom, are put together, there are two little
armies of men at work--one on the outer ship and one on the inner.
From the bottom and sides of the first steel shell of the ship there
extend upward and inward heavy steel supports, upon which are laid the
plates of the “inner ship.” In the space between these two walls will
be carried water ballast. The chambers into which it is divided are the
life-preservers of the vessel. A dozen holes may be punched into her,
but just as long as only this outer and protecting ship suffers, and
the inner ship is not perforated, the carrier and her ten-thousand-ton
cargo will keep afloat.

When the construction of the vessel has reached a point where men
can work on the inner as well as the outer hull, it is not uncommon
for six hundred to eight hundred workmen to be engaged on her at one
time. Frequently as high as one hundred gangs of riveters, of four men
each, are at work simultaneously, and at such times the pounding of
the automatic riveting machines sounds at the distance of half a mile
like a battery of Gatling guns in action. So the work continues until
every plate is in place and the vessel is ready for launching, which
is the most exciting moment in the career of the ship--unless at some
future day she meets a tragic end at sea. One by one the blocks which
have been placed under her bottom are removed, until only two remain,
one at each end. Then, at the last moment, these two are pulled away
simultaneously, and the steel monster slides sidewise down the greased
ways until, with a thunderous crash of water, she plunges into her
native element.

Thus ends the building of the ship, with the exception of what is known
as her “deck work,” the fitting of her luxurious cabins, the placing
of her engines, and a score of other things which are done after she
is afloat. She is now a “carrier” of the Lakes. A little longer and
captain and crew take possession of her, clouds of bituminous smoke
rise from her funnels, and with flying pennants and screaming whistles
she turns her nose into the great highway that leads a thousand miles
into the North--to the land of the ore kings.




II

What the Ships Carry--Ore


Picture a train of forty-ton freight cars loaded to capacity, the
engine and caboose both in New York City, yet extending in an unbroken
line entirely around the earth--a train reaching along a parallel from
New York to San Francisco, across the Pacific, the Chinese Empire,
Turkestan, Persia, the Mediterranean, mid the Atlantic--and you have
an idea of what the ships of the Great Lakes carry during a single
eight months’ season of navigation. At least you have the part of an
idea. For were such a train conceivable, it would not only completely
engirdle the earth along the fortieth degree of north latitude, but
there would still be something like two thousand miles of it left over.
In it would be two million five hundred thousand cars, and it would
carry one hundred million tons of freight! Were this train to pass you
at a given point at the rate of twenty miles an hour, you would have to
stand there forty days and forty nights to see the end of it.

Only by allowing the imagination to paint such a picture as this can
one conceive to any degree at all the immensity of the freight traffic
on our Inland Seas.

“A hundred million tons,” repeated the mayor of one of our Lake ports
when I told him about it recently. “A hundred million tons! That’s
quite a lot of stuff, isn’t it?”

Quite a lot of stuff! It might have been a hundred million bushels and
he would have been equally surprised. His lack of enthusiasm does not
discredit him. He does not own ships; neither does he fill them. He
is like the vast majority of our millions, who have never given more
than a passing thought to that gigantic inland water commerce which
has largely been the making of the nation. It did not dawn on him that
it meant more than a ton for every man, woman, and child on this North
American continent; that in dollars it counted billions; that on it
depended the existence of cities; that largely because of it foreign
nations acknowledged our commercial prestige.

[Illustration: Ice-Bound. Thirty-two Boats Tied up in the Ice at the
Soo.

    From a Photograph by Lord & Thomas, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
]

No other hundred million tons of freight in all the world is as
important to Americans as this annual traffic of the Great Lakes. To
move it requires the services of nearly three thousand vessels of all
kinds, employing twenty-five thousand men at an aggregate wage of
thirteen million dollars a year. A million working people are fed and
clothed and housed because of the cargoes this huge argosy carries from
port to port.

It is impossible to say with accuracy how this hundred million tons of
freight is distributed and of what it consists. Only at the Soo and
at Detroit are records kept of passing tonnage, so the figures which
are given showing the tremendous commerce that passes these places do
not include the enormous tonnage which is loaded and emptied without
passing through the Detroit River or the Sault Ste. Marie canals.
The Detroit River is the greatest waterway of commerce in the world,
and in 1906 there passed through it over sixty million tons, or more
than three fifths of the total tonnage of the Lakes. Of this about a
quarter moved in a northerly direction and three quarters toward the
cities of the East. The principal item of the up-bound traffic was
14,000,000 tons of coal, of the south-bound 37,513,600 tons of iron
ore, 110,598,927 bushels of grain, 1,159,757 tons of flour, 14,888,927
bushels of flaxseed, and over 1,000,000,000 feet of lumber. In 1907,
there was a big increase, the commerce passing through the Detroit
River being over 75,000,000 tons.

“And when you are figuring out what the ships carry, be sure and don’t
leave out the smoke!” said the captain of an ore carrier, pointing over
our port to a black trail half a mile long. “Never thought of it, did
you? Well, last year our Lake ships burned three million tons of coal.
Think of it! Three million tons--enough to heat every home in Chicago
for two years!”

[Illustration: A Network of Tracks Running through the Ore Lands.]

But in this chapter I am not going to deal with smoke; neither with the
grain that feeds nations, nor the lumber that builds their homes. They
will be described in their time. The backbone of American manufacturing
industry--the mainspring of our commercial prestige abroad--is iron;
and it is this iron, gathered in the one-time wildernesses of the
Northland and brought down a thousand miles by ship, that stands
largely for the greatness of the Lakes to-day. “Gold is precious, but
iron is priceless,” said Andrew Carnegie. “The wheels of progress may
run without the gleam of yellow metal, but never without our ugly ore.”
And the Lake country, or three little patches of it, produce each year
nearly a half of the earth’s total supply of iron. Farmers in the wake
of their ploughshares, our millions of workers in metal, and our other
millions whose fingers daily touch the chill of iron have never dreamed
of this. Few of them know that eight hundred great vessels are engaged
solely in the iron ore traffic; that in a single trip this immense
fleet can transport more than three million tons, and that in 1907,
they brought to the foundries of the East and South over forty-one
million tons. If every man, woman, and child, savage or civilised,
that inhabits this earth of ours were to receive equal portions of
this one product carried by Lake vessels in 1907, each person’s share
would be forty pounds! And still the world is crying for iron. There is
not enough to supply the demand, and there never will be. The iron
ore traffic of the Lakes has doubled during the last six years; it
will double again during the next ten--and iron will still be the most
precious thing on earth.

If the iron ore mines of the North were to go out of existence
to-morrow nearly half of the commerce of the Inland Seas would cease
to be. With it would go the strongest men of the Lakes. For our iron
has made iron men. In that Northland, along the Mesaba, Goebic, and
Vermilion ranges, from Duluth’s back door to the pine barrens of
northern Michigan and Wisconsin, they have practically made themselves
rulers of the world’s commerce in steel and iron. To follow the great
ships of the Lakes over their northward trail into this country is to
enter into realms of past romance and adventure which would furnish
material for a hundred novels. But people do not know this. The
picturesque days of ’49, the Australian fever, and the Klondike rush
are as of yesterday in memory--but what of this Northland, where they
load dirty ore into dirty ships and carry it to the dirty foundries
of the East? Ask Captain Joseph Sellwood; ask the “three Merritts,”
Alfred, Leonidas, and N. B.; or John Uno Sebenius, David T. Adams,
and Martin Pattison; ask any one of a score of others who are living,
and who will tell you of the days not so very long ago when the iron
prospectors went out with packs on their backs and guns in their hands
to seek the “ugly wealth.” These are of the old generation of “iron
men”--the men who suffered in the days of exploration and development
in the wilderness, who starved and froze, who survived while companions
died, who suffered adventures and hardships in the death-like grip of
Northland winters that rival any of those in Klondike history. And
the new generation that has followed is like them in “the strength of
man” that is in them. They are a powerful breed, these iron kings,
down to the newest among them; men like Thomas F. Cole, who rose from
nothing to a position of power and wealth, and W. P. Snyder, the
poverty-stricken Methodist minister’s son, who has fought the Steel
Corporation to a standstill and who is talked of as its president of
the future.

[Illustration: Captains of the Vessels of the Pittsburg Steamship
Company.]

It will be a great “coming together” for the iron and steel industry,
this winning of William Penn Snyder. To-day he is the king of pig
iron. When he refused to deal with those who formed the United States
Steel Corporation, his friends said that he was ruined. But he stood
on his feet alone--and fought. He got a neck hold on the corporation.
He cornered pig iron and because of him at the present time the
corporation is paying very heavy prices for its outside product. Snyder
is worth fifteen million dollars. In 1906, he cleaned up one million
five hundred thousand dollars on pig iron alone, and there is no reason
for doubting that his 1907 earnings were greater still. He is a
powerful enemy to have as a friend--and the corporation wants him, and
will probably get him.

If you are going into the North to study the ore traffic at close
range, the first man you will probably hear of after leaving your ship
is Thomas F. Cole, of Duluth. You must know Cole before you go deeper
into the subject of the forty or fifty million tons of ore which the
ships will carry during the present year of 1909. The United States
Steel Corporation will use about thirty million tons of the total
output of the ore regions this year, and Cole is the United States
Steel Corporation in this big Northland. He is the head of the finest
and most delicate industrial mechanism in the world. This mechanism,
in a way, is so fine that it may be said to be almost non-existent.
It is simply an “organized and capitalized intelligence.” The Steel
Corporation will mine some eighteen or twenty million tons of ore in
Minnesota alone this year. Yet it owns not a dollar’s worth of property
in the State. As a corporation it does no business in the State. It
might be described as a huge octopus, and each arm of this octopus,
representing a big mining interest, works independently of all other
arms and of the body of the octopus itself. Through these arms the
corporation accomplishes its aims. Each huge mine has its own executive
organisation, is responsible for its own acts--but it must obtain
results. The “central intelligence,” or body of the corporation, is
there to judge results, and Cole is the power that watches over all.
Officially he is known as the president of the Oliver Mining Company,
the greatest organisation of its kind in existence, which attends not
only to the Steel Corporation’s interests in Minnesota, but in Michigan
and Wisconsin as well. As the great eye of the world’s largest trust he
guards the interests of thirty-one mines, employs fifteen thousand men,
and gives subsistence to sixty thousand people.

[Illustration: The “Montezuma.”

The largest wooden ship on fresh water being towed out of the Maumee
River, Toledo.]

Because of the transportation of this mighty product Cole is as closely
associated with the Lakes and their ships as with the ranges and their
mines. It has been said that he was “born between ships and mines,” and
he has always remained between them. He is one of the most remarkable
characters of the Inland Seas. Cole is only forty-seven years old,
and for thirty-nine years he has earned his own livelihood, and more.
When six years old, his father was killed in an accident in the Phœnix
Mine. Baby Tom was the oldest of the widowed mother’s little brood,
and he rose to the occasion. At the age of eight he became a washboy
in the Cliff stamp mill. He had hardly mastered his alphabet; he could
barely read the simplest lines; never in this civilised world did a
youngster begin life’s battle with greater odds against him. But even
in these days the great ambition was born in him, as it was born in
Abraham Lincoln; and like Lincoln, in his little wilderness home of
poverty and sorrow, he began educating himself. It took years. But he
succeeded.

This is the man whose name you will hear first when you enter the
mining country. To chronicle his rise from a dusty Calumet office of
long ago to his present kingdom of iron would be to write a book of
romance. And there are others of the iron barons of the North whose
histories would be almost as interesting, even though fortune may have
smiled on them less kindly.

From the immensity of the interests which Cole superintends one might
be led to believe that the iron ore industry is almost entirely in the
hands of the trust. This, however, is not so. For every ship that goes
down into the South for the trust another leaves for an independent.
Nearly every maker of steel owns a mine or two in the ranges of
Minnesota, Michigan, or Wisconsin. There are five of these ranges.
The Mesaba and Vermilion ranges, both in Minnesota, produce about two
thirds of the total product carried by the ships of the Lakes; the
Goebic, Menominee, and Marquette ranges are in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Somehow it is true that nearly every great thing associated with the
Lakes is unusual in some way--unusual to an astonishing degree, and
the iron ore industry is not an exception. Probably not one person in
ten thousand knows that one lone county in this great continent is the
very backbone of the steel industry in the United States. This county
is in Minnesota. It is the county of St. Louis, and is about as big
as the State of Massachusetts. Not much more than twenty years ago it
was a howling wilderness. Even a dozen years ago the Mesaba bore but
little evidence of the presence of man. Now this country is alive with
industry. Buried in the wilderness which still exists are thriving
towns; where a short time ago deer and bear wandered unmolested, is
now the din of innumerable locomotives, the rumbling of thousands of
trains, the screeching of whistles, and the constant groaning of steam
shovels. There is not a richer county on the face of the earth. In it
are over one hundred mines, from which one hundred and twenty-three
million tons of ore have been taken since Charlemagne Tower, now
Ambassador to Germany, brought down the first carload to Duluth in
1884. These mines afford livelihood for more than two hundred thousand
people, and because of them St. Louis County possesses the greatest
freight traffic road in existence--the Duluth, Mesaba, and Northern
Railway--which, in 1907, carried about fourteen million tons of ore
from the mines to the docks.

[Illustration: A Coal Dock at Superior, Wisconsin.

The pile of coal is 1400 feet long and 30 feet high.]

This comparatively little corner of Minnesota practically runs the
whole State in so far as expenses are concerned. To administer the
affairs of the State, including all of its activities, costs about two
million six hundred thousand dollars, and, as inconceivable as it may
seem, the three railroads in the ore region pay in taxes one fifth of
this sum. They pay one third of the total railroad tax of the State,
notwithstanding the fact that some of the greatest lines in the country
centre at Minneapolis and St. Paul. To this must be added about seven
hundred thousand dollars paid in direct taxes by the mines themselves,
so that the iron ore which the ships of the Lakes bring down to Eastern
ports each season pays almost half of the total expense of running the
State of Minnesota!

And these mines will add more and more to the State exchequer each
year, as will also the mines of the three ranges in Michigan and
Wisconsin. For in no part of the world has mining been undertaken on a
scale so gigantic as that of the Superior region, and every contrivance
known to mining science is being used to increase month by month the
mountains of ore which ever fail to satisfy the hungry furnaces of the
East. It is predicted by Captain Joseph Sellwood, of Duluth, one of the
oldest and greatest of the iron barons, that the time is not distant
when the Mesaba range alone will be producing forty million tons of ore
a year--as much as all five ranges are producing now.

“It will cost over a billion dollars to get this ore to the docks,”
said he. “And seven hundred and fifty million dollars more to land
it in Lake Erie ports.”--Nearly a two-billion-dollar mining and
transportation business for the people of the Lakes to look forward to,
and this from a single range!

“But will not this tremendous activity exhaust your mines?” I asked of
several of these iron barons. “The ore doesn’t go down to China, and it
doesn’t extend all over the State. What is the future?”

The future! Few have thought of this. There are just at present too
many millions of dollars in the making to give one time or inclination
to picture the days when only black and silent scars will remain to
give evidence of the time when this Northland was one of the treasure
houses of the earth. But that time must come. Old mining men say so if
you can get them to talk about it, and scientific computations, as far
as they go, are proof of it. These computations differ, but they agree
pretty generally that there are still between a billion and a half
and two billion tons of ore in the Superior district. Within the next
five years the ships will be bringing down fifty million tons a year,
and there is no reason for believing that this will be the maximum. So
it is obvious that the ore of the Lake Superior regions will not last
beyond the year 1950 unless new deposits are discovered, or methods are
found for the utilisation of immense deposits that cannot now be used.

[Illustration: The Record Load Hauled by One Team out of the Michigan
Woods, 20,000 Feet.]

“Will this event not prove ruinous to a large extent to shipping
interests?” I asked G. Ashley Tomlinson, of Duluth, and others closely
associated with iron and vessel interests. “To-day nearly half of the
total tonnage of the Lakes is from the mines. If this industry becomes
practically extinct what will become of the hundreds of ships engaged
in the traffic?”

Mr. Tomlinson’s answer struck me as extremely logical. “The production
of ore will probably reach its maximum within the next ten years,” he
said. “It will then begin to decline. But the decrease will be gradual,
and meanwhile other freight traffic on the Lakes will be increasing
so rapidly that each year ships that were intended originally for
the ore trade will carry other business. There will be no loss for
the ships. The development of our own and the Canadian West has only
begun, and the Lakes are the great links of commerce between their vast
enterprises of the future and the East. The grain trade of the Canadian
West alone will in the not distant future be something tremendous.”

But whatever the future of the ore regions of the North may be, their
present is one of great interest and importance to the world at large.
Mining, like shipbuilding, has been reduced to a science on the Lakes.
A stranger visiting for the first time any one of the five ranges is
filled with astonishment. I will never forget the sensations with
which I first saw mining on the Mesaba range. We had come up over a
forest-clad hill and stood on the very edge of the mine before I had
been made aware of its nearness. Below me there stretched a mile of
deep, huge scars in the bottom of what seemed to be a great hole dug
into the earth. One of these pits, half a mile in diameter, and, as I
afterward discovered, nearly two hundred feet in depth, was almost at
my feet.

“That’s iron ore,” said my companion. “And right there it goes one
hundred feet deeper down.”

This was one of the great “open pits” of the Mesaba range. There
are many others like it in the Superior regions. They are the most
wonderful mines in the world. Imagine that you take a barrel of salt,
dig a hole, pour the salt into this hole, and cover it with a few
inches of earth. This gives you an idea of one of these ore mines.
After the earth has been “stripped” from the top the ore is reached and
it is found in much the same way that the salt would be found. In the
words of one superintendent, it is “all together.” It is as if Nature,
like a pirate, had dug holes here and there in which she had hidden her
treasure, covering it over for concealment with a few feet of earth.

[Illustration: One Steam Shovel Keeps Three Locomotives and Trains
Busy.]

Down into these pits and along their edges run the tracks of the ore
cars. There is here but little of the shovelling and “picking” of men.
Steam shovels, weighing from sixty to seventy-five tons each, do the
work. Like a great hand one of these shovels dips down into the soft
mass of ore, buries its great dipper until it holds from four to eight
tons, and then, groaning and rumbling, slowly lifts its burden aloft,
swings it over a car, and the actual work of mining is done. A thousand
times a day it will repeat this operation, lifting from three thousand
to eight thousand tons of ore. This one shovel keeps busy three
locomotives and as many trains of dump cars. And there are nearly two
hundred of these shovels in use on the Mesaba range alone. It costs
only about six cents a ton to mine in this way, after the “stripping”
has been done, or, in other words, after the ore has been laid bare.
There are two other processes on the ranges where the ore is not so
soft or so closely laid. One of these is the milling process, and the
other is the blasting out of hard ore. Milling costs about thirty-five
cents per ton, and the blasting process from one dollar to one dollar
and twenty-five cents.

Why it has for some time been impossible to build ships too fast
for the demand may most graphically be shown, perhaps, by quoting
a few figures which demonstrate the tremendous energy now being
exerted in the ore regions of the North. Figures as a usual thing are
uninteresting, but these enter so vitally into the welfare of every
American citizen that they should be regarded with more than ordinary
respect. As stated before, we are now making nearly half of all the
iron and steel produced on earth. In 1880, we made only 1,240,000 tons
of steel; in 1890, this had increased to over 4,000,000; in 1900, to
10,188,000 tons, and in 1905, to 20,023,000 tons. Lake ships and Lake
mines had to supply this. And now we come to mine figures which almost
stagger belief. In 1904, the Mesaba range, for instance, yielded only a
little over 12,000,000 tons. In the following year the production was
nearly doubled, the ore carriers bringing down 20,153,699 tons, which
in 1906 was increased to almost 24,000,000!

This enormous annual tonnage of the Mesaba range, together with that
of the other four ranges of the Superior region, is carried by rail
directly from the mines to the great ore docks of Lake ports. The
product of the Mesaba and Vermilion ranges, in Minnesota, is shipped
from Duluth and Two Harbors; the eight million tons of the Goebic and
Marquette ranges, in Michigan, from Escanaba and Marquette; and the
five million tons of the Menominee range, in Wisconsin, from Ashland
and Superior.

To these six ports of the Northland come the vikings of the Lakes
and their immense fleets. Four of these ports are within a radius of
seventy-five miles, and the two others, in Michigan, are about one
hundred and fifty miles farther east and south. No other area of lake
or ocean in the world is as much travelled by shipping as that along
which these ore harbours are situated. The people of Duluth have
witnessed blockades of vessels such as have never been seen in the
greatest ocean ports. Over this part of Superior there is a constant
trail of smoke from the funnels of ships. During one month there were
1221 arrivals and clearances from Duluth alone, an average of forty a
day.

[Illustration: Steamers at a Modern Ore Unloading Plant at Conneaut.]

Behind these great ships, which rest never a day nor an hour for eight
months of the year, are the kings of Lake commerce--such men as J. C.
Gilchrist, James Davidson, Captain Mitchell, William Livingstone, Harry
Coulby, W. C. Richardson, A. B. Wolvin, G. Ashley Tomlinson, and
scores of others. To write of these would be to chronicle a history of
men who have fought their way to the top through sheer force of the
“breed that is in them.”

Take G. Ashley Tomlinson, of Duluth, for instance, whose ships carry
a couple of million tons of ore a year. “Not a great record,” as Mr.
Tomlinson modestly says, but still enough to supply every man, woman,
and child in the United States with a little matter of fifty pounds
each twelvemonth! In a novel Tomlinson would make an ideal soldier of
fortune; in plain, matter-of-fact life he represents those elements
which make the great men of the Lakes. He is forty years old. He has
sixteen ships. His income is over one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year.

Yet Tomlinson began, as did many other Great Lake men of to-day, with
just two assets--the clothes on his back and a huge ambition. He
started his career as a messenger boy in the State treasurer’s office
at Lansing, Michigan. But there was not enough of the strenuous life in
this for him, so he went West to become a cowboy. He succeeded, much to
his regret; for soon after he had mastered the broncho and could handle
a lasso there came the war between the cowboys and the White River
Utes. In one of the fights Tomlinson was wounded and afterward captured
by the redskins. During the whole of one night he was subjected to
torture, and at dawn of the following day, when almost at the point of
death, he was delivered by a party of ranchmen. Tomlinson was not one
to display the white feather--but he had had enough of Western life,
and as soon as possible he worked himself from Rawlins, Wyoming, to
Chicago on a cattle train. After a time he came to Michigan, and with
his savings attended the University of Michigan for about a year. This
was enough of “higher education” for him, so he sold his text-books
and went to work on the Detroit _Journal_ at the munificent salary of
six dollars a week. Newspaper work was all right until Buffalo Bill
came along. Tomlinson joined the show, rode a bucking broncho for a
year, then “developed” a voice and cast his fortunes with the Mapleson
Opera Company. In 1889, he went to New York as a reporter on the _Sun_,
returned the following year to become night editor of the Detroit
_Tribune_, and in 1893 moved to Duluth.

[Illustration: The Main Slip in the Harbour of Conneaut.

Conneaut is the second largest ore-receiving port on the Lakes.]

The Lakes began to hold a peculiar fascination for him. He went into
the vessel brokerage business mostly on his nerve; but nerve made him
money, and his capital began to grow. How fast it has grown during
the past dozen years one must judge by his ships and his income. He
is president of five steamship companies, vice-president of another,
secretary to three more, and a director in the American Exchange
Bank, of Duluth, and the Cananea Central Copper Company. He has
developed from a typical adventurer of fortune into one of the great
men of the Lakes. His romantic career is described here because
it is illustrative of the fact that brain and brawn, not “pull” and
money, have made the vikings and iron barons of the Inland Seas.
No millionaires’ sons here, living on their fathers’ prestige--no
blue-blooded drones in these regions of the five little seas, where
only red blood counts!

When the first ships of the season come up from the South in April or
May nearly a million and a half tons of ore are awaiting them in the
docks of the ore-shipping ports. There are twenty-six of these ore
docks, one of which, at Duluth, has a storage capacity of ninety-six
thousand tons. From a distance these docks look like great trestles,
from fifty to one hundred feet above the water, some of them running
for nearly half a mile out into the lake. Out upon these docks run
the cars from the mines. From these cars the ore is dropped into
huge pockets, from which run downward long chutes, or spouts. A
ten-thousand-ton carrier runs alongside. Her hatches are opened. Into
each hatch runs a chute. The chute “doors” are opened, and with a dull,
rumbling, rushing sound the ore pours down by force of gravity from the
huge pockets above. At dock No. 4, Duluth, 9277 tons were put aboard
the steamer _E. J. Earling_ in seventy minutes, being at the rate of
7988 tons an hour. The rapidity with which Lake transportation is
carried on is shown in the fact that upon this occasion the _Earling_
was in port only two hours and fifteen minutes before she began her
thousand-mile return trip eastward.

And now comes the last important phase. One viewing the continuous
activity at the mines, the building up of cities on the ranges, and the
tremendous interests represented in the great shipping ports may forget
that this is but one end of the gigantic industry which makes the
United States the steel-maker for the world. At the other end of the
fresh-water highways is seen the other half of the picture. Down into
Erie come the ships from the North. A few of them go to Chicago, but
only a few. Out of a total movement of thirty-seven million tons, in
1906, thirty-two million tons were received at Lake Erie ports. There
are eleven of these “receiving ports”--Toledo, Sandusky, Huron, Lorain,
Cleveland, Fairport, Ashtabula, Conneaut, Erie, Buffalo, and Tonawanda.

[Illustration: One of the Huge Open Pits of the Mesaba Range.]

Between these cities there is a constant battle for prestige. Now
one leads in tonnage received, now another. At the present time the
bitterest rivalry exists between Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Conneaut,
the three greatest ore ports in the world. In 1901, Ashtabula led. In
1902, Cleveland bore away the “pennant,” with Ashtabula and Conneaut
second and third. Cleveland was still ahead in 1903, but in 1904,
Conneaut became the greatest ore-receiving port in the world. In 1905,
Ashtabula had again won the ascendency, and in 1906, she maintained
her prestige, receiving in that year 6,833,352 tons; Cleveland was
second, and Conneaut third. Lorain, Fairport, Ashtabula, Conneaut, and
Erie practically exist because of the ore which comes down from the
northern mines. Seven million dollars are now being expended in the
improvement of Ashtabula harbour by the Lake Shore and Pennsylvania
railroad companies, and the capacity of the harbour has been doubled
since 1905. With the improvement of that harbour Conneaut’s greatest
advantage will be gone, for until a comparatively recent date nearly
all of the largest vessels went to that port. The tremendous activity
in Ashtabula must be seen to be fully appreciated. In one day lately
almost four thousand ore and coal cars were moved between that port and
Youngstown.

At this end of the great ore industry the wonderful mechanism for
the handling of cargoes is even more astonishing than that of the
Northland. The ore carrier is run under a huge unloading machine which
thrusts steel arms down into the score or more hatches of the vessel,
and without the assistance of human hands the cargo is emptied so
quickly that the uninitiated observer stands mute with astonishment.
How quickly this work is done is shown in the record of the _George W.
Perkins_, which discharged 10,346 tons at Conneaut in four hours and
ten minutes.

Once more, after this unloading, the steel monster of the Lakes is all
but ready for her long journey into the North. Within a few hours she
is reloaded, with a few sonorous blasts of her whistle she bids a last
adieu, and again she is off on the long trail that leads to the “ugly
wealth” in the ore ranges of Superior.




III

What the Ships Carry--Other Cargoes


Not long ago I went to see William Livingstone, President of the
Lake Carriers’ Association--Great Admiral, in a way, of the world’s
mightiest fleet of steel--an enrolled navy of 593 ships and a tonnage
of nearly one million nine hundred thousand. Unconsciously I had come
to call this man the Grey Man and the Man who Knows. Both titles fit,
as they will tell you from the twin Tonawandas to Duluth. For six
consecutive years president of the greatest organisation of its kind on
earth, an association of ships made up, if weighed, of half of the iron
and steel floating on the Inland Seas, he has become a part of Lake
history. I sought him for an idea. I found it.

The Grey Man was at his desk studying over the expenditure of a matter
of several millions of dollars for a new canal at the “Soo.” He turned
slowly--grey suit, grey tie, grey eyes, grey beard, grey hair--all
beautifully blended. He seldom speaks first. He is always fighting to
be courteous, yet the days are ten hours too short for him.

“I want a new idea,” I opened bluntly. “I want something new in
marine--something that will make people sit up and take notice, as it
were. Can you help me?”

He swung slowly about in his chair until his eyes rested upon a picture
on the wall. It was a picture of the old days on the Lakes. My eyes,
too, rested on the old picture. It reminded me of things, and I kept
pace with the thoughts that might be his. I saw him, more than half a
century before, the stripling son of a ship’s carpenter, swimming in
the shadows of the big fore-’n’-afters that were monarchs before steam
came--glorious days when ninety-eight per cent. of vessels carried
sail, and sailors dispensed law with their fists and bore dirks in
their bootlegs. Later I saw the proud moment of his first trip to
“sea”--and then, quickly, I noted his rise: his saving dollar by dollar
until he bought an interest in a tug, his monopolisation of it later,
his climb--up--up--until----

“I’m busy, very busy!” he broke in quietly. “But say, did you ever
think of this? Did you ever build a city of the lumber we carry each
year, populate that city, feed it with the grain we carry, and warm it
with our coal? You can do it on paper and you will be surprised at what
you find. It will show you more graphically than anything else just
what the ships carry. Try it. You’ll be interested.”

I have kept that idea warm. Now I am going to use it. For probably in
no better way can the immensity of the lumber, grain, coal, flour, and
package freight traffic of the Great Lakes be given. Imagine, then,
this “City of the Five Great Lakes.” We will build it, we will people
it, feed it, and heat it--and our only material, with the exception
of its inhabitants, will be the cargoes of the Lake carriers for a
single season. And these carriers? If you should stand at the Lime Kiln
Crossing, in the Detroit River, one would pass you on an average every
twelve minutes, day and night, during the eight months of navigation;
and when you saw their number and size you would wonder where they
could possibly get all of their cargoes. The cargoes with which we will
deal in this article will be of lumber, grain, flour and coal, for
these, with iron ore, constitute over ninety per cent. of the commerce
of the Inland Seas.

[Illustration: A Raft of Five Million Pulp Logs on the North Shore of
Lake Michigan.]

To build our city we first require lumber. During the 1909 season of
navigation about 1,500,000,000 feet of this material will be carried by
Lake ships. What this means it is hard to conceive until it is turned
into houses. To build a comfortable eight-room dwelling, modern in
every respect, requires about 20,000 feet of lumber, and when we divide
a billion and a half by this figure we have 75,000 homes, capable of
accommodating a population of about 400,000 people. With the thousands
of tons of building stone transported by lake each year, the millions
of barrels of cement, the cargoes of shingles, sand, and brick, our
“City of the Lakes” for 1909 would be as large as Buffalo, Cleveland,
or Detroit.

But one does not begin fully to comprehend the significance of the
enormous commerce of the Great Lakes, and what it means not only to
this country but to half of the civilised world, until he begins
to figure how long the grain which will be carried by ships during
the present year would support this imaginary city of 400,000 adult
people. There will pass through the “Soo” canals this year at least
90,000,000 bushels of wheat and 60,000,000 bushels of other grain,
besides 7,500,000 barrels of flour, all of which represents the “bread
stuff” that is shipped from Lake Superior ports alone. There will, in
addition, be shipped by lake at least 50,000,000 bushels from Chicago,
Milwaukee, and other ports whose eastbound commerce is not reported
at the “Soo.” In short, estimating conservatively from the past four
years, it is safe to say that at least 200,000,000 bushels of grain and
11,000,000 barrels of flour will have been transported by the Great
Lakes marine by the end of this year’s season of navigation.

But what do these figures mean? They seem top-heavy, unwieldly,
valuable perhaps to the scientific economist, but of small interest
to the ordinary everyday eater of bread. Let us reduce this grain to
flour. It takes from four and a half to five bushels of grain for a
barrel of flour and dividing by the larger figure our grain would give
us 40,000,000 barrels, which, plus the 11,000,000, would make a total
of 51,000,000 barrels. Now we come right down to dinner-table facts.
At least 250 one-pound loaves of bread can be made from each 196-pound
barrel of flour, or a total of 12,750,000,000 from the whole, which
would mean at least five loaves for every man, woman, and child of the
two and one half billion people who inhabit this globe! In other words,
figuring from the reports of food specialists, the grain and flour
carried by the ships of the Lakes for one year would give the total
population of the earth a food supply sufficient to keep it in life and
health for a period of two weeks!

This enormous supply of the staff of life would give each of the
400,000 bread-eating people in our “City of the Lakes” a half-pound
a day for one hundred and seventy-five years, or it would supply a
city of the size of Chicago with bread for fifty years! To each of
the 60,000,000 bread-eaters in the United States it would give 212
one-pound loaves, or, with an allowance of half a pound for each person
per day, it would feed the nation for one year and two months!

Now, having built our city, peopled it, and supplied it with food, we
come to the point of heating it. In 1907, there were transported by
Lake nearly 15,000,000 tons of coal, and this year another million
will probably be added to that figure. Here again mere figures fail
to tell the story. But when we come to divide this coal among the
homes of a city like Cleveland, Detroit, or Buffalo, which rank
with our 75,000-home “City of the Lakes,” we again come to an easy
understanding. Each of these 75,000 home-owners would receive as his
share over 213 tons of coal, and if he burned six tons each winter this
would last him for thirty-five years!

In a nutshell, there is enough lumber and other material carried
by Lake ships each year to build a city the size of Detroit; there
is enough grain transported to supply its 400,000 inhabitants with
bread-stuffs for a period of one hundred and seventy-five years,
conceding the total population of the city to be adults; and enough
coal is shipped from Erie ports into the North to heat the homes in
this city for thirty-five years!

When one knows these facts, when perhaps for the first time in his
life he is brought to a realisation of the enormous proportions of the
commerce of the Inland Seas, he may, and with excellent excuse, believe
that he has reached the limit of its interest. But as a matter of fact
he has only begun to enter upon its wonders, and the farther he goes
the more he sees that economic questions which have long been mysteries
to him are being unravelled by the Great Lakes of the vast country in
which he lives.

“Because of the ships of our Inland Seas,” James A. Calbick, late
President of the Lumber Carriers’ Association, said to me, “the people
of the United States, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains,
and as far south as Kentucky and Tennessee, have been able to build
the cheapest homes in the world--and the best,” and this assertion,
which can be proved in several different ways, brings us at once to the
lumber traffic as it exists on the Lakes to-day.

Going through almost any one of the Eastern and Central States one will
find thousands of old sheds and barns, travelling the road to ruin
through age alone, though built of the best of pine and oak--materials
of a quality which cannot be found in the best of modern homes in
this year of 1909. For ten years past the price of lumber has been
steadily climbing, and since 1900 the increase in the cost of building
construction has brought lumber to a par with brick. While the commerce
of the Lakes is increasing by tremendous bounds in other ways, people
are now, perhaps unknowingly, witnessing the rapid extinction of one
of their oldest and most romantic branches of traffic--the lumber
industry; and each year, as this industry comes nearer and nearer to
its end, the price of lumber climbs higher and higher, home-owners
become fewer in comparison with other years, and fleets and lumber
companies go out of existence or direct their energies into other
channels.

[Illustration: Scooping up Ore from the Mahoning Mine at Hibbing.

The largest open pit mine in the world.]

To Lake people it is pathetic, this death of the lumber fleets of the
Inland Seas. An old soldier who had sailed on a lumber hooker since the
days of the Civil War once said to me, “They’re the Grand Army of the
Lakes--are those old barges and schooners, and they’re passing away
as fast as we old fellows of the days of ’61.” To-day no vessels are
built along the Lakes for the carrying of lumber. Scores of ancient
“hookers” and picturesque schooners of the romantic days of old are
rotting at their moorings, and when a great steel leviathan of ten
thousand tons passes one of these veterans the eyes of her crew will
follow it until only her canvas remains above the horizon.

Yet from the enormous quantity of lumber which will be transported by
Lake during the present year, one would not guess that the great fleet
which will carry it is fast nearing the end of its usefulness in this
way. In every lumbering camp along the Lakes, in the great forests
of Minnesota, and in the wilderness regions of Canada, unprecedented
effort has been expended in securing “material” because of the high
prices offered, and the result has been something beyond description.
Recently I passed through the once great lumbering regions of the Lakes
to see for myself what I had been told. Michigan is stripped; the
“forest” regions of Georgian Bay are scrub and underbrush; for hundreds
of square miles around Duluth the axe and the saw have been ceaselessly
at work, though there is still a great deal of timber land in the
northern part of the State. In the vast lumber regions of a decade
ago, once lively and prosperous towns have become almost depopulated.
Scores of lumbering camps are going to rot and ruin; saw-mills are
abandoned to the elements, and in places where lumbering is still
going on, timber is greedily accepted which a few years ago would have
been passed by as practically worthless. A few years more and the
picture of ruin will be complete. Then the lumber traffic on the Great
Lakes will virtually have ceased to be, the old ships will be gone, and
past forever will be the picturesque life of the lumberjack and those
weather-beaten old patriarchs who, since the days of their youth, have
been “goin’ up f’r cedar ’n’ pine.”

[Illustration: A Mining Town on the Mesaba Range, where a Few Years ago
the Deer and Bear Roamed Undisturbed.]

But even in these last days of the lumber industry on the Lakes the
figures are big enough to create astonishment and wonder, and give some
idea of what that industry has been in years past. Take the Tonawandas,
for instance--those two beautiful little cities at the foot of Lake
Erie, a few miles from Buffalo. Lumber has made these towns, as it has
made scores of others along the Lakes. They are the greatest “lumber
towns” in the world, and estimating from the business of former years
there will be carried to them by ship in 1909 between 300,000,000 and
400,000,000 feet of lumber. In 1890, there entered the Tonawandas
718,000,000 feet, which shows how the lumber traffic has fallen during
the last nineteen years. It is figured that about 10,000,000 feet of
lumber, valued at $200,000, is lost each year from aboard vessels bound
for the “Twin Cities.” In 1905, the vessels running to the Tonawandas
numbered 300; this year their number will not exceed 250--another
proof of the rapidly failing lumber supply along America’s great inland
waterways.

“This talk of a lumber famine is all bosh,” I was informed with great
candour a short time ago. “Look at the great forests of Washington and
Oregon! Think of the almost limitless supply of timber in some of the
Southern States! Why, the stripping of the Lake States ought not to
make any difference at all!”

There are probably several million people in this country of ours
who are, just at the present moment, of the above opinion. They have
never looked into what I might call the “economy of the Lakes.” A few
words will show what part the Lakes have played in the building of
millions of American homes. At this writing it cost $2.50 to bring a
thousand feet of lumber from Duluth to Detroit aboard a ship. It costs
$5.50 to bring that same lumber by rail! Conceding that this year’s
billion and a half feet of lumber will be transported a distance of
seven hundred miles, the cost of Lake transportation for the whole
will be about $3,750,000. The cost of transportation by rail of this
same lumber would be at least $7,500,000, or as much again! Now what
if you, my dear sir, who live in New York, had to have the lumber for
your house carried fourteen hundred miles instead of seven, or three
thousand miles, from Washington State? To-day your lumber can be
brought a thousand miles by water for $3 per thousand feet; by rail
it would cost you $7! And this, with competition playing a tremendous
part in the game. When lumber is gone from the Lake regions, will our
philanthropic railroads carry this material as cheaply as now, when
for eight months of the year they face the bitter rivalry of our Great
Lakes marine?

“When the time comes that there is no more lumber along the Lakes, what
will be the result?” I asked Mr. Calbick, the late President of the
Lumber Carriers’ Association. He replied:

“Lumber will advance in price as never before. No longer will the frame
cottage be the sign of the poor man’s home; no longer will the brick
mansion be the manifestation of wealth. It will then cost much more to
build a dwelling of wood than of brick or stone. The frame house will
in time become the sign of aristocracy and means. It will pass beyond
the poor man’s pocket-book, and while this poor man may live in a house
of brick it will not be his fortune to live in a house of wood. That is
what will happen when the lumber industry ceases along the Great Lakes.”

[Illustration: Harbour View at Conneaut, Ohio, Showing Docks and
Machinery.]

Then this great lumberman went on to say:

“People are beginning to see, and each year they will see more plainly,
how absolutely idiotic our State and National governments have been
in not compelling forest preservation. For all the centuries to come
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota should be made to supply the nation
with timber. In these three Lake States there are millions of acres of
ideal forest land which is good for nothing else. Yet for at least half
a century must these millions of acres now remain worthless. Nothing
has been left upon them. They are “barrens” in the true sense of the
word, and before forests are regrown upon them fifty or a hundred years
hence, the greatest timber famine the world has ever seen will have
been upon us for generations.”

Hardly could the significance of the passing of the lumber industry
along our Inland Seas be appreciated without taking a brief glance into
the past, to see what it has already done for the nation. There is now
practically no white pine left in the State of Michigan--once the home
of the greatest pine regions in the whole world. Michigan’s tribute
to the nation has been enormous. For twenty years she was the leading
lumber-producing State of the Union. As nearly as can be estimated,
her forests have yielded 160,000,000,000 feet of pine, more than one
hundred times the total amount of lumber that will be transported on
the Lakes this year. These are figures which pass comprehension until
they are translated into more familiar terms. This enormous production
would build a board walk five feet wide, two inches thick, and three
million miles long--a walk that would reach one hundred and twenty
times around the earth at the equator; or it would make a plank way
one mile wide and two inches thick that would stretch across the
continent from New York to San Francisco! In other words, Michigan’s
total contribution of pine would build ten million six-room dwellings
capable of housing over half the present population of the United
States.

As a consequence of this absolute spoliation of the forest lands, a
large part of Michigan is now practically worthless. First, the lands
were bought by lumbering companies; the timber was stripped--then came
the tax-collector! But why pay taxes on worthless barrens, with only
stumps and brush and desert sand to claim? So people forgot they owned
them, and as a result one seventh of the State of Michigan is to-day on
the delinquent tax list.

Minnesota is going the way of Michigan. In 1906, there was cut in the
Duluth district a total of 828,000,000 feet of white pine; but each
year this production will become smaller, until in the not distant
future there will be nothing for the lumber ships of the Lakes to
carry. What this will mean to the home-builders of the nation can be
shown in a few words. Previous to 1860, the Chicago man could buy 1000
feet of the best white pine for $14. To-day it costs him $80! What will
it cost ten years hence?

[Illustration: A Steam Shovel at Work.

This removes from 4000 to 8000 tons of ore a day.]

Already the centre of lumber production has swung from the North to
the South. The yellow pine of Louisiana is now taking the place once
filled by white pine, and at the rate it is being cut another decade
will see that State stripped as clean as Michigan now is, and then the
country’s last resort will be to turn to the Pacific coast with its
forests of Douglas fir. And still, as though blindfolded to all sense
and reason, almost every State government continues to look upon the
fatal destruction without a thought for the future, though before us
are facts which show that Americans are using nearly eight times as
much lumber per capita as is used in Europe, and that the nation is
consuming four times as much wood annually as is produced by growth in
our forests.

Ten years more and the last of the romantic old lumber ships of the
Inland Seas will have passed away; gone forever will be the picturesque
life of those who have clung thus long to the fate of canvas and the
four winds of heaven; and with it, too, will pass the remaining few of
those old lumber kings who have taken from Michigan forests alone fifty
per cent. more wealth than has been produced by all the gold mines of
California since their discovery in 1849.

But in the place of this passing industry is rapidly growing another,
the effect of which is already being felt over half of the civilised
world, and which in a very few years from now will be counted the
greatest and most important commerce in existence. The iron mines of
the North may become exhausted, the little remaining forest of the Lake
regions will fade away; but the grain trade will go on forever. Just
as the Superior mines have produced cheap iron and steel, just as the
Inland Seas have been the means of giving the nation cheap lumber, so
will they for all time to come supply unnumbered millions with cheap
bread. Like great links, they connect the vast grain-producing West
with the millions of the bread-consuming East. And not only do they
control the grain traffic of the United States. To-day western Canada
is spoken of as the future “Bread Basket of the World,” and over the
Lakes will travel the bulk of its grain. Looking ahead for a dozen
centuries, one cannot see where there can be a monopoly of grain
transportation, either by railroad or ship. The water highways are
every man’s property; a few thousand dollars--a ship--and you are your
own master, to go where you please, carry what you please, and at any
price you please. For all time, in the carrying of grain from field to
mouth, the Great Lakes will prove themselves the poor man’s friend. To
bring this poor man’s bushel of wheat over the one thousand miles from
Duluth to Buffalo by Lake now costs only two cents.

And according to the predictions of some of the oldest ship-owners
of the Lakes, the tremendous saving to the poor man because of the
cheapness of Lake freightage is bound to increase in the not distant
future. It must be remembered that at the present time ships are not
built too fast for Lake demand, and as a consequence transportation
rates, while exceedingly low when compared with rail rates, are such
as to make fortunes each year for the owners of ships. Take the cargo
of the _B. F. Jones_, for instance, delivered at Buffalo in October
of 1906. She had on board 370,273 bushels of wheat which she had
brought from Duluth at two and three fourths cents a bushel, making
her four-day trip down pay to the tune of $7500! The preceding year
one cargo of 300,000 bushels was brought down for six cents a bushel,
a very extraordinary exception to the regular cheap rate--one of the
exceptions which come during the last week or two of navigation. The
freight paid on this cargo was $18,000. In other words, if this vessel
had made but this one trip during the season the profit on the total
investment of $300,000 represented by the ship would have been six per
cent. There are on the Lakes vessels which pay from twenty to thirty
per cent. a year, and an “ordinary earner” is supposed to run from ten
to twenty.

In viewing these enormous profits, however, the layman has no cause for
complaint, for the vessels that make them do so not to his cost, but
from the rapidity with which they achieve their work. The _W. B. Kerr_
is a vessel that can carry 400,000 bushels of wheat. Figure that she
makes twenty trips a season. If she carried grain continually she would
transport a total of 8,000,000 bushels in a single season, which would
supply Chicago with bread for nearly a year and a half. And it is an
interesting fact, too, that with few exceptions the ships of the Lakes
are not owned by corporations, but by the American people. Their stock
is held, not by thousands, but by hundreds of thousands. Recognised as
among the best and safest investments in the United States, they are
the property of farmers, mechanics, clerks, and other small investors,
as well as of capitalists. Recently one of the largest shipbuilders on
the Lakes said to me, “A third of the farmers in the Lake counties of
Ohio have money invested in shipping.” Which shows that not only in
the way of cheap transportation are the common people of the country
profiting because of the existence of our Inland Seas. It may be
interesting to note at this point that the tonnage shipped and received
at Ohio ports in 1907 exceeded that of all the ports of France.

The rate at which the grain traffic of the Lakes is increasing is
easily seen in the figures of the last few years. In 1905, over
68,000,000 bushels of wheat passed through the “Soo” canals. In 1906,
this increased to more than 84,000,000, showing a growth in one year of
16,000,000 bushels, or 23 per cent. This rate of increase is not only
being maintained, but it is becoming larger; and the grain men of the
Lakes are unanimous in the opinion that even from the big increase of
recent years cannot be figured the future grain business of the Inland
Seas.

“Ten years more will see the American and Canadian Wests feeding the
world,” a grain dealer tells me. “Within that time I look to see the
wheat production of North America not only doubled, but trebled.”

[Illustration: The Old and the New.

A modern freight carrier passing one of the old schooners.]

What western Canada is destined to mean to Lake commerce is already
shown in marine figures. From Port Arthur and Fort William, the “twin
cities” of Thunder Bay, were shipped in 1907 over 60,000,000 bushels
of grain, and it is safe to predict that the shipment of these two
little cities will this year exceed 70,000,000 bushels. The largest
elevator in the world, with a capacity of 7,500,000 bushels, has been
constructed at Port Arthur; and Fort William already has a capacity of
13,000,000 bushels.

And as yet the fertile regions of western Canada have hardly been
touched! These 70,000,000 bushels of 1909 will represent part of the
production, not of a nation, but of a comparatively few pioneers in
what is destined to become the greatest grain-growing country in the
world--a country connected with the East and the waterways to Europe
by the Five Great Lakes. When the task now under way of widening and
deepening the Erie Canal is accomplished, the enormous Lake traffic in
grain may continue without interruption to the Atlantic coast. Even as
it is, the transportation of grain from Buffalo to New York by canal
is showing a phenomenal increase. The value of the freight cleared by
canal from Buffalo in 1907 was nearly $19,000,000, while in 1905 it was
less than $12,000,000.

Like the building of ships the building of elevators is now one of
the chief occupations along the Lakes. The “grain age,” as vessel-men
are already beginning to call it, has begun. In the four chief grain
ports of the Lakes, Chicago, Duluth-Superior, Buffalo, and Port
Arthur-Fort William, there are now 145 elevators with a capacity of
138,000,000 bushels. Chicago leads, with 83 elevators and a capacity
of 63,000,000, although Duluth-Superior with their 27 elevators and
35,000,000-bushel capacity shipped half again as much grain to Buffalo
in 1907 as did Chicago. Buffalo is the great “receiving port” of the
lower Lakes. There vast quantities of grain are made into flour, and
the rest is transhipped eastward. At present the city possesses 28
elevators with a capacity of 23,000,000 bushels.

There is another potent reason why the passing of the lumber traffic
and the future exhaustion of the iron mines do not trouble ship
builders and owners. It has been asserted that when lumber and iron
are gone there will no longer be business for all of the ships of the
Lakes. How wrong this idea is has been shown by the growth of the grain
trade. But grain will be only one item in the enormous commerce of the
future. Each year the coal transportation business is growing, and the
constantly increasing saving to coal consumers because of this commerce
is astonishing. At one end of the Lakes are the vast coal deposits of
the East; at the other is Duluth, the natural distributing point for a
multitude of inland coal markets. Of the 16,000,000 tons of coal to be
shipped by water this year probably 8,000,000 will go to Duluth, and
will be carried a distance of one thousand miles for thirty-five cents
a ton, just about what one would pay to have it shovelled from a waggon
into his basement window! The remaining 8,000,000 tons will be unloaded
at Chicago, Milwaukee, etc.

One of the most interesting sights to be witnessed along the Lakes is
the loading and unloading of a big cargo of coal. The _W. B. Kerr_
holds the record at this writing. She loaded 12,558 tons at Lorain for
Duluth, and took on 400 tons of fuel in addition. Inconceivable as it
may seem, such a cargo under good conditions can be loaded on a ship
in from ten to fifteen hours. The vessel runs alongside the coal dock,
her crew lifts anywhere from a dozen to twenty hatches, and the work
begins. In the yards are hundreds of loaded cars. An engine quickly
pushes one of these up an inclined track to a huge “lift,” or elevator,
to the tracks of which the wheels of the car are automatically clamped.
Then the car, with its forty or fifty tons of coal, scoots skyward, and
when forty feet above the deck of the ship great steel arms reach out
and turn it upside down. With a thunderous roar the coal rushes into a
great chute, one end of which empties into a hatch. Then the car tips
back, is quickly carried down by the elevator, and is “bumped off” by
another loaded car, which goes through the same operation. Four or five
days later, at the other end of the Lakes, powerful arms, high in the
air, reach out over the open hatches of the same vessel. Out upon one
of these arms suddenly darts a huge “clamshell” bucket; for a moment it
poises above a hatch, then suddenly tumbles downward, its huge mouth
agape, and half buries itself in the cargo of coal. As it is pulled up,
the “jaws” of the clam are closed, and with it ascend several tons of
fuel. Three or four of these clam-shells may be at work on a vessel
at the same time, and can unload 10,000 tons in about two days. In
the days of old, it would have taken three weeks and scores of men to
unload such a cargo.

“And in looking into the future we must take another item into
consideration,” said President Livingstone to me. “And that is package
freight. It is almost impossible to estimate the amount that is
carried, but it is enormous, and has already saved the country millions
in transportation.”

There is one other “item” that is carried in the ships of the Inland
Seas--not a very large one, judging by bulk alone, but one which
shows that the possibilities of romance are not yet gone from modern
commerce. Perhaps, sometime in the not distant future, you may have the
fortune to see a Lake ship under way. She is long, and black, and ugly,
you may say; she carries neither guns nor fighting men, nor is she
under convoy of a man-o’-war. Yet it may be she carries a richer prize
than any galleon that ever sailed the Spanish Main. She is a “treasure
ship” of the Inland Seas, bringing down copper from the great Bonanzas
of the North. The steamer _Flagg_ holds the record, carrying down as
she did in 1906 $1,250,000 worth of metal.

[Illustration: A Shaft on One of the Ranges.]

Once a copper ship was lost----

But I will keep that story a little longer, for it properly belongs
in “The Romance and Tragedy of the Inland Seas,” in which I pledge
myself to show that the great salt oceans are not the only treeless and
sandless wastes rich in mysterious, romantic, and tragic happenings.




IV

Passenger Traffic and Summer Life


In a previous article I have shown how the saving to the people of
the United States by reason of Great Lake freight transportation is
more than five hundred million dollars a year, or, in other words,
an indirect “dividend” to the nation of six dollars for every man,
woman, and child in it. Yet in describing how this enormous saving
was accomplished I touched upon but one phase of what I might term
the “saving power” of the Lakes. To this must be added that dividend
of millions of dollars which indirectly goes into the pockets of the
people because of the cheapness of water transportation and because of
the extraordinarily low cost at which one may enjoy, both afloat and
ashore, the summer life of the Lakes. These two phases of Lake life are
among the least known, and have been most neglected.

[Illustration: The “North West.”

One of the finest passenger steamers on the Great Lakes.]

At the same time, considering the health and pleasure as well as the
profit of the nation, they are among the most important. To-day it
is almost unknown outside of Lake cities that one may travel on the
Inland Seas at less cost per mile than on any other waterway in
the civilised world, and that the pleasure-seeker in New York, for
instance, can travel a thousand miles westward, spend a month along
the Lakes, and return to his home no more out of pocket than if he
had indulged in a ten-day or two-week holiday at some seacoast resort
within a hundred miles of his business. This might be accepted with
some hesitancy by many were there not convincing figures behind the
statements, figures which show that the Lakes are primarily the “poor
man’s pleasure grounds” as well as his roads of travel, and that on
them he may ride in company with millionaires and dine with the scions
of luxury and fashion without overreaching himself financially. This
has been called the democracy of the Lakes. And only those who have
travelled on the Inland Seas or summered along their shores know what
the term really means. It is a condition which exists nowhere else in
the world on such a large scale. It means that what President Roosevelt
describes as “the ideal American life” has been achieved on the Lakes;
that the bank clerk is on a level, both socially and financially, for
the time, with the bank president, with the same opportunities for
pleasure and with the same luxuries of public travel within his reach.
The “multi-millionaire” who boards one of the magnificent passenger
steamers at Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, or Chicago, or any other
Lake port, has no promenade decks set apart for himself and others
of his class, as on ocean vessels; there are no first-, second-, and
third-class specifications, no dining-rooms for the especial use of
aristocrats, no privileges that they may enjoy alone. The elect of
fortune and fashion becomes a common American as soon as he touches a
plank of a Lake vessel, rubs elbows with the everyday crowd, smokes his
cigars in company with travelling men, rural merchants, and clerks,
forgets himself in this mingling with people of red blood and working
hands--and enjoys himself in the experience. It is a novel adventure
for the man who has been accustomed to the purchase of exclusiveness
and the service of a prince at sea, but it quickly shows him what life
really is along the five great waterways that form the backbone of the
commerce of the American nation.

This is why the passenger traffic of the Inland Seas is distinctive,
why it is the absolute antithesis of the same traffic on the oceans.
If a $2,000,000 floating palace were to be launched upon the Lakes
to-morrow and its owners announced that social and money distinctions
would be recognised on board, the business of that vessel would
probably be run at a loss that would mean ultimate bankruptcy. It is
an experiment which even the wealthiest and most powerful passenger
corporations on the Lakes have not dared to make, though they have
frequently discussed it. A score of passenger traffic men have told
me this. It is a splendid tribute to the spirit of independence and
equality that exists on these American waters.

[Illustration: The Stop at Tashinoo Park, St. Clair Flats.]

And there is a good reason for this spirit. In 1907, sixteen
million passengers travelled on Lake vessels and of these it is
estimated that less than five hundred thousand were foreign tourists
or pleasure-seekers from large Eastern cities. In other words, over
fifteen million of these travellers were men and women of the Lake and
central Western States, where independence and equality are matters of
habit. Twelve million were carried by vessels of the Eighth District,
which begins at Detroit and ends at Chicago, while only three and a
half million were carried in the Ninth District, including all Lake
ports east of the Detroit River. From these figures one may easily get
an idea of the class of people who travel on the Lakes, and at the same
time realise to what an almost inconceivable extent our Inland Seas
are neglected by the people of many States within short distances of
them. Astonishing as it may seem, nearly eight million passengers were
reported at Detroit in 1907--as many as were reported _at all other
Lake ports combined_, including great cities like Buffalo, Cleveland,
and Chicago. These millions were drawn almost entirely from Michigan
and Ontario, with a small percentage coming from Indiana, Ohio, and
Kentucky. Ninety per cent. of the Chicago traffic of two million was
from Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin, while of the three and a half
million carried east of the Detroit River, from Erie and Ontario ports,
fully two thirds were residents of Ohio and Pennsylvania. At Buffalo,
which draws upon the entire State of New York and upon all States
east thereof, there were reported only a million passengers! To sum
up, figures gathered during the year show that fully ninety per cent.
of all travel on the Inland Seas is furnished by the States of Ohio,
Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, western New York,
western Pennsylvania, and northern Kentucky.

[Illustration: The Landing at Mackinac Dock, Michigan.]

Why is this? Why are the most beautiful fresh-water seas in the whole
world neglected by their own people? Why is it that from the single
city of Boston there travel by water two million more people than on
all of the Lakes combined, which number on their shores the second
largest city on the continent and four others well up in the front
rank? I have asked this question of steamship companies in a dozen
ports along the Lakes, and from them all I have received practically
the same reply. There is a man in Detroit who has been in the passenger
traffic business for more than a quarter of a century. I refer to
A. A. Schantz, general manager of the largest passenger business on
the Lakes. He was managing boats at the age of twenty, he has studied
the business for thirty years, and he hits the nail squarely on the
head when he says: “It’s because people _don’t know_ about the Lakes.
For generations newspapers and magazines have talked _ocean_ to them.
They know more about Bermuda and the Caribbean than they do about
Mackinaw and the three thousand islands of Lake Huron. The people of
three States out of four are better acquainted with steamship fares
to London and Liverpool than to Duluth or Chicago; they have been
_taught_ to look to the oceans and ocean resorts, and to-day the five
Great Lakes of America are more foreign, so far as knowledge of them is
concerned, than either the Atlantic or the Pacific.”

This is true. When Admiral Dewey made his triumphal journey through the
Inland Seas even he found himself constantly expressing astonishment at
what he saw and heard. It is so with ninety-nine out of every hundred
strangers who come to them. Think, for instance, of travelling from
Detroit to Buffalo, a distance of two hundred and sixty miles, for
$1.25!--less than _half a cent a mile_! I recently told a Philadelphia
man who has been to Europe half a dozen times about this cheap travel,
and he laughingly asked, “What kind of tubs do you have on the Lakes
that can afford to carry passengers at these ridiculous rates?”

Well, there is one particular “tub” which offers this cheap
transportation once a week, which cost a little over a million and a
quarter dollars! Every bit of woodwork in the parlours, promenades, and
dining-rooms is of Mexican mahogany. It carries with it a collection
of oil paintings which cost twenty-five thousand dollars. Every one of
four hundred state-rooms is equipped with a telephone and there is a
telephone “central,” so that passengers may converse with one another
or with the ship’s officers without leaving their berths. There are
reading-rooms, and music-rooms, and writing-rooms, magnificently
upholstered and furnished; and on more than one of these Lake palaces
passengers may amuse themselves at shuffle-board, quoits, and other
games which fifty millions of Americans believe are characteristic only
of ocean craft. Another of these “tubs”--the _Eastern States_--broke
Lake records in 1907 by berthing and feeding fifteen hundred people on
a single trip; and the new _City of Cleveland_ will accommodate two
thousand without crowding.

Notwithstanding the extreme cheapness of their rates of transportation,
Lake passenger vessels constantly vie with one another in maintaining
a high standard of appearance and comfort. This is illustrated in the
interesting case of the _City of St. Ignace_, which was built a number
of years ago at a cost of $375,000. Since that time, in painting,
decorating, refurnishing, etc., and not including the cost of broken
machinery or expense of crew, nearly $500,000 have been spent in
the maintenance of this vessel, a sum considerably greater than her
original cost. A Government law says that thirty per cent. of the cost
of a vessel must be expended in this kind of maintenance before that
particular boat can change its name. The _City of St. Ignace_ could
have changed her name four times! And the case of the _St. Ignace_ is
only one of many.

[Illustration: Hickory Island at the Mouth of Detroit River.

    From a Photograph by Manning Studio, Detroit.
]

I have gone into these facts with some detail for the purpose of
showing that the extreme cheapness of travel and living along the Lakes
does not signify a loss of either comfort or luxury. In few words, it
means that the Lakes, as in all other branches of their industries, are
agents of tremendous saving to the nation at large in this one; and
that, were the pleasure-seekers and travellers of the country to become
better acquainted with them, the annual “dividend” earned in freight
transportation would be doubled by passenger traffic. The figures of
almost any transportation line on the Lakes will verify this. Last
year, for instance, one line carried two hundred thousand people
between Detroit and Cleveland. The day fare between these points is one
dollar, the distance 110 miles. Estimating that four fifths, or one
hundred and sixty thousand, of these passengers travelled by day, their
total expense would be $160,000. By rail the distance is 167 miles, and
the fare $3.35, making a total railway fare of $536,000. These figures
show that one passenger line alone, and between just two cities, saved
the travellers of the country $376,000 in 1908. The saving between
other points is in many instances even greater. Once each week one
may go by water from Detroit to Buffalo, or from Buffalo to Detroit,
a distance of 260 miles, for $1.25, while the rail rate is seven
dollars; and at any time during the week, and on any boat, the fare
is only $2.50. These low rates prevail, not only in localities, but
all over the Lakes. The tourist may board a Mackinaw boat at any time
in Cleveland, for instance, travel across Lake Erie, up the Detroit
River, through Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron, and back again--a round
trip of nearly one thousand miles--at an expense of _ten dollars_.
The round trip from Detroit to Mackinaw, which gives the tourist two
days and two nights aboard ship and a ride of six hundred miles, costs
eight dollars. The rail fare is $11. At a ticket expense of less than
twenty-five dollars one may spend a whole week aboard a floating palace
of the Lakes and make a tour of the Inland Seas that will carry him
over nearly three thousand miles of waterway, his meal service at the
same time being as good and from a third to a half as expensive as that
of a first-class hotel ashore. Excursion rates, which one may take
advantage of during the entire season, are even less, frequently being
not more than half as high as those given above.

When one becomes acquainted with these facts it is easy for him to
understand the truth of Mr. Schantz’s statement that “people _don’t
know_ about the Lakes.” If they did, the annual passenger traffic on
them would be thirty million instead of sixteen; and, instead of an
estimated saving of ten million dollars to the people because of Lake
passenger ships, the “dividend” that thus goes into their pockets would
be twice that amount.

[Illustration: The “City of Erie.”

The fastest steamer on the Lakes, holding a record of 22.93 miles per
hour.]

Foreign shipbuilders as well as Americans along the seacoasts frankly
concede that vessel-building on the Lakes has developed into a science
which is equalled nowhere else in the world, evidence of which I have
offered in a former article. This is true of passenger ships as well as
of freighters, and the strongest proof of this fact lies in the almost
inconceivably small loss of life among travellers on the Lakes. There
was a time when the marine tragedies of the Inland Seas were appalling,
and if all the ships lost upon them were evenly distributed there would
be a sunken hulk every half-mile over the entire thousand-mile waterway
between Buffalo and Duluth. But those days are gone. Lake travel has
not only become the cheapest in the world, but the safest as well. The
figures which show this are of tremendous interest when compared with
other statistics. Of the sixteen million men, women, and children who
travelled on Lake passenger ships in 1907, _only three were lost_, or
one out of every 5,300,000. Two of these were accidentally drowned,
and the third met death by fire. The percentage of ocean casualties
is twelve times as great, and of the eight hundred million people who
travelled on our railroads during 1906 approximately one out of every
sixty thousand was killed or injured.

To the great majority of our many millions of people the summer life
of the Lakes is as little known as the passenger traffic. And, if
possible, it offers even greater inducements, especially to those who
wish to enjoy the pleasures of an ideal summer outing and who can
afford to spend but a very small sum of money. Notwithstanding this
fact, the shores and countless islands of the Great Lakes are taken
advantage of even less than their low transportation rates. Only a few
of the large and widely-advertised resorts receive anything like the
patronage of seacoast pleasure grounds. If a person in the East or
West, for instance, plans to spend a month somewhere along the Lakes,
about the only information that he can easily obtain is on points like
Mackinaw Island: popular resorts which are ideal for the tourist who
wishes to pass most of his time aboard ship, or who, in stopping off at
these more fashionable places, is not especially worried about funds.

It is not of such isolated places as the great resorts that I shall
speak first. They play their part, and an important one, in the summer
life of the Lakes; but it is to another phase of this life, one which
is almost entirely unknown, that I wish to call attention. The man who
does not have to count the contents of his pocket-book when he leaves
home will find his holiday joys without much trouble. But how about the
man who works for a small salary, and who with his restricted means
wishes to give his wife and children the pleasures of a real vacation?
What about the men and women and children who look forward for weeks
and months, and who plan and save and economise, sometimes hopelessly,
that _somewhere_ they may have two weeks together, free from the worry
and care and eternal grind of their daily life? It is to such people as
these, unnumbered thousands of them, that the Lakes should call--and
loudly. And it is to such as these that I wish to describe the
astonishing conditions which now exist along thousands of miles of our
Great Lakes coast line--conditions which, were they generally known,
would attract many million more people to our Inland Seas next year
than will be found there during the present summer.

“But _where_ shall I go?” asks the man who is planning a vacation,
and who may live two or three hundred miles away from the nearest of
the Great Lakes. He is perplexed, and with good cause. He has spent
other vacations away from home and generally speaking he knows what a
hold-up game ordinary summer-resort life is. But he need not fear this
on the Lakes. All that he has to do in order successfully to solve
this problem of “where to go” is to get a map, select any little town
or village situated on the fresh-water sea nearest to him, or three or
four of them, for that matter, and write to the postmasters. They can
turn the communications over to some person who will interest himself
to that extent. Say, for instance, that you write to the little port of
Vermilion, on Lake Erie. Your reply will state that “Shattuck’s Grove
would be a nice place for you to spend your holidays; or you may go to
Ruggles’ Grove, half a dozen miles up the beach; or you can get cheap
accommodations, board and room for three or four dollars a week apiece,
at any one of a hundred farmhouses that look right out over the lake.”
In fact, it is not necessary for you to write at all. When you are
ready to leave on your vacation, when your trunk is ready and the wife
and children all aglow with eagerness and expectancy--why, _start_.
Go direct to any one of these little Lake towns. Within a day after
arriving there, or within two days at the most, you will be settled. I
have passed nearly all of my life along the Lakes, and have travelled
over every mile of the Lake Erie shore; I have gone from end to end of
them all, and I do not know of a Lake town that does not possess in its
immediate vicinity what is locally known as a “grove.” A grove, on the
Lakes, means a piece of woods that the owner has cleared of underbrush,
where the children may buy ice-cream and candy, where there are plenty
of swings, boats, fishing-tackle, and perhaps a merry-go-round, and
where the pleasure-seeker may rent a tent at almost no cost, buy his
meals at ridiculously low prices and live entirely on the grounds, or
board with some farmer in the neighbourhood. A “grove,” in other words,
is what might be called a rural resort, a place visited almost entirely
by country people and the residents of neighbouring towns, and where
one may fish, swim, and enjoy the most glorious of all vacations for no
more than it would cost him to live at home, and frequently for less.

[Illustration: Little Venice, St. Clair River.

Showing the type of “Inns,” where people may pass their holidays at
small expense.

    Courtesy of Northern Steamship Co.
]

There are many hundreds of these “groves” along the Lakes, unknown to
all but those who live near them. Only on occasion of Sunday-school
picnics or Fourth of July celebrations are they crowded. They are the
most ideal of all places in which to spend one’s holidays, if rest
and quiet recreations are what the pleasure-seeker desires. And these
groves are easily found. I do not believe there is a twenty-mile
stretch along Lake Erie that does not possess its grove, and sometimes
there are a dozen of them within that distance. I know of many that
are not even situated near villages, being five or six miles away
and patronised almost entirely by farmers. In almost any one of
them a family may enjoy camp life if they wish, buy their supplies
of neighbouring farmers, do their own cooking, rent a good boat for
from twenty-five to fifty cents a day, and get other things at a
corresponding cost. I am personally acquainted with one family of four
who came from Louisville to one of these sylvan resorts on Lake Huron
last year, and the total expense of their three weeks’ vacation, not
including railroad fare, was under fifty dollars. The experience of
these parents and their children is not an exception. It is a common
one with those who are acquainted with the Lakes and who know how to
take advantage of them to their own profit.

[Illustration: A Scene on Belle Isle, Detroit River.]

There is another phase of Lake life, a degree removed from that which I
have described, which is also unknown beyond its own local environment
and which ought to be made to be of great profit and pleasure to
those seeking holiday recreation along our Inland Seas. The shores
of the Lakes, from end to end, are literally dotted with what might
appropriately be called lakeside inns--places located far from the dust
and noise and more fashionable gaiety of crowded resorts and cities,
where one may enjoy all of the simpler pleasures of water-life for from
six to eight dollars a week. This price includes room, board, boats,
fishing-tackle, and other accommodations. At most of these places the
board is superior to that which one secures at the large resorts.
Fish, frogs’ legs, and chickens play an important part in the bill
of fare, and almost without exception they are placed upon the table
in huge dishes, heaped with fresh viands from the kitchen as soon as
they become empty. The fish cost the innkeepers nothing, for they are
mostly caught by the pleasure-seekers themselves; frogs usually abound
somewhere in the immediate vicinity, and where the landlord does not
raise his own fowls they are purchased from neighbouring farmers.
The inn is a local market for butter, eggs, celery, and vegetables
of all kinds, so it is not difficult to understand why the board at
these places is superior to almost any that can be found in a city. I
have no doubt that if these lakeside inns were generally known they
would be so crowded that life would not be worth living in them. But
they are _not_ known and as a consequence are running along in their
old-fashioned way, sources of unrivalled summer joy to those who have
been fortunate enough to discover them. At many of these inns only a
dollar a day is charged, all accommodations included, and the price is
seldom above $1.50 a day, even for transients. I know of one inn that
has been “discovered” by half a dozen travelling men and their wives.
Three of these families live in Cleveland, one in Pittsburg, and two
in New York, and each year they spend a month together on Lake St.
Clair. The cost is _six dollars a week_ for each adult! A few weeks
ago I was talking with one of these men, the representative of a New
York dry-goods firm, and he told me that for himself, his wife, and
two children it cost less to stay a month at this place than it did
to pass a single week at an ocean resort, and that the accommodations
and opportunities for pleasure were greater there than he had ever
been able to afford on the Atlantic. I do not wish to emphasise the
attractions of any particular inn, for in most ways all of them are
alike. And the holiday-seeker who knows nothing of the Lakes can find
them as easily as he can locate the groves I have described. The secret
of the whole thing is in the knowledge that hundreds of such places
really exist.

I have often thought that if it were possible for every person in the
United States to make a trip over the Lakes, beginning at Niagara
Falls, our Inland Seas from that day on would be recognised as the
greatest pleasure-grounds in the world. At Niagara Falls, the traveller
takes the Gorge ride, and perhaps makes a trip on the _Maid of the
Mist_. But he is probably unaware that in the immediate neighbourhood
are a score of spots hallowed in history, and whose incidents have
made up some of the most romantic and tragic pages in the story of our
country. He may not know that within walking distance of the falls was
fought the battle of Queenston Heights, that at certain points the
earthworks of the British still remain, that he may stand in the very
spot where General Brock fell dying, and that he may follow, step by
step, that thrilling fight far up on the summit of those wild ridges.
Neither does the ordinary tourist know that almost within sight of the
falls is one of the oldest cemeteries in America, where many of the men
who were slain in the battles of those regions are at rest. Old Fort
Niagara remains almost unvisited, and the spot not far distant where
the adventurer La Salle built the _Griffin_, the first vessel ever to
sail the Lakes, is virtually unknown. Two weeks, and every hour of them
filled with interest, might be spent by the Lake tourist at Niagara
Falls, yet the average person is satisfied with a day. And it is all
because he does not _know_. This may be said of his experiences from
end to end of the Lakes.

[Illustration: Steamer “Western States.”

One of the largest and fastest boats on the Lakes. Carries 2500 people
and her fastest speed is 20 miles an hour.

    From a Photograph by Detroit Photographic Co.
]

When his ship passes into Lake Erie he enters upon new and even more
thrilling pages of history. Near Put-in-Bay his captain can point out
to him where Perry and his ships of war engaged and whipped the British
fleet in 1813; for nearly a hundred miles his vessel will travel over
the very course taken by the fleeing British ships, and that course,
if he follows it to the Thames, will lead to the scenes of the fierce
battle that was fought there, and of the sanguinary conflict with the
Indians in which the famous chieftain Tecumseh was slain. And all this
time he will see rising along the white stretches of shore the smoke of
great cities, and hundreds of miles of wooded beach, where unnumbered
millions might pass their summer holidays without crowding. And when he
enters the Detroit River he looks out upon quiet Canadian shores and
little “Sleepy Hollow” towns, still characterised by the quaint French
atmosphere and peacefulness that marked them a century ago.

Now he begins to see the crowded, noisy, jostling pleasures of popular
river resorts; then comes Detroit, the greatest excursion city on the
Lakes. Here again history may add to the pleasure of his reflections,
for three nations have fought for and possessed Detroit. He passes
Belle Isle, the greatest pleasure ground in the world with the
exception of Coney Island, and a few minutes later can almost throw a
stone upon the island that was once the home of the famous Indian chief
Pontiac, and where the plans for that bloodthirsty warrior’s assaults
upon the whites were made. Then follows the course across beautiful
Lake St. Clair, and the slow journey through Little Venice, where
again the crowds and music and gay vessels of one of the most popular
resorts in America greet his eyes for many miles; where every bit of
land that thrusts itself out of the lake is lined with summer cottages
and lakeside inns. Here the tourist may stop for a dollar a day or two
dollars a day, and may mingle freely with bankers and merchants and
millionaires as well as with the “common herd.” It is a mixed, happy,
cosmopolitan life.

From Little Venice the tourist’s ship enters the St. Clair River, along
which live innumerable captains of ships. It is a paradise of beauty,
yet along its length one may buy cottage sites cheaper than he can
purchase ordinary city lots. Here the traveller will see the tents
of happy campers from the city, comfortable inns, and now and then a
summer resort hotel--a mixed life, one of pleasure for the man with a
family and little money as well as for him who has more than he knows
well how to spend.

[Illustration: Steamship “North West” in American Lock.]

Once out upon the bosom of Lake Huron, the scenes begin to change.
Now there are miles of shore on which there is hardly a habitation
to be seen. From Saginaw Bay northward for hundreds of miles along
the Georgian Bay and Michigan shores, the grandeur and beauty of the
wilderness are seen from the deck of the vessel. As one progresses
farther north the scenes become wilder and wilder, until the captain
may tell you that you are looking out over regions where the bear and
the deer and the wolf make their homes; and if you have a drop of
sportsman’s blood in you, he adds to your excitement by saying that you
may see big game from the deck of the ship before the trip is over.
At times, and for long distances, the vessel seems to be picking her
way between innumerable islands, and if the course is through Georgian
Bay their number bewilders the traveller. They are on all sides of him.
Here and there upon them are resort hotels; more numerous still are the
simple, homelike places where the city worker and his family may stay
at comparatively small expense, and along the mainland are the homes of
settlers and farmers, nine out of ten of whom are glad to accommodate
summer visitors at prices which make living there as cheap as at home.

Farther northward the tourist’s ship carries him deeper into the
wilderness country, through St. Mary’s River, with its forest-clad
shores and islands, broken here and there by little cottages built
and owned by city people; through the locks at the “Soo,” and into
Lake Superior. Beyond this, as one captain expressed it to the writer,
“there is howling wilderness on every shore.” At times the traveller
may have glimpses of the Canadian coast, from which the unbroken
wild stretches northward to Hudson Bay; his eyes may travel over the
hazy distance of the greatest moose- and caribou-hunting country on
the continent; and when near the Michigan shore he may see the smoke
rising above the great copper mines of the Upper Peninsula. And at the
end of this northern route he comes to Duluth, the second greatest
freight-shipping port in the world, and destined to become one of the
most important cities in America.

At the Straits of Mackinaw, however, the tourist may turn into Lake
Michigan instead of continuing into Superior: and if so, he soon comes
within sight of Beaver Island, famous for all ages in history as the
one-time stronghold of King Strang and his Mormons--an island about
which piracy once flourished and where more than one vessel, in the
years of long ago, met a mysterious and tragic end at the hands of
buccaneers as bloodthirsty as any that ever roamed the seas.

[Illustration: Cottages Built at Small Expense along the St. Mary’s
River.]

And so it goes, from end to end of the Lakes, every mile fraught with
interest, every hour offering the traveller something new of scenery or
history. At no time is there the monotonous sameness of ocean travel,
and even night is to be regretted because of the things which are
passed then and cannot be seen. And this life of the Lakes is not, like
that of the salt seas, open only to those of means. It is within the
poor man’s reach as well as the rich, is accessible to the hard-working
housewife as well as to the woman who possesses her carriage and her
servants.




V

The Romance and Tragedy of the Inland Seas


I was watching a blockade of ships in a Lake Erie harbour--a score of
striving, crowding, smoking monsters of the Inland Seas, hung under a
pall of black smoke, with screeching tugs floundering here and there,
megaphone voices shouting curses and orders, and the crashing of chains
and steel filling the air. And I thought of a theatre I had visited
the night before where, arriving late, I was forced to crush in with
the gallery gods and fight for a place in the fifth heaven. In the
excitement of this “spring rush” of great ships for the freight-laden
docks of the North, I spoke my sentiment to the man beside me--a man
who had always before him in his office five miniature lakes, on which
miniature vessels represented his steel leviathans of commerce, which
he moved about, and played, and watched, day by day and almost hour
by hour, as a player might move his men at chess. And this man, I
noticed, was regarding the scene before him with different eyes from
mine. His face was set in a frown, his eyes stared in their momentary
anxiety, and I could almost feel the eager tenseness of his body.
Out there in that chaotic tangle, where captains were fighting for
prestige and taking chances that might cost thousands, _he_ had ships.
I saw him clench his hand as a black monster crept forward into the gap
between two ships ahead; I saw it forge on, yard by yard, saw the other
vessels close up on it as though it were an egg which they were bent on
crushing between them, heard the rumbling of steel side against steel
side, and when at last I witnessed this ship break triumphantly into
the lead, great blotches of paint scraped from it, I looked at the man
again, and he was smiling.

Then he turned to me, and as we walked away from the scene, he observed:

“That’s good--that ‘crush’ idea of yours. I’d use it. It’s as pretty a
comparison as you could get to the whole situation on the Lakes to-day,
and it’s a key to what the situation is going to be ten years from
now. It’s crush and crowd all over the Lakes from Duluth to Buffalo.
Harbours are getting too small; the ‘Soo’ canals are becoming outgrown;
the Lime Kiln crossing is a greater and greater menace as the number of
ships increases. And the ships? They’re increasing so fast that unless
the Government takes a hand, there will be more tragedies to write down
in Lake history during the next decade or two, than in all of the years
that have gone before.”

[Illustration: A Steamer Stripped by a Tow-Line by Running between a
Steamer and her Consort.

    From a Photograph by Lord & Rhoades, Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
]

This possibility of the actual overcrowding, of the Lakes is one that
I have discussed with half a hundred captains and owners. It offers
a new “future” for romance and tragedy on the Great Lakes. Since the
day the first strong-hearted explorers sailed up the Inland Seas on
the _Griffin_, the unusual, the tragic, and the romantic have made up
thrilling chapters in their history--chapters in battle, piracy, and
adventure, whose heroes and their exploits rank on even terms with Paul
Jones, Kidd, Morgan, Hudson, and other worthies of the open seas. The
romance of the old days, as upon the ocean, is gone; a new romance has
taken its place--the romance of iron and steel and steam; and a new
and greater peril than that born of wind and storm, many believe, is
fast developing to face the fresh-water mariner of the future. This is
the peril of collision--not as it exists to-day, but as it may exist
a few years from now. Already this peril is an ever-present menace
upon the Great Lakes, and hardly a day passes during the season of
navigation that collisions do not occur. The Lakes, it is probable,
will never be able to take entire care of the enormous commerce of the
East and West, and as a result ships will continue to increase until,
like the streets of a great city with their rushing automobiles and
unceasing pandemonium of cars, vans, and seething multitudes, these
water highways will become dangerously crowded with the vehicles of
trade. Already the Lake Carriers’ Association seems to foresee the
danger of future navigation on the Inland Seas, and has recommended
that east and west courses be established, so that up-bound vessels
will be far out of the path of down-bound ships. This is but the first
step toward government legislation, many believe, that will bring
about the “cutting up of the Lakes into roads,” when vessels bound for
given ports will have prescribed courses to travel, from which they
will deviate, unless with good cause, at the risk not only of their
safety, but of a heavy fine. Thus, it is probable, will the Lakes be
made navigable for the myriad ships of the future, when, in the words
of one ship-owner, “A pall of smoke will hover overhead day and night
for seven months in the year, and when the world will witness water
commerce as it has never existed before, and as it will never exist
elsewhere on the globe.”

This is looking into the future; but one acquainted with the Lake
life of to-day cannot but see the picture. And this picture brings
one to the real motif of this chapter--a description of the “human
interest side” of America’s vast “unsalted seas,” that side in which
the romantic and the tragic and not the realities of statistics and
economic progress play the absorbing parts, and which should serve to
make them of interest to hundreds of thousands of people who have yet
their first trips to take upon them.

From my twenty years of experience with them, I believe that failure to
treat of the human interest of the Lakes is one of the most inexcusable
omissions of American literature. In the rush of modern progress the
Lakes have been forgotten--except in the way of their vital importance
to the commerce of the nation. And each year their picturesque and
thrilling aspects are becoming more deeply engulfed in considerations
of profit and loss and corporation finance.

Not long ago I asked a romantically inclined young woman, who was about
to spend the savings of several years on an ocean trip, why she did not
take a more economical, and pleasanter, holiday by making a tour of the
Lakes. She looked at me as if I had gone out of my head.

“Take a trip on the Lakes when I can have one on the ocean!” she cried.
After a moment of continued surprise, she added: “I want something that
I can think about. I want to go where something has happened--where
there have been battles, and pirates, and where there’s sunken ships,
and treasure, and things under us! I’m reading a story now that tells
of the ocean--_The Cruise of a Lonely Heart_--situated in the very part
of the sea we’re to cross, and I shall read every word of it over again
while we’re aboard the ship!”

That is the great trouble. Historians, novelists, and short-story
writers have neglected the Lakes. I did not waste my breath in telling
this young lady that real pirates flourished in the days of King Strang
and his Mormons on the Lakes; that some of the most picturesque “sea
fights” of history were fought upon them, and that treasure untold,
and mysteries without number, lie hidden within their depths. But I am
determined that she shall read these few pages, and I pray that she, as
well as a few thousand others of my readers, may hereby be induced to
“take to their history.”

For centuries the oceans have been regarded as the realm of romance and
mystery. In this age, the youths of Chicago, of New York, Cincinnati,
or Denver, and even of Lake cities, search public libraries for tales
of the South Seas and of the great Pacific; even the youngster whose
every day has been spent on the shores of one of the five Great Lakes
seeks afar the material that satisfies his boyish imagination. And so
is it with his father and mother, his big brothers and sisters. Instead
of a glorious trip over the Lakes, they prefer the old and oft-made
journey to Europe, to the Bermudas; instead of seeking out the grand
scenery and actual romance that environ them, they follow beaten paths
laid out in books and pamphlets descriptive of the ocean.

[Illustration: A Remarkable Photograph Showing the Big Freighter
“Stimson” in a Holocaust of Smoke and Flame.]

In view of the action already being taken to bring about legislation
to prevent collisions, it is interesting to note that no similar area
of any ocean, if suddenly robbed of its waters, would expose to human
eyes more sunken ships, or more valuable cargoes, than the Great Lakes.
During the twenty years between 1878 and 1898, only one less than
6000 vessels were wrecked on the Inland Seas, and 1093 these were
total losses. The loss of cargo during this period of a little more
than one fourth of the years of navigation on the Lakes was nearly
$8,000,000, and from this it is quite safe to figure that the total
amount of property that has gone to the bottom of the Lakes, including
only cargoes, would make a total of at least $15,000,000, involving the
wrecking of 14,000 vessels and the total loss of over 2000 ships. Were
these “total losses” strung out in a row, there would be a sunken ship
at a distance of every half-mile over the thousand-mile length of the
Lakes between Buffalo and Duluth. What a field for romance here! What
material for the seeker of human achievement, of heroism, of sacrifice!
Scores of these vessels disappeared as suddenly and as mysteriously
as though some great power had smuggled them from the face of the
earth, leaving naught behind to tell of the tragedies; hundreds of
ships carried with them valuable cargoes which remain to this day for
lucky fortune-hunters to recover from the depths; and in their going
thousands of lives were snuffed out, and thousands of unwritten acts of
heroism were played and never heard of, or forgotten.

How many remember the name of Captain James Jackson? Jackson is only
one of a thousand heroes of the Inland Seas, and the deed which made
him famous among Lake seamen is only one of a thousand of a similar
kind. It happened one year in the closing days of navigation on
Superior. The owners of the freighter _W. F. Sauber_ had sent that
ship from Duluth with one last load of iron ore under the command of
W. E. Morris. Off Whitefish Point the vessel was caught in a fierce
storm from the north. All night she weathered the gale, but with
morning there came a blinding sleet with fierce wind and intense
cold, and the breaking seas froze as they touched the upper works of
the ship. Under the increasing weight of ice the disabled _Sauber_
gradually settled. When thus the “little ice devils” of Superior gather
upon a victim, it sometimes happens that no power of man can save the
ship, and in this instance the crew of the doomed freighter realised
that it was only a matter of a short time before the end would come.
But strange things happen on the Inland Seas, as on the oceans.

Upon this day, so far as is known, there were just two vessels on Lake
Superior, and fate decreed that they should meet off Whitefish Point.
While the men of the _Sauber_ were waiting for death, the steamer _Yale_
was tearing her way through the gale toward the “Soo,” and as he passed
Captain Jackson sighted the sinking ship. It was then that occurred
that act which won him a gold medal and a purse contributed to by
hundreds of sailors all over the Lakes.

[Illustration: After a Fierce Night’s “Late Navigation” Run across Lake
Superior.]

Notwithstanding the peril of his own situation, Captain Jackson brought
his vessel to. For hours it was buffeted in the trough of the sea,
which was too heavy for small boats to attempt a rescue in. Night came,
and the freighters drifted to within a stone’s throw of each other.
At dawn, when the _Yale_ might have been safely in port, it was found
that she, too, was gradually settling, and that the _Sauber_ could not
live an hour longer. Captain Jackson at once called for volunteers
willing to risk their lives in an attempt at rescue; he himself went
out in the first boat. If bravery was ever rewarded it was then. Every
member of the _Sauber’s_ crew, with the exception of the captain, was
carried to the _Yale_. At the last moment Captain Morris attempted to
lower himself into one of the boats--hesitated--then leaped back to the
deck of the sinking ship.

“Go on, boys!” he shouted through the gale. “Good luck to you, but I’m
going to stay with the old boat!”

This is heroism, sacrifice, faithfulness, as they are bred on the
Inland Seas.

Thirty minutes later the _Sauber_ went under, and immediately after the
explosion of her deck, caused by the pressure of air and water, those
who were still courageously waiting in a small boat heard the last
cries of Captain Morris rising above the gale.

These “last days of navigation”--the season when life and property are
hazarded by crews and captains with a recklessness that thrills one’s
blood--are justly dreaded, and I have been told by a hopeful few that
the time is coming when proper legislation will send ships into winter
quarters earlier than now. It is at this time that casualties multiply
with alarming rapidity, the perils of Lake navigation becoming tenfold
as great as those of the ocean. Heavy fogs hide the beacons that mark
the danger lines. Blinding snowstorms blot out the most powerful
lights. Driven by fierce gales, weighted by ice, with heaven and sea
meeting in a pall that conceals the guiding stars ashore, scores
of vessels continue to beat onward in the hope of adding one more
successful trip to their season’s record.

The history of a Lake Superior tragedy is simple. One more trip from
Duluth may mean thousands of dollars. The season is late--too late.
But freight rates are high. No risk, no gain, argues the ship-owner,
as he sends his vessel from port. Those are days of anxiety for
captain, crew, and owner. In a few hours the clear sky may give place
to banks of snow clouds. The air turns bitter cold. Darkness falls in
the middle of the afternoon. The snow descends in dense clouds. It is
far worse than the blackest night, for it shuts out the lights along
the treacherous shores as completely as a wall of mountains. Upon the
captain alone now depends the safety of the ship, for the Government’s
attempts to aid him are futile. Perhaps his vessel is safely making her
course miles from the coast. Or it may be that it is driving steadily
toward its doom upon the dreaded Pictured Rocks. It was in this way
that the steamer _Superior_ was lost with all on board, and in the same
way the _Western Reserve_ beat herself to pieces within sight of the
Big Sable light. And Superior has a harder fate in store for many of
those who take the last ill-fated trip of the season. Sailors dread
it more than the tragedy of dense snowstorms, when they run upon the
rocks, for even there hope does not die; they dread it more than the
fierce, sledge-hammer wash of Erie in a storm; more than the fearful
dash for port in Lake Michigan, where ports are few; and this fate is
the fate of “the little ice devils”--those masses of ice which freeze
upon a ship until she is weighted beyond control.

In these days of late navigation--days of fierce battles with snow,
ice, and wind, days of death and destruction as they are never known
upon the salt seas--is material for a generation of writers; unnumbered
stories of true mystery, true romance, and true tragedy, which, if
fed to the nation in popular form, would be of immeasurable value to
lovers of the literature of adventure. Into what a fascinating tale
of mystery, for example, might the loss of the _Queen of the West_ be
turned! And, yet, here is a case where truth is in reality stranger
than fiction, and possibly an editor might “turn down” the tale as
too improbable. Recently I chronicled a true romance of the Lakes. I
had dates, names of ships, names of people, and even court records
to prove the absolute verity of my story, which was related in the
form of fiction. I sent it to several editors who had published other
stories of mine, and one after another they returned it, saying that
while my proofs were conclusive, the story was so unusual in some of
its situations that their readers would consider the tale as a gross
exaggeration of anything that might occur on the Great Lakes!

Well, here is the story of the _Queen of the West_--only one of scores
of Lake incidents equally unusual; and I hope that it will have at
least some weight in showing that things _can_ occur on the Inland
Seas. In the late navigation days of 1903, the freighter _Cordurus_
left Duluth on a “last trip down.” In mid-lake, the lookout reported
a ship in distress, and upon nearer approach the vessel was found to
be the _Queen of the West_, two miles out of her course, and sinking.
Captain McKenzie immediately changed his course that he might go to the
rescue, at the same time signalling the other vessel to lay to. What
was his astonishment when he perceived the _Queen of the West_ bearing
rapidly away from him, as though her captain and crew were absolutely
oblivious of their sinking condition, as well as of the fact that
assistance was at hand!

[Illustration: A Ship that Made the Shore before she Sank. The Work of
Raising her in Progress.]

Now began what was without doubt the most unusual “chase” in marine
history. Every eye on the deck of the _Cordurus_ could see that the
_Queen of the West_ was sinking--that at any moment she might plunge
beneath the sea. Was her captain mad? Each minute added to the mystery.
The fleeing ship had changed her course so that she was bearing
directly on to the north Superior shore. Added fuel was crammed under
the _Cordurus’s_ boilers; yard by yard, length by length, she gained
upon the sinking vessel. Excited figures were seen waving their arms
and signalling from the _Queen of the West’s_ deck. But still the ship
continued on her mysterious flight. At last Captain McKenzie came
within hailing distance. His words have passed down into Lake history:

“You’re sinking, you idiot! Why don’t you heave to?”

“I know it--but I _can’t_,” came back the voice of the _Queen of the
West’s_ captain. “We’re almost gone and if we stop our engines for a
second we’ll go down like a chunk of lead!”

Not stopping to consider the risk. Captain McKenzie ran alongside.
The _Queen of the West’s_ engines were stopped and her crew clambered
aboard. Hardly had the _Cordurus_ dropped safely away when the doomed
ship went down. Her momentum alone had kept her from sinking sooner.

One of the most thrilling and interesting pages in the history of
Great Lakes navigation, despite the comparative smallness of these
fresh-water seas, is made up of “mysterious disappearances.” Ships have
sailed from one port for another, and though at no time, perhaps, were
they more than ten to thirty miles from shore, they have never been
heard from again. Of some not even a spar or a bit of wreckage has been
found. Only a few years ago the magnificent passenger steamer _Chicora_
left St. Joseph, Michigan, for Chicago on a stormy winter night. She
was one of the finest, staunchest, and best-manned vessels on the
Lakes. She sailed out into Lake Michigan--and thence into oblivion. Not
a soul escaped to tell the story of her end. Through the years that
have passed no sign of her has ever been found. Wreckers have sought
for her, people along the shore have watched for years; but never a
memento has the lake given up from that day to this. And this is only
one of the many mysteries of the Inland Seas.

[Illustration: A Treacherous Sea in its Garb of Greatest Beauty.

One phase of Lake navigation.]

Captains and sailors theorise and wonder to this day on the loss of
the _Atlanta_, which went down in Lake Superior; and wonderful stories
are told of the disappearance of the _Nashua_, the _Gilcher_, and the
_Hudson_, and of the nameless vessels spoken of by old Lake mariners as
“The Two Lost Tows” of Huron. The disappearance of these tows remains
to this day unexplained. During the night the line which held them to
their freighter consort parted and unknown to the steamer they fell
behind. With the coming of dawn search was made for them, but in vain.
What added to the uncanniness of the simultaneous disappearance of the
two vessels was the fact that there was no storm at the time. No trace
of the missing ships has ever been found. Almost as mysterious was the
disappearance of the crack steamer _Alpena_ in Lake Michigan. When last
seen she was thirty miles from Chicago. From that day to this no one
has been able to say what became of her. Of the fifty-seven people who
rode with her that tragic night, not one lived to tell the tale.

Of all Lake mysteries, that of the _Bannockburn_ is one of the freshest
in the memory. The ill-fated vessel left Duluth in the days of the
“ice devils,” a big, powerful freighter with a crew of twenty-two men.
What happened to her will never be known. She went out one morning,
was sighted the next evening--and that was the last. Not a sign of her
floated ashore, not one of her crew was found. For eighteen months the
ice-cold waters of Lake Superior guarded their secret. Then one day an
oar was found in the driftwood at the edge of the Michigan wilderness.
Around the oar was wrapped a piece of tarpaulin, and when this was
taken off, a number of rude letters were revealed scraped into the
wood--letters which spelled the word B-a-n-n-o-c-k-b-u-r-n. This oar is
all that remains to-day to tell the story of the missing freighter. And
now, by certain superstitious sailors, the _Bannockburn_ is supposed to
be the Flying Dutchman of the Inland Seas and there are those who will
tell you in all earnestness that on icy nights, when the heaven above
and the sea below were joined in one black pall, they have descried the
missing _Bannockburn_--a ghostly apparition of ice, scudding through
the gloom. And this is but one more illustration of the fact that all
of the romance in the lives of men who “go down to the sea in ships” is
not confined to the big oceans.

Unnumbered thousands of tourists travel over the Lakes to-day with
hardly a conception of the unrevealed interests about them. What
attracts them is the beauty and freshness of the trip; when they
go upon the ocean they wonder, and dream, and read history. Tragedy
has its allurement for the pleasure-seeker, as well as romance; and
while certain phases of tragedy are always regrettable, it is at least
interesting to be able at times to recall them. The Lake traveller, for
instance, would feel that his trip had more fully repaid him if his
captain should say, pointing to a certain spot, “There is where Perry
and his log ships of war met the British: the battle was fought right
here”; or, “There is where the _Lady Elgin_ went down, with a loss of
three hundred lives.”

[Illustration: A View of the “Zimmerman.”

After a collision with another freighter.]

Three hundred lives! The ordinary modern tourist would hold up his
hands in incredulous wonder. “Is it possible,” he might ask, “that
such tragedies have occurred on the Lakes?” I doubt if there are many
who know that upon the Lakes have occurred some of the greatest marine
disasters of the world. On September 8, 1860, the _Lady Elgin_ collided
with the schooner _Augusta_ and went down in Lake Michigan, carrying
with her three hundred men, women, and children, most of whom were
excursionists from Milwaukee. Two months later the propeller _Dacotah_
sank in a terrific gale off Sturgeon Point, Lake Erie, carrying every
soul down with her. Nothing but fragments were ever seen afterward,
so complete was her destruction. On the steamer _Ironsides_, which
dove down into one hundred and twenty feet of water, twenty-four
lives were lost in full sight of Grand Haven. Many vessels, like
the _Ironsides_, have perished with their bows almost in harbour.
Less than four years ago, for instance, the big steel ship _Mataafa_
was beaten to pieces on the Duluth breakwater, while not more than
thirty or forty rods away thousands of people stood helpless, watching
the death-struggles of her crew, who were absolutely helpless in the
tremendous seas, and who died within shouting distance of their friends.

Probably the most terrible disaster that ever occurred on the Lakes
was the burning of the steamer _G. P. Griffin_, twenty miles east of
Cleveland. The vessel was only three miles from shore when the flames
were discovered, and her captain at once made an effort to run her
aground. Half a mile from the mainland the _Griffin_ struck a sand-bar
and immediately there followed one of the most terrible scenes in the
annals of marine tragedy. The boats were lowered and swamped by the
maddened crowd. Men became beasts, and fought back women and children.
Frenzied mothers leaped overboard with their babes in their arms.
Scorched by the flames, their faces blackened, their eyes bulging, and
even their garments on fire, over three hundred people fought for their
lives. Men seized their wives and flung them overboard, leaping after
them to destruction; human beings fought like demons for possession of
chairs, boards, or any objects that might support them in the water,
and others, crazed by the terrible scenes about them, dashed into
the roaring flames, their dying shrieks mingling with the hopeless
cries of those who still struggled for life. From the shore scores of
helpless people, without boats, or any means of assistance, watched the
frightful spectacle, and strong swimmers struck out to give what aid
they could. Only a few were saved. For days scorched and unrecognisable
corpses floated ashore, and when the final death-roll was called, it
was found that 286 lives had gone out in that frightful hour of fire.

Is there a more tragic page in the history of any ocean than this?--a
page to which must still be added the burning of the steamer _Erie_,
with a loss of one hundred and seventy lives, the sinking of the
_Pewabic_ with seventy souls off Thunder Bay Light, in Lake Huron,
the loss of the _Asia_ with one hundred lives, and scores of other
tragedies that might be mentioned. The Inland Seas have borne a burden
of loss greater in proportion than that of any of the salt oceans.
Their bottoms are literally strewn with the bones of ships and men,
their very existence is one of tragedy coupled with the greatest
industrial progress the world has ever seen. But there are no books
descriptive of their “attractions,” no volumes of fiction or history
descriptive of those “thrilling human elements” that tend to draw
people from the uttermost ends of the earth. This field yet remains for
the writers of to-day.

And romance walks hand in hand with tragedy on the Inland Seas. For
two or three years past a new epidemic has been sweeping the world, an
epidemic which has attracted attention in every civilised land and to
which I might give the name “treasuritis”--the golden _ignis fatuus_
of hidden treasure which is luring men to all parts of the world, and
which is bringing about the expenditure of fortunes in the search for
other fortunes lost on land or at sea. While South Sea treasure-hunts
have been exploited by newspapers and magazines, while Cocos Island and
the golden Pacific have overworked the imaginations of thousands, few
have heard of the treasure-hunts and lost fortunes of the Lakes. So
businesslike are these ventures of the Inland Seas regarded by those
who make them, that little of romance or adventure is seen in them.

How treasures are lost, and sometimes found, in the depths of the Great
Lakes is illustrated in the tragic story of the _Erie_. This vessel,
under command of Captain T. J. Titus, left Buffalo for Chicago on the
afternoon of August 9, 1841. When thirty-three miles out, off Silver
Creek, a slight explosion was heard and almost immediately the ship
was enveloped in flames. In the excitement of the appalling loss of
life that followed, no thought was given to a treasure of $180,000 that
went down with her--the life savings of scores of immigrants bound for
the West. For many years the _Erie_ lay hidden in the sands, seventy
feet under water. In 1855, a treasure-seeking party left Buffalo,
discovered the hull, towed it into shallow water, and recovered a
fortune, mostly in foreign money.

Not very long ago a treasure-ship came down from the North--the
_William H. Stevens_, loaded with $101,880 worth of copper. Somewhere
between Conneaut, Ohio, and Port Burwell, Ontario, she caught fire
and sank. For a long time unavailing efforts were made to recover her
treasure. Then Captain Harris W. Baker, of Detroit, fitted out a modern
treasure-hunting expedition that was as successful in every way as the
most romantic youngster in the land could wish, for he recovered nearly
$100,000 worth of the _Stevens’s_ cargo, his own salvage share being
$50,000.

[Illustration: The Steamer “Wahcondah.”

One of the Lake grain carriers which was caught in a storm late in the
season after being buffeted by the waves of Lake Superior for about
fourteen hours.]

While there have been many fortunes recovered from the bottoms of the
Lakes, there are many others that still defy discovery. Somewhere
along the south shore of Lake Erie, between Dunkirk and Erie, lies a
treasure-ship which will bring a fortune to her lucky discoverer, if
she is ever found. One night the _Dean Richmond_, with $50,000 worth of
pig zinc on board, mysteriously disappeared between those two places.
All hands were lost and their bodies were washed ashore. In vain have
search parties sought the lost vessel. The last attempt was made by the
Murphy Wrecking Company, of Buffalo, which put a vessel and several
divers on the job for the greater part of a season. In the deep water
of Saginaw Bay lies the steamship _Fay_, with $20,000 worth of steel
billets in her hold; and somewhere near Walnut Creek, in Lake Erie,
is the _Young Sion_, with a valuable cargo of railroad iron. Off Point
Pelee is the _Kent_, with a treasure in money in her hulk and the
skeletons of eight human beings in her cabins; and somewhere between
Cleveland and the Detroit River is a cargo of locomotives, lost with
the _Clarion_. In Lake Huron, near Saginaw Bay, are more lost ships
than in any other part of the Great Lakes, and for this reason Huron
has frequently been called the “Lake of Sunken Treasure.” In the days
when the country along the Bay was filled with lumber-camps, large sums
of money were brought up in small vessels, and many of these vessels
were lost in the sudden tempests and fearful seas which beset this part
of Huron. Beside these treasure lumber barges, it is believed that the
_City of Detroit_, with a $50,000 treasure in copper, lies somewhere in
Saginaw Bay. The _R. G. Coburn_, also laden with copper, sank there in
1871, with a loss of thirty lives. Although searches have been made for
her, the location of the vessel is still one of the unsolved mysteries
of the Lakes.

That treasure-hunting is not without its romance, as well as its
reward, is shown by the case of the _Pewabic_. This vessel, with her
treasure in copper, disappeared as completely as though she had been
lifted above the clouds. Expedition after expedition was fitted out to
search for her--a search which continued over a period of thirty years.
In 1897, a party of fortune-seekers from Milwaukee succeeded in finding
the long-lost ship six miles south-east of Thunder Bay. Another
terrible event was the loss of the steamer _Atlantic_, off Long Point,
Lake Erie, with three hundred lives. For many years, futile search was
made for her; not till nearly a quarter of a century was she found, and
$30,000 recovered.

[Illustration: This is One of the Most Remarkable Photographs ever
Taken on the Lakes. It Shows a Sinking Lumber Barge just as She Was
Breaking in Two.

The Photograph was taken from a small boat.]

Whisky and coal form quite an important part of the treasure which
awaits recovery in the Inland Seas. Many vessels with cargoes of whisky
have been lost, and this liquor would be as good to-day as when it went
down. In 1846, the _Lexington_, Captain Peer, cleared from Cleveland
for Port Huron, freighted with one hundred and ten barrels of whisky.
In mid-lake, the vessel foundered with all on board, and though more
than sixty years have passed, she has never been found. To-day her
cargo would be worth $115 a barrel. The _Anthony Wayne_ also sank in
Lake Erie with three hundred barrels of whisky and of wine; and five
years afterwards, the _Westmoreland_ sank near Manitou Island with a
similar cargo. These are only a few of many such cargoes now at the
bottom of the Lakes. Of treasure in lost coal, that of the _Gilcher_
and _Ostrich_, steamer and tow, that disappeared in Lake Michigan,
is one of the largest. The two vessels carried three thousand tons,
and as yet they have not been traced to their resting place. In 1895,
the steamer _Africa_ went down in a gale on Lake Huron, carrying two
thousand tons of coal with her, and at the bottom of Lake Ontario is
the ship _St. Peter_, with a big cargo of fuel. It is estimated that
at least half a million dollars in coal awaits recovery at the bottom
of the Lakes.

But, after all, perhaps the most romantic of all disappearances on the
Inland Seas is that of the _Griffin_, built by La Salle at the foot of
Lake Erie, in January, 1679. The _Griffin_ sailed across Lake Erie, up
the Detroit River, and continued until she entered Lake Michigan. In
the autumn of 1680, she started on her return trip, laden with furs and
with $12,000 in gold. She was never heard of again, and historians are
generally of the opinion that the little vessel sank during a storm on
Lake Huron.

Or it may be that one must choose between this earliest voyager of
the Lakes and that other shrouded mystery--the “Frozen Ship.” Lake
Superior has been the scene of as weird happenings as any tropic sea,
and this of the Frozen Ship, perhaps, is the weirdest of all. She was
a schooner, with towering masts, of the days when canvas was monarch
of the seas; and the captain was her owner, who set out one day in
late November for a more southern port than Duluth. And then came the
Great Storm--that storm which comes once each year in the days of late
navigation to add to the lists of ships and men lost and dead--and just
what happened to the schooner no living man can say. But one day, many
weeks afterward, the corpse of a ship was found on the edge of the pine
wilderness on the north Superior shore; and around and above this ship
were the tracks of wild animals, and from stem to stern she was a mass
of ice and snow, and when she was entered two men were found in her,
frozen stiff, just as the “Frozen Pirate” was discovered in a story not
so true.

So might the tragedy and the romance of the Inland Seas be written
without end, for each year adds a new chapter to the old; and yet, how
many thousands of our seekers of novelty say, with the young woman I
know, “I want to go where something has happened--where there have been
battles, and pirates, and where there’s sunken ships, and treasure, and
things!”




VI

Buffalo and Duluth: the Alpha and Omega of the Lakes


Is the day approaching when Buffalo and not Chicago will be the
second largest city in the United States? and when, at the end of
Lake Superior, her back doors filled with the treasures of the earth
and with a developed empire about her, Duluth will claim a million
inhabitants? Is the day far distant when the world’s greatest
manufacturing city will be located on the Niagara River? and when,
as steel men all the world over believe, Duluth will be a second and
perhaps greater Pittsburg?

These are questions which have never been of greater interest than now,
when the State of New York is expending over a hundred million dollars
on the new Erie Canal, thus “bringing Buffalo and the Lakes to the
sea,” and when, at the same time, the United States Steel Corporation
is devoting ten million dollars to the erection of the most modern
steel plant in the world at Duluth.

“Buffalo is the great doorway of the Inland Seas,” said President
McKinley only a short time before his tragic death. “Some day she
will reach out to the ocean, and when that time comes she will be one
of the greatest cities in the world.” For many years the people of
Buffalo have dreamed of this. And now it is coming true. And while the
Pittsburger, entrenched in the prosperity of steel and fortified behind
the smoke of his own mills, has been laughing at prophecies, away up
at the end of the thousand-mile highway that leads to Duluth, other
people have been dreaming. And their dreams, too, are coming true.
For years the silent struggle for the supremacy of cities has been in
progress along the Great Lakes. The outside world has seen little of
it, and has heard little of it. Now the beginning of the end is at
hand. The two great doors of the Inland Seas have been opened wide.
At one end is Duluth, at the other Buffalo. Chicago is great, Buffalo
may be greater. Pittsburg, like ancient Rome, feels that hers is to be
a reign unbroken, and that she will still be “Pittsburg, Queen of the
World of Steel” until the last call of Judgment Day. In another ten
years--perhaps in less time--she will recognise the power of her rival
in the North.

[Illustration: The Residence of A. Wilcox at Buffalo.

Where President Roosevelt took the oath of office.

    Copyright 1908 by Detroit Photographic Co.
]

These are predictions, but they are well founded. To find just why
they are made, one must go among the powerful men of the Lakes, among
the iron barons of the North and the coal barons of the South and
East--must, in short, become acquainted with the entire commercial and
industrial mechanism which exists on the Great Lakes to-day. They are
not predictions that can be arrived at from New York, or San Francisco,
or London, or Liverpool. One must talk with the men who make them, must
live among those commercial and industrial conditions for a long time,
and must know at first hand the two cities we speak of--Buffalo and
Duluth. They are predictions which have a solid foundation of facts,
and these facts are what make these two cities the most interesting
as well as the most important ports in the Western World, with the
exception of New York City. I venture to say that only a ridiculously
small percentage of our own people--of Americans, whose very existence
as an industrial and commercial power depends largely upon the
Lakes--know these two cities beyond their names, their location, and
possibly the number of their inhabitants. How many, for instance, know
that to-day Duluth is the second greatest freight-shipping port on
earth; that London, the capital of the British Empire, queen of the
world’s commerce for many years, has abdicated in favour of a port
so remote from the heart of British commercial enterprise that it is
doubtful if fifty thousand of the five million people of London have
ever heard of the name of the city which has taken the place of the
world’s metropolis in the list of the great harbours of the world? And
how many know, as well, that within a single night’s ride of the city
of Buffalo--within a radius of less than five hundred miles--live
sixty per cent. of the total population of North America?

[Illustration: A Bird’s-eye View of the Harbour of Duluth, Taken from
the Hill.

    From a Photograph by Maher, Duluth.
]

These are only two of the remarkable facts about Buffalo and Duluth,
the Alpha and Omega of the Inland Seas. That they are now two of the
greatest freight-distributing points in the United States is shown
by figures; that within the next generation they will become the two
greatest distributing cities in the world is almost a certainty. It is
not only Lake commerce that assures their destinies. Logically, they
are situated to rule the world of commerce in the United States. Duluth
is approximately midway in the continent, with a clear waterway soon to
reach to the ocean, and with the great West behind her already webbed,
with Duluth as the centre, by thirty-seven thousand miles of rail; and
Buffalo, with sixty million people within five hundred miles of her
City Hall, with fifteen great trunk-lines entering the city, with the
greatest electrical power of the age at her doors, with “one hand on
the ocean and the other on the Inland Seas,” holds a position which no
other city can ever hope to attain. According to H. C. Elwood, Chairman
of the Transportation Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of Buffalo,
the combined rail and water tonnage of that city is not exceeded by
that of any other city in the United States, with the exception of
Pittsburg. And the story of Buffalo’s commerce has just begun. In
1885, Buffalo’s total tonnage of iron ore received by Lake was only
a little more than eight thousand,--less than the single cargo carried
by one of the great freighters of the Inland Seas to-day! Last year it
was five and a half millions. The position that both Buffalo and Duluth
hold in the commerce of the Lakes is briefly told in figures. Of the
total tonnage of ninety-seven million carried on the Lakes in 1907,
more than fourteen and a half million were registered at Buffalo and
thirty-five million at Duluth-Superior. In other words, over a half
of the total tonnage of the Lakes passed in or out of these two great
doors of the Inland Seas in 1907.

There are few cities in the world to-day in which romance and adventure
have combined in more extraordinary ways with calamity, failure, and
indomitable courage than in the upbuilding of Duluth. Chiselled back
into the rocky hillsides, terrace upon terrace, and stretching for
miles along the bay front where only a quarter of a century ago was the
wild and rugged grandeur of virgin wilderness; built upon rock, and in
rock; looking down upon one of the finest harbours in the world on one
hand, and up over vast regions red with iron treasure on the other,
Duluth is one of the most beautiful cities in the United States--one of
the most wonderful and most interesting. Twenty-five years ago, only
a village marked this stronghold of the iron barons. The deer, the
wolf, the bear, the moose roamed unafraid over places now alive with
commercial activity. Into the vast unexplored wildernesses, even less
than a dozen years ago, prospectors went out with their packs and their
guns, and searched and starved and even died for the “ugly wealth”
hidden in the ranges that are now giving to the world three quarters of
its iron and steel. And to-day many of these same men, “whose callouses
of the old prospecting days have hardly worn away,” live in a city
of eighty thousand people, whose annual receipts from its industries
aggregate fifty-five million dollars, and whose invested wealth is
over one hundred and fifty millions. While London, Liverpool, Hamburg,
Antwerp, Hong-kong, and Marseilles have had eyes for New York alone in
this Western World, while the ports of ancient and historic renown have
been struggling among themselves for supremacy, away up at the end of
the Lake Superior wilderness the second greatest freight-shipping port
in the world was building itself, quietly, unobtrusively, unknown. That
is the story of Duluth in a nutshell.

[Illustration: The Ship Canal and Aërial Bridge, Duluth, Minn.

    Copyright 1908 by Detroit Photographic Co.
]

But it is only the first chapter. The others will be written even
more quickly, perhaps with even greater results. The commerce of
America’s five Inland Seas has but just commenced, and the growth
of this commerce and the growth of Duluth go hand in hand. In 1892,
for instance, only four thousand tons of ore were shipped from
the Duluth-Superior harbour; in 1907, including the sub-port of
Two Harbours, the total was nearly thirty millions! And this same
percentage of increase holds good with other products. Fifteen years
ago very few people along our seaboards would have recognised the
name of Duluth; to those who knew the town it was often an object of
ridicule--the “pricked balloon,” the “town of blasted hopes.” Yet in
1907, this same town, still unknown in a large sense, handled one sixth
of the combined tonnage of all the two hundred and forty shipping ports
on the coast of the United States. During the two hundred and fifty
days of navigation in 1907, an average of fifty-six vessels entered
or left Duluth each day, or one ship every twenty-six minutes, day
and night, for eight months. These vessels carried cargoes valued at
two hundred and eighty-eight million dollars. In other words, over a
million dollars a day left or entered Duluth-Superior harbour.

Not long ago a writer who was seeking information on the possibilities
of our inland waterways asked me what would happen when, as experts
predicted, the ore of the North became exhausted. “Where will Duluth
be then?” he questioned. This is what nine people out of ten ask, who
are at all interested in the future of Duluth. There seems to be an
almost universal opinion among people who do not live along the Lakes
that, with the exhaustion of the great iron deposits, the commerce of
our Inland Seas will dwindle. A more near-sighted supposition than
this could hardly be imagined. At the present time ore is the greatest
object of commerce on the Great Lakes, and it will continue to be so
for many years. It is safe to say that the day is not far distant when
fifty million tons of iron ore, instead of thirty million, will leave
Duluth each year; and at the same time millions of tons of steel will
be leaving by rail. But Duluth’s great future does not rest on iron
and steel alone. As I have said, thirty-seven thousand miles of rail
already reach out from the city into the vast agricultural regions of
the West. It is the one logical doorway of the vast empire at its back,
to which it offers the cheapest and shortest route to the Atlantic and
Europe; just as it must become the great distributing point through
which the bulk of the vast commerce of the East will flow into the
West. There is more agricultural and grazing land tributary to it
than to any other port in America. And Minnesota is still one of the
great timber States of the country in spite of the vast scale on which
lumber operations have been carried on within its boundaries during
the past few years. Lake, Cook, and other northern counties (several
of these counties are each as large as a small State) possess great
forest wealth, and for many years to come Duluth will be the great
lumber-shipping port of the Lakes.

These are a few of the reasons why Duluthians see in their city a
future metropolis of perhaps a million people.

Though a large part of the almost endless fertile regions behind it are
still undeveloped, Duluth has already become the great grain-shipping
port of the world. In 1907, over eighty million bushels of grain were
shipped from the Duluth-Superior harbour, or a bushel for every man,
woman, and child in the United States. There was a time when it was
thought that Chicago would always be the greatest grain port on earth.
But that time has passed. Of the grain received at Buffalo in 1907,
less than forty-two million bushels came from Chicago, while more than
sixty-three million were shipped from Duluth-Superior. And this grain
traffic is growing even more rapidly than the ore traffic. Ships can
hardly be built fast enough to handle the volumes of wheat, oats,
barley, and flax that come by rail into Duluth. The city can handle
one thousand cars a day, or a million bushels, and yet this is not
fast enough. So great is the crush at times that cars of grain are
lost for three weeks in the yards! In the not distant future, Duluth
will be handling two thousand cars a day. Not only wheat, oats, corn,
rye, and barley are pouring into Duluth from the West, but she has now
taken first place as shipper of flaxseed, nearly twenty million bushels
having left Duluth-Superior harbour last year. Just what this quantity
of flaxseed means very few people unacquainted with that product can
realise. Take the four hundred thousand bushels brought down to Buffalo
by the _D. R. Hanna_ in a single trip, for instance. It was loaded in
seven hours and was the product of forty thousand acres, or sixty-two
square miles. It was worth $460,000, and would make one million gallons
of linseed oil.

Probably the most memorable day in the history of Duluth was April 1,
1907, for on that day official notice was received from New York that
the Steel Corporation had decided to establish an iron and steel plant
in Duluth. At first it was planned to cost ten million dollars. Now
it is believed that much more than this will be expended. Preliminary
work has already commenced, and within a year and a half it is expected
that the plant will be in operation. This movement on the part of the
great corporation that rules the world of steel is for several reasons
the most interesting that it has ever made. For years, the ore of the
North has been carried a thousand miles to the smelters of the East. To
reach Pittsburg, it was not only transported that thousand miles, but
was loaded three times and unloaded three times. And, meantime, while
millions of dollars were being expended on the transportation of ore,
while cities half-way across the continent existed and were growing
because of their smelters, the city of Duluth, with the vast iron
deposits at her back door, was not making a ton of steel. This is one
of the mysteries which the Steel Corporation does not explain; but it
is fair to assume that hitherto there has not been a sufficient market
for the products of such a plant within paying reach of this port.

[Illustration: Fleet of Boats in Duluth Harbour Waiting to Unload.]

The new plant will bring thirty thousand people to Duluth--and this
is not the end. Those who are acquainted with the situation say that it
is but the first step in the making of a second Pittsburg. “The steel
industry,” they say, “brought almost a million people and billions of
dollars to Pittsburg--a city a thousand miles from its ore, and without
natural advantages. What, then, will it mean to Duluth, with its
strategic position on the great highways of commerce, with its cheap
water-power, and above all with its ore ready to be dumped direct from
the mine cars into the smelters?”

In short, the dreams of Duluth’s old “boomers” are coming true. The
great East, with its railroad and manufacturing development, has
been supplied with its steel--from Pittsburg. Now it is the West and
South-west, and the Orient, to which our great volumes of steel trade
will turn. It is Duluth’s chance. Because the ore is at her doors, she
can turn out iron and steel cheaper than any other city in the world;
and she is the nearest distributing point to the West. This movement to
Duluth is inevitable. The world’s steel industry has been constantly
moving and changing. Since 1564, the centre of the industry has moved
from Birmingham, England, from Lynn through Connecticut to New Jersey,
then to Philadelphia, and lastly to Pittsburg, where it has remained
for fifty years. Of late years, the tendency has been westward, the
movement culminating in Chicago. Now it is centring in Duluth. In a
way, Duluth’s history will be similar to that of Pittsburg. Duluth and
Superior, twin cities with one harbour and identical interests, cannot
follow the example of Pittsburg and Allegheny, and unite politically,
as State lines divide them, Duluth being in Minnesota and Superior in
Wisconsin; but commercially they are fast becoming one. Together they
will not only head the ports of the world, probably for all time to
come, but will become one of the greatest manufacturing centres on the
continent. With a harbour frontage of forty-five miles, with electrical
power from the St. Louis Falls second only to that of Niagara,
with iron and steel at her doors, and with a world-market behind
her, Duluth, already the largest coal-receiving port in the world,
possesses manufacturing advantages beyond those of any other city on
the continent, with the exception of Buffalo. There are good reasons
why this coming Pittsburg of the North will never equal Buffalo in
population and commercial activity; there are just as good reasons why
no other city in the United States, with the exception of New York and
Chicago, will equal Buffalo. At the same time, as a member of the Steel
Corporation said to me: “If steel and only a few natural advantages
made Pittsburg what it is--what will steel, and all the natural
advantages in the world, do for Duluth?”

[Illustration: View Looking South-west from the New Chamber of Commerce
Building, Buffalo.]

Of course it is not possible to conceive that Duluth, even as a great
steel city, would use more than a small fraction of the enormous ore
tonnage that is annually taken from the Minnesota ranges. If millions
of dollars were spent each year in the erection of new steel plants in
Duluth, even the annual _increase_ of ore taken from the mines could
not be used at home for a long time to come. The ore traffic on the
Lakes is bound to become larger even as Duluth develops into a steel
city. And a constantly increasing percentage of this ore is going to
Buffao--not to be transhipped to Pittsburg, but to be converted into
iron and steel in that city. I believe that very few people are aware
of the fact that Buffalo is already an important iron- and steel-making
plant. The largest independent steel-making plant in the United States
is now in operation in South Buffalo. This is the Lackawanna Iron and
Steel Company, capitalized at sixty million dollars, employing between
six and ten thousand men, and undergoing constant enlargement. The
plants of the New York Steel Company and the Wickwire Steel Company are
now in course of construction on the Buffalo and Niagara rivers, and
other steel- and iron-making plants are in operation. Each year sees
Buffalo drawing more and more ore away from the Pittsburg smelters.
In 1900, Buffalo made only three hundred and seventy thousand tons of
pig-iron. In 1907, the production was one million three hundred and
fifty thousand tons, and in 1909 there will be a considerable increase.
A recent investigation showed that the many great iron-producing
and iron-working plants which extend along the navigable waters of
the Buffalo have doubled their pay-rolls and almost trebled their
production since 1900. The same investigation brought forth the fact
that a ton of foundry iron can be produced in Buffalo for sixty-three
cents less than in Pittsburg. After a year’s study of the situation in
Buffalo, Mr. Elisha Walker, the international expert in iron and steel
manufacture, said that, in a few years, Buffalo would rival Pittsburg
in the use of iron ore.

While steel plants are generally the most powerful agents that work
for the increase of a city’s population and wealth, and while it is
true that scores of smaller users of iron and steel are flocking to
Buffalo, just as other hundreds grouped themselves about the big parent
furnaces in Pittsburg, Buffalo’s great future does not depend upon her
development as a steel-manufacturing city. As F. Howard Mason, then
Secretary of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce, said to me: “Buffalo has
more than one iron in the fire. Steel is but one of many things that
will make her a city of millions a quarter of a century from now.”

[Illustration: Unloading at One of the Coal Docks at Duluth.]

From my own investigations and from my own close study of Lake traffic,
I feel confident in saying that, although Buffalo is one of the
important ore-converting centres of the country, steel and iron are
not the most important of the agents that will work for her future
greatness. This may seem inconceivable to those who live in cities the
very existence of which depends upon iron and steel; yet it is one
of the soundest arguments for the optimistic opinion that Buffalo is
destined to become the third, if not the second, largest city in the
United States. Just as Duluth is the logical shipping and receiving
port of the West, so is Buffalo the great receiving and distributing
port of the East. Cleveland will always be an important Lake port, but
it is impossible to compare its destiny with that of Buffalo. With the
new Erie Canal in operation, lake highways from west to east will lead
to Buffalo as surely as all roads led to old Rome. This year the total
tonnage of Buffalo harbour, which is closed for at least four months
of the year, will be considerably greater than that of Liverpool. Of
the products passing through the Detroit River in 1907, ninety per
cent. of the hard coal was shipped from Buffalo, seventy-five per cent.
of the flour and ninety-five per cent. of the wheat came to Buffalo;
also seventy-five per cent. of the corn, ninety-eight per cent. of the
oats, ninety per cent. of the flaxseed, and ninety-five per cent. of
the barley. In other words, Buffalo may be regarded as almost the only
receiving port on the Lakes for Western grain.

Mayor Adams hit the nail pretty squarely on the head when he said
that Buffalo’s future greatness rests chiefly upon the fact that
this city will, within a very few years, be the greatest converting,
or manufacturing, point in North America. The cost of bringing raw
materials to her workshops from all Western points is already reduced
to a minimum. The Erie Canal will link her mills with the ocean. The
unlimited resources of Niagara furnish her with the cheapest power in
the world. Her proximity to the coal-fields provides her with fuel
for $1.60 to $2.60 per ton. Natural gas for manufacturing purposes
is retailed at a little over twenty-seven cents per thousand cubic
feet. And, above all, there are sixty millions of people within five
hundred miles of her City Hall. It was between 1900 and 1905 when
Buffalo really awoke to her unlimited opportunities. It is interesting
to compare her growth between those years with that of Pittsburg, one
of the most progressive cities in the United States. In that time
Pittsburg’s capital increased twenty-two per cent., Buffalo’s forty-six
per cent. The number of wage-earners in Pittsburg increased a little
over two per cent., while in Buffalo they increased twenty-nine per
cent. The value of Pittsburg’s products increased three per cent.;
of Buffalo’s, forty-two per cent. These figures show the remarkable
rapidity with which Buffalo is overtaking the cities ahead of her in
population.

[Illustration: A Fleet of Erie Canal Boats--Capacity of Each 150 Tons.

    The boats on the new canal will be 1000 tons each.
]

Because of the waterways at her door, cheap power, and the millions
of consumers within a night’s reach of her mills, Buffalo has become
the second city in the United States in the production of flour, now
ranking next to Minneapolis, and at her present rate of increase she
will be the world’s greatest milling centre in another five years. In
1901, she was producing only about half a million barrels of flour; in
1907, her product was over three million barrels, and it is predicted
that the output in 1909 will be four millions. Within the last three
years Buffalo has become the chief malting city in America. In 1907,
her output was ten million bushels as compared with four million in
1900.

To handle her Lake freight at the present time, Buffalo has twenty-four
elevators with a total storage capacity of twenty-two million bushels,
and a daily elevating capacity of six million bushels; nine ore docks;
five coal trestles with a daily loading capacity of twenty-two thousand
tons--and with these might be included three railroad storage-yards
with an aggregate capacity of four hundred thousand tons. Thirteen
lines of steamships, not including the many companies represented
by the big freighters, ply the Lakes from Buffalo; and the fifteen
trunk lines centring in the city provide two hundred and fifty-three
passenger trains a day. With all of this vast machinery working night
and day to care for Buffalo’s present traffic, the question naturally
arises, What will happen to Buffalo when the new Erie Canal links her
with the sea?

During the next decade, or less, Buffalo will astonish the whole world
by her industrial growth. The effects of the canal project are already
being felt, and manufacturing capital is hurrying to Buffalo as never
before. The Federal Government is deepening the Niagara River to a
depth of twenty-one feet as far down as North Tonawanda, and this,
together with the deepening of the Buffalo River, is opening up a new
territory for factory sites, soon to be accessible to the largest
ships. Millions of dollars of capital are locating, or planning to
locate, here. On the one side is the cheap transportation of the Lakes;
on the other will soon be the “man-made river reaching to the sea.”
With the joining of these waterways no other city in the United States
will be able to compete with Buffalo as a manufacturing centre.

The actual task of digging the new canal for which the people of New
York voted one hundred and one million dollars, and which will connect
Buffalo with tidewater by a thousand-ton waterway, is now at hand.
Few people realise just how stupendous this task is. While every
intelligent American is acquainted with the Panama Canal project, few
know that this connecting link between the Lakes and the ocean is a
greater public improvement for the State of New York to carry out than
is the building of the Panama Canal for the United States Government,
and it is of hardly less commercial value. Its cost will be greater
than that of Suez, and in a short time its tonnage will be more than
that of Suez. The first one hundred and twenty-five miles were under
contract in January, 1908, with another sixty-five miles ready to be
contracted for.

This great waterway, including the Hudson River, will pass from or to
and through the city of New York and adjacent cities in New Jersey,
Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Oswego,
Rochester, and Buffalo, besides smaller towns, possessing an aggregate
population of over six million. The canal when completed will really
terminate at Tonawanda, on the Niagara River, the route to Buffalo from
there being via the Niagara River, the federal ship canal, and the Erie
Basin. While the old canal has a depth of only from seven to nine feet
and a width on the bottom of fifty-two, the new waterway will have a
uniform depth of twelve feet, with a minimum width at the bottom of
seventy-five feet, thus being capable of carrying boats one hundred and
fifty feet long, twenty-five feet beam, and with a draft of ten feet.
The present capacity of an Erie Canal boat is two hundred and forty
tons, while the new boats will carry a thousand tons.

I have shown in preceding articles what a tremendous saving to the
people of the United States is made because of Lake transportation, and
this will be greatly increased by the new canal. Large aggregations
of capital will own not merely Lake vessels, but terminals and canal
fleets as well, so that from Lake ports they can name a through freight
rate to New York or to foreign countries. Within a few years after
its completion, the canal will probably be carrying twenty million
tons of freight from Buffalo to the ocean. Taking this figure as a
basis, it is easy to figure what a tremendous saving the canal will
bring about. It now costs three and a half cents a bushel to send
grain from Buffalo to New York. The new canal rate should be not more
than a cent a bushel. On twenty million bushels of grain this means
a saving of five hundred thousand dollars, which will either go into
the pockets of the producer or the consumer or be divided between the
two. Freight of all descriptions, manufactured products, and iron and
steel, can be transported from Buffalo to tidewater for half of a mill
per ton per mile. In other words, on the new canal all kinds of freight
can be shipped from Buffalo to New York, a distance of four hundred
and forty-six miles, at twenty-two cents per ton. The present cost
is eighty-seven cents. On twenty million tons this saving of nearly
sixty-five cents a ton would total nearly thirteen million dollars.

[Illustration: The Jack-knife Bridge at Buffalo.]

What this would mean to Buffalo it is almost impossible to estimate,
especially in regard to the steel industry. Buffalo now has an
advantage over Pittsburg in the cost of ore, limestone, and several
other matters incident to the manufacture of iron and steel,
Pittsburg’s sole remaining advantage being its proximity to coking
coal. This will be obliterated. A large percentage of the vast steel
and allied industries centring at Pittsburg will, of their own
volition, move within the boundaries of the State of New York and
locate along the Niagara frontier. This industrial migration has
already begun. It will continue, naturally, ceaselessly. The ore will
meet the coke at Buffalo, and the manufactured product will be floated
down the Erie Canal instead of being hauled across the Alleghanies.
This is inevitable.

And just as inevitable is the migration of other industries to
Buffalo from other cities. Not only does the cheap lake and canal
transportation call to them, but also the cheap and unlimited power of
Niagara. A few years ago George Westinghouse said: “I expect to live to
see the day when a city that will astonish the world will stretch along
the entire Niagara frontier--and this city will be Buffalo.” Those
who investigate this frontier to-day cannot fail to see the strength
of his prediction. Tesla said that Niagara power would revolutionise
manufacturing in the United States. It is already revolutionising it in
and about Buffalo, and the power of the world’s greatest fall has only
been tapped. On the American side the Niagara Falls Power Company is
developing one hundred and five thousand horse-power, and the Niagara
Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company fifty thousand, while
on the Canadian side the Canadian Niagara Falls Company is developing
fifty thousand horse-power and the Electrical Development Company
and the Ontario Power Company sixty-two thousand each. Less than
four per cent. of the total flow of water over Niagara Falls has been
diverted by the companies now in operation. The total fall of water
is theoretically capable of producing over seven million horse-power,
which would run virtually all of the manufacturing plants in the United
States.

At the present time about seventy-five thousand electrical horse-power
is consumed in Buffalo by manufacturing and mercantile establishments.
What this cheap power means to the city can best be shown in figures.
In nearly all cities the power required for manufacturing purposes is
derived from steam produced from coal. In its simplest form this method
of generating power requires apparatus consisting of steam boilers with
their settings, pumps, steam-pipings, flues and stack, facilities for
coal-storage, engines, foundations, and beltings--demanding altogether
a large amount of floor-space. The cost of an installation of such
equipment has been found to be approximately fifty dollars per rated
horse-power. Electric motors using Niagara power can be installed for
less than thirty dollars per rated horse-power. In other words, the
saving in power to the manufacturer is almost one half. On the other
hand, a steam plant requires a considerable force of men to operate and
maintain it, while electrical power cuts down this service two thirds.

[Illustration: A Scene on Blackwell Canal.

The winter home of big boats in Buffalo.]

Why manufacturers are flocking to Buffalo, and why the greatest
manufacturing city in the world is bound to extend along the Niagara
frontier, is graphically shown by the following figures comparing
the cost of Buffalo power with that of other representative cities.
Assuming the maximum power used to be one hundred horse-power, the
number of working hours a day to be ten, and the “load factor,” or
average power actually used, to be seventy-five per cent. of the total
one hundred, the cost per month in the cities named is about as follows:

  Boston             $937.50
  Philadelphia        839.25
  New York            699.37
  Chicago             629.43
  Cleveland           559.50
  Pittsburg           419.62
  Buffalo             184.91
  Niagara Falls       144.17

These figures show that the manufacturer on the Niagara frontier not
only possesses the cheapest water-power in the country, but that his
power costs him less than half as much as it cost his next nearest
rival, the manufacturer at Pittsburg. While power costs his Boston
competitor a hundred and fifty dollars per horse-power per year, the
Buffalo manufacturer pays less than thirty dollars. Even without cheap
transportation rates, this item alone would give him an overwhelming
advantage in the race for trade.

Destined to be one of the greatest if not the greatest manufacturing
city on earth, Buffalo is also one of the most beautiful. To-day she
possesses four hundred miles of asphalt pavement--more smooth pavement
than is found in Paris, Washington, or any other city. She is the
greatest “home city” in America. Out of a population of more than four
hundred thousand people, the home-owning population is only thirty
thousand below the total registered vote. As a convention city she has
only one rival, and that is Detroit. Nature has showered blessings upon
her without stint. And I confidently believe that many of the young
men and women of Buffalo will live to see the day when one city will
stretch along the entire Niagara frontier, with a population exceeded
by that of only one or at most two other American cities.

[Illustration: Some of the Grain Elevators at Duluth, which Have a
Combined Storage Capacity of 35,550,000 Bushels.]




VII

A Trip on a Great Lakes Freighter


In my previous chapters I have described nearly every phase of Lake
shipping, with the exception of one, which, while not being vitally
concerned with the story of our fresh-water marine, is still one of
the most interesting, and perhaps the least known of all. That is the
“inner life” of one of our Great Lakes freighters; the life of the crew
and the favoured few who are privileged to travel as passenger guests
of the owners upon one of these steel monsters of the Inland Seas. In
more than one way our Lake marine is unusual; in this it is unique.

Recently one of the finest steel yachts that ever sailed fresh water
came up the St. Lawrence to the Lakes. Its owner was a millionaire many
times over. With his wife he had cruised around the world, but for the
first time they had come to the Lakes. I had the fortune to converse
with him upon his yacht about the craft of other countries, and as we
lay at anchor in the Detroit River there passed us the greatest ship
on the Inland Seas--the _Thomas F. Cole_; and, addressing his wife, I
asked, “How would you like to take a cruise on a vessel like that?”

The lady laughed, as if such a suggestion were amusing indeed, and
said that if she were a man she might attempt it, and perhaps enjoy
it to a degree, and when I went on to describe some of the things
that I knew about “those great, ugly ships,” as she called them, I am
quite sure that all of my words were not received without doubt. This
little experience was the last of many that proved to me the assertion
I have made before--that to nine people out of ten, at least, our
huge, silent, red ships that bring down the wealth of the North are a
mystery. They are not beautiful. Freighted low down, their steel sides
scraped and marred like the hands of a labourer, their huge funnels
emitting clouds of bituminous smoke, their barren steel decks glaring
in the heat of the summer sun, there seems to be but little about them
to attract the pleasure seeker. From the distance at which they are
usually seen their aft and forward cabins appear like coops, their
pilot houses even less.

[Illustration: The Mesaba Ore Docks.]

Yet fortunate is the person who has the “pull” to secure passage on
one of these monster carriers of the Lakes, for behind all of that
uninviting exterior there is a luxury of marine travel that is equalled
nowhere else in the world except on the largest and finest of private
yachts. These leviathans of the Lakes, that bring down dirty ore and
take up dirtier coal, are the greatest money-makers in the world, and
they are owned by men of wealth. The people who travel on them are the
owner’s guests. Nothing is too good for them. Each year the rivalry
between builders is increasing as to whose ships shall possess the
finest “guests’ quarters.” Behind the smoke and dirt and unseemly red
steel that are seen from shore or deck, a fortune has been spent in
those rooms over the small doors of which one reads the word “Owners.”
You may climb up the steel side of the ship, you may explore it from
stem to stern, but not until you are a “guest”--not until the “key to
the ship” has been handed to you, are its luxuries, its magnificence,
its mysteries, clearly revealed.

My telegram read:

“Take my private room on the _Harry Berwind_ at Ashtabula.”

It was signed by G. Ashley Tomlinson, of Duluth. The _Berwind_ is one
of the finest of Tomlinson’s sixteen steel ships and is named after
one of the best known fuel transportation men on the Lakes--a vessel
that can carry eleven thousand tons without special crowding and makes
twelve miles an hour while she is doing it. I reached the great ore and
coal docks at Ashtabula at a happy moment.

The other guests had arrived, seven in all--four ladies and three
gentlemen, and we met on the red and black dock, with mountains of ore
and coal about us, with the thundering din of working machines in our
ears, and out there before us, enshrouded in smoke and black dust,
the great ship that was to carry us for nearly a thousand miles up the
Lakes and back again. It was a happy moment, I say, for I met the seven
guests in this wilderness of din and dirt--_and six of them had never
been aboard a freighter in their lives_. They had heard, of course,
what lay beyond those red steel walls. But was there not a mistake
here? Was it possible----

Doubt filled their faces. High above them towered the straight wall
of the ship with a narrow ladder reaching down to them. At the huge
coal derricks whole cars of coal were being lifted up as if they
were no more than scuttles in the hands of a strong man and their
contents sent thundering into the gaping hatches; black dust clouded
the air, settling in a thousand minute particles on fabric and flesh;
black-faced men shouted and worked at the loading machine; the crash
of shunting cars came interminably from the yards; and upon it all
the sun beat fiercely, and the air that entered our nostrils seemed
thick--thick with the dust and grime and heat of it all. A black-faced,
sweating man, who was the mate, leaned over the steel side high above
us and motioned us aft, and the seven guests hurried through the
thickness of the air, the ladies shuddering and cringing as the cars
of coal thundered high over their heads, until they came to the big
after port with a plank laid to the dock. Up this they filed, their
faces betraying more doubt, more uneasiness, more discomfort as hot
blasts of furnace air surged against them; then up a narrow iron stair,
through a door--and out there before them lay the ship, her thirty
hatches yawning like caverns, and everywhere coal--and coal dust. The
ladies gasped and drew their dresses tightly about them as they were
guided along the narrow promenade between the edge of the ship and the
open hatches, and at last they were halted before one of those doors
labelled “Owners.”

Then the change! It came so suddenly that it fairly took the breath
away from those who had never been on a freighter before. The guests
filed through that narrow door into a great room, which a second glance
showed them to be a parlour. Their feet sank in the noiseless depths
of rich velvet carpet; into their heated faces came the refreshing
breaths of electric fans; great upholstered chairs opened to them
welcomingly; the lustre of mahogany met their eyes, and magazines and
books and papers were ready for them in profusion. To us there now
came the thunder of the coal as if from afar; here was restfulness and
quiet--through the windows we could see the dust and smoke and heat
hovering about the ship like a pall.

This was the general parlour into which we had been ushered; and now
I hung close behind the ship’s guests, watching and enjoying the
amazement that continued to grow in them. From each side of the
parlour there led a narrow hall and on each side of each hall there was
a large room--the guest-chambers--and at the end of each hall there
was a bathroom; and in the bedrooms, with their brass beds, their rich
tapestries and curtains, our feet still sank in velvet carpet, our
eyes rested upon richly cushioned chairs--everywhere there was the
luxury and wealth of appointment that a millionaire had planned for the
favoured few whom he called his guests.

[Illustration: From the Deck of the Ship the Tug Looks Like an Ant
Dragging at a Huge Prey.]

Now I retired from the guest-chambers to my own private room. I am
going a good deal into detail in this description of the guests’
quarters of a great freighter like the _Berwind_, for I remember once
being told by a shipbuilder of the Clyde that he “could hardly believe
that such a thing existed,” and I know there are millions of others
who have the same doubts. The forward superstructure of a Great Lakes
freighter might be compared to a two-story house, with the pilot-house
still on top of that; and from the luxurious quarters of the “first
story,” which in the _Berwind_ are on a level with the deck of the
vessel, a velvet-carpeted stair led to the “observation room”--a great,
richly furnished room with many windows in it, from which one may look
out upon the sea in all directions except behind. And from this room
one door led into the Captain’s quarters, and another into the private
suite of rooms which I was fortunate enough to occupy on this trip. The
finest hotel in the land could not have afforded finer conveniences
than this black and red ship, smothered in the loading of ten thousand
tons of coal. In the cool seclusion of its passenger quarters a unique
water-works system gave hot and cold water to every room; an electric
light plant aft gave constant light, and power for the fans. Nothing
was wanting, even to a library and music, to make of the interior of
this forward part of the ship a palace fit for the travel of a king.
Within a few minutes we had all plunged into baths; hardly were we out
and dressed when the steward came with glasses of iced lemonade; and
even as the black clouds of grime and dirt still continued to settle
over the ship we gathered in the great observation room, a happy party
of us now, and the music of mandolin and phonograph softened the sounds
of labour that rumbled to us from outside.

Then, suddenly, there fell a quiet. The ship was loaded. Loud voices
rose in rapid command, the donkey-engines rumbled and jerked as their
cables dragged the steel hatch-covers into place, and the freighter’s
whistle echoed in long, sonorous blasts in its call for a tug. And
then, from half a mile away, came the shrieking reply of one of those
little black giants, and up out of the early sunset gloom of evening
it raced in the maelstrom of its own furious speed, and placed itself
ahead of us, for all the world like a tiny ant tugging away at a
prey a hundred times its size. Lights sprung up in a thousand places
along shore, and soon, far away, appeared the blazing eye of the
harbour light, and beyond that stretched the vast opaqueness of the
“thousand-mile highway” that led to Duluth and the realms of the iron
barons of the North. Once clear, and with the sea before us, the tug
dropped away, a shudder passed through the great ship as her engines
began to work, our whistle gave vent to two or three joyous, triumphant
cheers, and our journey had begun.

[Illustration: Observation Room on the “Wm. G. Mather.”

Which gives an idea of the luxuriousness of the guests’ quarters on a
Great Lakes freighter.]

It was then that our steward’s pretty little wife, Mrs. Brooks,
appeared, smiling, cool, delightfully welcome, and announced that
dinner was ready, and that this time we must pardon them for being
late. Out upon the steel decks men were already flushing off with huge
lengths of hose, the ship’s lights were burning brilliantly, and from
far aft, nearly a tenth of a mile away, there came the happy voice
of a deckhand singing in the contentment of a full stomach and the
beautiful freshness of the night. Not more than a dozen paces from
our own quarters was a narrow deckhouse which ran the full length of
the hatches--the guests’ private dining-room. It was now ablaze with
light, and here another and even greater surprise was in store for
those of our party who were strangers to the hospitality which one
receives aboard a Great Lakes freighter. The long table, running nearly
the length of the room, glittered with silver, and was decorated with
fruits and huge vases of fresh flowers, and at the head of the table
stood the steward’s wife, all smiles and dimples and good cheer,
appointing us to our seats as we came in. On these great ore and grain
and coal carriers of the Inland Seas, the stewards and their wives,
unlike those in most other places, possess responsibilities other than
those of preparing and serving food. They are, in a way, the host and
hostess of the guests, and must make them comfortable--and “at home.”
On a few vessels, like the _Berwind_, there are both forward and aft
stewards, with their assistants, who in many instances are their wives.
The forward steward, like our Mr. Brooks, is the chief, and buys for
the whole ship and watches that the aft steward does his work properly.
Outside of this he devotes himself entirely to the vessel’s guests, and
is paid about one hundred dollars a month and all expenses, while his
wife gets thirty dollars for doing it. So he must be good. The stewards
of Lake freighters are usually those who have “graduated” ashore, for
even the crews of the Lakes are the best fed people in the world. Mr.
Brooks, for instance, had not only won his reputation in some of the
best hotels in the land, but his books on cooking are widely known,
and especially along the fresh-water highways. I mention these facts
because they show another of the little known and unusual phases of
life in our Lake marine. For breakfast, dinner, and supper the tables
in the crew’s mess-room are loaded with good things; very few hotels
give the service that is found in the passengers’ dining-room.

Thus, from the very beginning, one meets with the unusual and the
surprising on board one of these big steel ships of the Lakes.
While towns and cities and the ten thousand vessels of the seas are
sweeping past, while for a thousand miles the scenes are constantly
changing--from thickly populated country to virgin wilderness, from
the heat of summer on Erie to the chill of autumn on Superior,--the
vessel itself remains a wonderland to the one who has never taken the
trip before. From the huge refrigerator, packed with the choicest
meats, with gallons of olives and relishes, baskets of fruits and
vegetables--from this to the deep “under-water dungeons” where the
furnaces roar night and day and where black and sweating men work like
demons, something new of interest is always being found.

[Illustration: The Luxurious Dining-room on the 10,000-Ton Steamer
“J. H. Sheadle.”]

For the first day, while the steel decks are being scrubbed so clean
that one might lie upon them without soiling himself, the passengers
may spend every hour in exploring the mysteries of the ship without
finding a dull moment. Under the aft deck-houses, where the crew eat
and sleep, are what the sailors call the “bowels of the ship,” and
here, as is not the case on ocean craft, the passenger may see for the
first time in his life the wonderful, almost appalling, mechanism that
drives a great ship from port to port, for it must be remembered that
the “passenger” here is a guest--the guest of the owner whose great
private yacht the great ship is, in a way, and everything of interest
will be shown to him if he wishes. Of the bottom of this part of the
ship the “brussels-carpet guest”--as sailors call the passenger who is
taking a trip on a freighter for the first time--stands half in terror.
There is the dim light of electricity down here, the roaring of the
furnaces, the creaking and groaning of the great ship, and high above
one’s head, an interminable distance away it seems, one may see where
day begins. Everywhere there is the rumbling and crashing of machinery,
the dizzy whirling of wheels, the ceaseless pumping of steel arms as
big around as trees; and up and up and all around there wind narrow
stairways and gratings, on which men creep and climb to guard this
heart action of the ship’s life. The din is fearful, the heat in the
furnace-room insufferable, and when once each half-minute a furnace
door is opened for fresh fuel, and writhing torrents of fire and light
illumine the gloomy depths, the tenderfoot passenger looks up nervously
to where his eyes catch glimpses of light and freedom far above him.
And then, in the explanation of all this--in the _reason_ for these
hundreds of tons of whirling, crashing, thundering steel--there comes
the greatest surprise of all. For all of this giant mechanism is to
perform just one thing--and that is to whirl and whirl and whirl an
insignificant-looking steel rod, which is called a shaft, and at the
end of which, in the sea behind the ship, is the screw--a thing so
small that one stands in amazement, half doubting that this is the
instrument which sends a ten-thousand-ton ship and ten thousand tons of
cargo through the sea at twelve miles an hour!

After this first day of exploration, the real joyous life of the ship
comes to one. Every hour of every day is one of pleasure. You are on
the only ship in the world into every corner of which a passenger is
allowed to go. You are, in so far as your pleasure and freedom go,
practically the owner of the ship. The crew and even the captain _may
not_ know but what you _are_ one of the owners, for nothing but your
name is given to the officers before you come aboard. Of course, the
steward has the privilege to tell you to keep out of his kitchen, and
the captain for you to keep out of the pilot-house--but they never do
it. That guest, for instance, who haunts the pilot-house almost from
morning to night, who insists upon taking lessons in steering, and who
on any other craft in the world would soon be told to remain in his
cabin or mind his business, may be a millionaire himself--a millionaire
who is giving this line of ships many thousands of dollars’ worth of
freight each year. So the captain and the crew _must_ be affable. But,
as I have said before, this is accepted as a pleasure and not as a
duty on the Inland Seas. I have taken trips on a score of vessels, and
it means much when I say that never have I encountered an unpleasant
captain, and that only once did I meet with a mate who was not pleasant
to his passengers.

So, from the first day out, the big steel ship is an “open house” to
its guests. Forward and aft of the cabins, great awnings are stretched,
thick rugs and carpets are spread upon the deck, and easy chairs are
scattered about. The captain and his mates are ready with the answers
to a thousand questions. They point out objects and locations of
interest as they are passed. There, in the late storms of last autumn,
a ship went down with all on board; on yonder barren coast, five or six
miles away, the captain guides your glasses to the skeleton of a ship,
whose tragic story he tells you; he names the lighthouses, the points
of coasts, and tells you about the scores of ships you pass each day.
He shows you how the wonderful mechanism of the ship is run from the
pilot-house, and he gives you lessons in the points of the compass, and
perhaps lets you try your hand at the wheel. And each hour, if you have
been abroad, you see more and more how an ocean trip cannot be compared
to this. In a preceding chapter I have described what you see and what
you pass in this thousand-mile journey to Duluth; how you slip from
summer to autumn, from the heart of the nation’s population to vast,
silent wildernesses where the bear and the wolf roam unmolested; how
great cities give place to mining and lumber camps, and you come into
the great northern lake where darkness does not settle until after nine
o’clock at night.

[Illustration: Tugs Trying to Release Boats Held in the Ice at the Soo.

    Copyright 1906 by Young, Lord & Rhoades, Ltd.
]

But these are not the only things which make a trip on a Great Lakes
freighter interesting. It is what you can _do_. There are a dozen
games you can play, from hatch-bag to shuffle-board; there is music
and reading, eating and drinking--for the steward is constantly alive
to your wants, always alive to add to your pleasures. And there is
excitement--if not of one kind then of another. You may be thrilled
by the sudden alarm of fire aboard ship, and find yourself burning
with relief when you discover that you are witnessing nothing but an
exciting fire drill; it may be a wrestling or boxing match between two
of the ship’s champions, a race over the steel hatches, or--something
like the following incident:

One of the greatest sources of entertainment for guests aboard a
Lake freighter is in the study of the men and boys of the crew, for
the average crew of twenty-five or thirty always possesses some odd
characters. Our party was very much amused by one individual, a youth
of about twenty, large, round-faced, full-fed, a young man of unbounded
good humour whose two great joys in life were his meals--and sleep.
This youth never lost an opportunity to take a nap. After his dinner in
the mess-room, he would promptly fall into a doze in his chair, to be
aroused by a dash of cold water or some other practical joker’s trick;
if he sat down on a hatch he would sleep; he would fall asleep leaning
against the cabin. His actions caused no little uneasiness on the
part of the captain, who liked the boy immensely. “Some day he will
fall asleep and topple overboard,” he said.

We had come into Superior, where the clear, dry air exerts a peculiar
effect upon one. Coming suddenly from the warm atmosphere of the Lower
Lakes a person has difficulty in keeping his eyes open half of the
time up there. We were off Keweenaw Point when the thrilling alarm was
spread that “Dopey,” the sleepy youth, had fallen overboard. The aft
steward brought the news forward. Billy had eaten a huge dinner and was
taking a comfortable siesta _standing_, half leaning over the aft rail.
A moment after passing him the steward returned, bent upon stirring the
boy from his dangerous position, and found him gone. The vessel was
searched from stem to stern. Even the passengers joined in the hunt.
But there was found no sign of the missing youth, and a deep gloom fell
upon the people of the ship. An hour later, one of the young ladies
approached the steep, narrow stair that led down into the forward
locker. The mate himself had searched this gloomy nook for Billy. I
was a dozen feet behind the girl and she turned to me with a white,
startled face.

“Come here--quick!” she cried. “Listen!”

Together we bent our heads over the opening--and up to our ears there
came a mysterious sound now so low that we could hardly hear it,
then louder--something that for a moment held us speechless and set
our hearts beating at double-quick. It was the snoring of a sleeping
person! In another instant we were down in that dingy hole of ropes and
cables and anchor chains, and there, curled up in the gloom, we found
Billy, sleeping a sleep so sound that it took a good shaking to awaken
him. On deck he explained the mystery. The passing of the steward aft
had aroused him from his nap against the rail, and he had wandered
forward, seeking the cool seclusion of the locker.

[Illustration: Whaleback Barges Preparing for Winter Quarters at
Conneaut, Ohio.

(The Whaleback is a type of vessel that has been tried and found
wanting. They are going out of use.)]

While this little affair did not end in a tragedy, I give it as
an illustration of the fact that _something_ of interest, if not
excitement, is constantly occurring to keep the guests of a Great Lakes
freighter alive to the possibilities of the trip. The night following
Billy’s mysterious disappearance, for instance, the two young ladies
aboard our ship nearly brought about a mutiny. Before going into the
details of this incident, it is necessary for me to repeat what I have
said in a preceding paragraph--that the seamen of our Lakes are the
best fed working people in the world. If a captain does not provide the
best of meats and vegetables and fruits, and in sufficient quantities,
he may find himself minus a crew when he reaches port. One day as I was
leaning over the aft rail the steward approached me and said:

“Do you see that ship off there?”

He pointed to a big down-bound freighter.

“Notice anything peculiar about it?” he continued.

I confessed that I did not.

“Well, this is the noon hour,” he went on, “and the sea-gulls always
know when it’s feeding time. But there are no gulls following that
ship. There are a good many more ships in that same line--and there’s
never a gull behind them. Do you know why? It’s because the grub on
those boats is so poor. The gulls have learned to tell them as far as
they can see ’em, and they won’t have anything to do with ’em, and
that’s the Lord’s truth, sir! Any man on the Lakes will tell you so,
and the men on those boats most of all. They don’t take a job there
until they’re down and out and can’t get work anywhere else.”

On the afternoon of Billy’s adventure, the young lady who discovered
him was taken slightly ill and was not present at dinner. Late that
night, however, she was much improved--and ravenously hungry. As
the steward and his wife were in bed there was no chance of getting
anything to eat forward. In some way the girl had learned that a
part of the crew, who were in the night watch, had luncheon in the
aft mess-room at midnight, and this young lady and her chum, and the
three young men in the party, planned to wait until after that hour
and then, stealing quietly aft, help themselves to the “leavings.” At
twelve-thirty, the decks were dark and silent, with the watch ahead of
the forward deck-houses, and the young people made their way unobserved
to the mess-room. Not a soul was about, and on the table was meat and
cake and pickles, and a huge pot of coffee was simmering on the range.
The five helped themselves. No one interrupted them, and when fifteen
or twenty minutes later they slipped back to their quarters the table
was pretty well cleaned. Now it just happened that the night men,
instead of eating at midnight, ate at _one_--an hour later, and when
they came in after six hours of hard work, tired and hungry, only the
wreck of what should have been, greeted their astonished eyes. The
men were in a rage. They had been imposed upon as no self-respecting,
liberty-loving man of the Lakes will allow himself to be imposed
upon--in the way of food; and it took the combined efforts of the
two stewards and their wives, and the humble apologies of the three
young men, to straighten the affair out. Thereafter, at midnight, the
mess-room door was locked.

[Illustration: Ashore.]

The more one comes in touch and sympathy with the lives of these men
of the Lakes the more one’s interest increases; and it is not until
one eats and drinks with them aft, and secures their confidence and
friendship, that he is let into the secrets of the inner and home life
of these red-blooded people, which is unlike the life of any other
seafaring men in the world. It is when this confidence and friendship
is won that you begin to reap the full pleasure of a trip on a Great
Lakes freighter; it is then that the romance, the picturesqueness, and
the superstition of the Lake breed creep out. Not until that time, for
instance, will you discover that these rough strong men of the Lakes
are the most indomitable home-owners in the world. A home is their
ambition, the goal toward which they constantly work. From the deckhand
to the young, unmarried mate it is the reward of all their labour, the
end for which they are all striving. And there are good reasons for
this--reasons which have made the “home instinct” among Lake sailors
almost a matter of heredity. The ships of the Inland Seas are almost
constantly in sight of land. Now it is a long stretch of coast a mile
or so away; again it is a point stretching out to sea, or the shores of
some of the most beautiful streams in America. And wherever there is
land within shouting or megaphone or “whistle” distance of the passing
vessels, there nestle the little homes of those who run the ships of
our fresh-water marine. It may be that for an entire season of seven
or eight months the Lake sailor has no opportunity of visiting his
family. Yet every week or so he sees his home and his wife and children
from the deck of his ship. It is easy for those ashore to learn from
the marine officers when a certain vessel is due to pass, and at that
hour wives and sweethearts, friends and children, assemble on the shore
to bid their loved ones Godspeed. All of the vessels on the Lakes
have their private code of signals. Perhaps in the still hours of
night, the sleeping wife is aroused by the deep, distant roar of the
freighter’s voice. For a moment she listens, and it comes again--and
from out there in the night she knows that her husband is talking to
her; and the husband, his eyes turned longingly ashore, sees a light
suddenly flash in the darkness, and his heart grows lighter and happier
in this token of love and faith that has come to him. And in the hours
of day it is more beautiful still; and the passengers and crew draw
away, leaving the man alone at the rail, while the wife holds up their
baby for the father to see, and throws him kisses; and there is the
silence of voiceless, breathless suspense on the deck that the faint
voice of the woman, or the happy cries of the children, may reach the
husband and father, whose words thunder back in megaphone greeting. It
is beautiful and yet it is pathetic, this constant union of the people
of the Lake breed. And the pathos comes mostly when there is no answer
from the little home ashore, for it is then that visions of sickness,
of misfortune, and possibly of neglect cast their gloom.

In a hundred other ways that I might describe does one see life on a
Great Lakes freighter as on none of the vessels of the salt seas. It
is a life distinct from all others, a life that is building a people
within itself--the people of the Lake breed.




PART II

Origin and History of the Lakes




I

Origin and Early History


While the modern romance of the Great Lakes, the vast commerce that has
grown upon them, the great cities along their shores, and the part they
have played in the history of the last generation form, to my mind, one
of the most absorbing and at the same time one of the most fruitful
subjects for the writer of to-day, it is to the “dim and mysterious
ages of long ago” that one must allow his imagination to be carried, if
he would understand, in its fullest measure, the part that our Inland
Seas should hold within the hearts of the American people. It has been
my desire, in this volume, to establish between our people and our
Lakes that bond of friendship which unfortunately has never existed
except upon their very shores. In the years in which I have studied
the Lakes, their commerce, and their people, I have been astonished at
the dearth of material which has been published about them, and not
until this discovery came upon me forcefully did I understand that our
own glorious Inland Seas, holding in perpetual inheritance for the
American people one half of the fresh water of the whole globe, are,
indeed, “aliens in the land of their birth.”

[Illustration: Arch Rock, Mackinac Island.

One of the natural wonders of the world.]

For this reason, I am adding to my preceding chapters a brief history
of the Lakes. It is not what might be called a history in detail, for
such a story of the Inland Seas would fill volumes in itself. No other
portion of the globe has been fraught with more incident of historical
and romantic interest than these fresh-water heritages of our nation.
The dramas that have been played upon them or along their shores would
fill libraries. Their unrevealed pages of romance and tragedy would
furnish rich material for the writers of a century. About them lie the
dust of three quarters of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America.
Along their shores were fought some of the world’s most relentless wars
of absolute extermination. Upon their waters occurred the most romantic
adventures of the early exploration of the continent. Every mile of
these waters, now clouded with the smoke of a gigantic commerce, is
fraught with the deepest historical interest. And yet, as I write
this, there comes to my mind a thought of those countless thousands
of Americans who, travelling afar for their pleasures, seek in every
quarter of the globe that their feet may tread in awesome respect upon
spots hallowed because of their historical associations, whether those
associations be of fact, of legend, or of song.

The romance of the Lakes does not begin with their early discoverers;
neither does it begin with the primitive inhabitants along their
shores. It dawns with their making. Unnumbered thousands of years
ago, before the glaciers of the Ice Age crept over the continent;
when prehistoric monsters, still living in a tropical world, roamed
throughout what is now the Lake region; and when man, if he existed
at all, was in his crudest form, the Great Lakes were still unborn.
Where their ninety-five thousand square miles of surface now afford
the world’s greatest highways of water commerce there were then vast
areas of plain, of highland and plateau, rising at times to the
eminence of mountains. Those were the days when the North American
continent was completing itself, when the last handiwork in the
creation of a world was in progress. In place of the Lakes there were
then a number of great rivers in these regions--rivers, which despite
the passing of ages, have left their channels and their marks to
this day. These rivers were all of one system and were all tributary
to one great stream, the Laurentian River, whose channel to the sea
was that of the St. Lawrence of to-day. Were it possible for one to
conceive himself back in those primitive times a journey over this
first great river system of the continent would have carried him,
first of all, from the still unfinished ocean along the south shore of
what is now Lake Ontario. He would have travelled within ten miles of
where scores of towns and cities now flourish, and almost directly
opposite what is now the Niagara River he would have encountered
another great stream pouring into the Laurentian from the south and
west. This river continued almost through the middle of what is now
Lake Erie, and opposite where Sandusky is now situated divided itself
into two branches, which still exist in the Maumee and the Detroit.
The Laurentian continued northward close along the southern shore of
Georgian Bay, turned southward to the centre of the Lake Huron basin,
where the Huronian River, sweeping across central Michigan, joined
it from Saginaw Bay. The Laurentian itself passed northward through
the Straits of Mackinaw and terminated in what is now Lake Michigan.
The story of this vast water system has been left in clearly defined
outlines; its indelible marks are ancient valleys, sand-filled channels
of the great streams, and worn escarpments. Seldom has science had an
easier story to read of ages that are gone.

Then came the second step in the creating of the Lakes of to-day.
Slowly life changed as the Glacial Age approached, and with the
sweeping back of life the rivers, too, passed out of existence. During
the slow passing of centuries, their channels were filled, and the
valleys were obstructed with drift, so that when the Ice Age had come
and gone their channels no longer ran clear and unobstructed to the
sea. As a consequence, great areas were submerged, and hundreds of
thousands of square miles of what is now fertile land, populated by
millions and dotted by cities, became an ocean. But the continent
was still in process of formation. The land in the Lake region began
to rise, and continued in its elevation until out of the chaos of
sea the Lakes were formed. To the north-east, as the centre of the
continent rose, there was a tilting of the land oceanward, and this
warping dropped Lake Ontario below the level of the other Lakes, thus
interposing a barrier to free communication to the sea and giving birth
to Niagara Falls.

In this way, so far as science can tell, the Great Lakes of to-day
were brought into existence. How early human life existed along their
shores it is impossible even to guess, but that the earliest life of
the continent should first of all gather in the valleys of the vast
water system that gave them birth, and afterward reassemble along their
shores, is highly probable. The earliest discoverers to penetrate into
the wildernesses of the West found these shores inhabited by powerful
nations. Other nations were facing extermination. Still others had
ceased to exist and were forgotten except in legend. Along the Inland
Seas have been found evidences of a superior race to the warlike
aborigines of the days of La Salle. But only these evidences, utensils
of copper and stone and clay, remain as proof of their existence. What
they were, when they lived, and how they died, is one of the mysteries
that will remain forever unsolved.

By the time the known history of the Lakes really begins their
inhabitants had degenerated into warlike, ferocious savages, bent upon
battle and extermination, and for the most part constantly embroiled in
war of one kind or another. From Lake Ontario to the end of Superior
the Lake regions were one great battle-ground, and this sanguinary
history had extended so far into the past that with the coming of the
first French explorers the Indians could give no comprehensive idea
of when it had begun. At this time, early in the seventeenth century,
the Lake country was the bone of contention among three quarters of
the aborigines of North America. There was hardly a tribe that was not
fighting some one of its neighbours, and the remnants of vanquished
nations were constantly fleeing from their enemies and escaping total
extermination by seeking safety in the West and South. In Northern
Michigan and in Wisconsin there lived three branches of the Algonquin
tribe, the Ottawas, the Ojibwas, and the Pottawatomies. The Ottawas had
been driven westward, and the Ojibwas at this time were invading the
hunting grounds of the Crees, who were entrenched on the northern shore
of Lake Superior, their territory extending northward to Hudson Bay.
On their west, the Ojibwas were also at war with the powerful Dakotas,
who, fighting eastward from the Mississippi, had secured a foothold on
Superior. To the eastward, encroaching upon the tribes of Lake Ontario,
were the Iroquois, or Five Nations, consisting of the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas, and the Senecas. Between these and the fierce
Algonquins of the Upper Lakes were wedged the Hurons and the Eries,
fighting vainly against the almost total extermination which became
their fate a little later. It was in the war between 1650 and 1655 that
both the Eries and the Neuters, on the southern shore of Lake Erie,
were wiped out of existence by the Iroquois, and it was about this same
time that the Hurons received their death-blow. The few that escaped
fled to the Mississippi and promptly became involved in a war with the
Sioux. Reduced to a pitiable remnant the once powerful Sacs and Foxes
were awaiting their end along Green Bay.

In these days, the Lakes were already playing a part in commerce as
well as in war. Great fleets of Indian canoes made annual voyages from
the Upper to the Lower Lakes, and war fleets were common spectacles
from almost every coast. The greatest of these fleets, so far as is
known, was that of the Iroquois, which in 1680 carried six hundred
selected braves across Lake Erie, up the Detroit River, through Lake
St. Clair, Lake Huron, the Straits of Mackinaw, and down to the foot
of Lake Michigan, where the adventurous navigators were utterly
repulsed by the warriors of the Illinois. Another Iroquois fleet was
annihilated near Iroquois Point, in Lake Huron. In 1600, according to
stories told by the Indians, a fierce naval battle in which several
hundred war canoes were engaged was fought in the middle of Lake Erie
by the Wyandots and the Senecas. Only one Seneca canoe escaped.

It was at this time, when the Lake country and the Lakes themselves
were the stage upon which were being played the most thrilling dramas
of aboriginal history, that the Inland Seas were first visited by
their white discoverers. In 1615, the Franciscan friar, Joseph Le
Caron, in company with three other Franciscans and twelve Frenchmen,
invaded the seat of the Huron nation on Matchedash Bay, where Champlain
joined him a few days later. The Hurons were preparing to attack
their old enemies, the Iroquois, and Champlain accompanied them on
their expedition. The campaign was unsuccessful but it led to the
Frenchman’s discovery of Lake Ontario. Stephen Brule, an unlettered
and reckless adventurer, was the first white man to rest eyes upon
Lake Superior, his voyage up Lake Huron being made some time in 1629.
Brule, however, was more interested in ingots of copper which he found
than in the greatest body of fresh water on the globe, and he returned
south almost immediately, while it was left for Raymbault and Jogues,
two hopeful missionaries in search of a passage to China, to make the
first navigation of Superior. This they did in 1641. Five years after
Brule’s discovery, another adventurer, Jean Nicolet, paddled in a birch
canoe from Georgian Bay across Lake Huron and through the Straits of
Mackinaw, and thus discovered Lake Michigan. As surprising as it may
seem, Erie was the last of the Great Lakes to be found by white men,
and although its existence was known to the French as early as 1640, it
was not until 1669 that Joliet, its discoverer, made his voyage upon it.

The situation as it existed in the entire Lake country at the time of
the coming of these first explorers was so unreasonably tragic that,
viewed from the present day, it approaches dangerously near to having
a touch of the comic about it. As one early writer says, “It was as if
a pack of dogs were fighting over a bone. Only--where was the bone?”
There was hardly an Indian tribe that was not at war with some other
tribe, and in most instances, according to the discoverers, there were
no evident causes for the sanguinary conflicts. “It was as if all the
savages were impelled by a bad spirit, and a rage of extermination
was sweeping over the land,” wrote one of the early Fathers. It is
a popular superstition that the extinction of the red man must be
ascribed to the coming of the white, but nothing shows more graphically
the error of this belief than these conditions of the seventeenth
century in the Lake country. The aborigines were exterminating
themselves. They were doing the work completely, mercilessly. Nations
had already been put out of existence. The Eries and Neuters were
but lately annihilated. The once powerful Hurons were reduced to a
remnant. The Sacs and Foxes were doomed. Existing tribes were weakened
and scattered by ceaseless war. And sweeping down from the east the
all-powerful Iroquois, the Romans of the wilderness, were coming each
year to add to the completeness of the extermination.

[Illustration: Fort Mackinac.]

Now came the whites, and with their presence there developed slowly
a check to the indiscriminate slaughter. At no time in the world was
the missionary spirit more active, and scores of the disciples of the
Church plunged fearlessly into the wilderness of the Lake regions,
daring their perils of starvation and torture and death that the word
of God might reach the hearts of the savages. And with them there came
hundreds of adventurous spirits, trappers employed by the “Hundred
Associates,” fortune-hunters, and reckless souls who had no other
object than the excitement of exploration and discovery, but all of
whom were staunch Catholics. The very fearlessness of these white
invaders acted as a governor on the hostile energies of the savages,
and their interests, in a small way at first, began to be diverted
into other channels than those of war. Among the neutral nations on
the Niagara River, Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon formed a mission
early in the seventeenth century. As early as 1615, the Recollects
had established a mission among the Hurons, which was later continued
by the Jesuits. For more than thirty years, the missionaries had
laboured among the Hurons when, in 1648, the Senecas and Mohawks fell
upon their country, razed twenty of their villages, killed most of
their 3000 fighters, and totally destroyed them as a people. Two of
the Jesuit Fathers, Brébeuf and Daniel, gave up their lives in the
fearful massacres of those days. It was only five years later that
the Iroquois, destroyers of the Hurons, requested the French to send
missionaries among them, and for nearly twenty years the zealous
Jesuits brought about a lull in the sanguinary conflicts of the Five
Nations, but at the end of that time when war flamed out anew they were
compelled to abandon their missions. Meanwhile, along the Upper Lakes,
the missionary movement was being prosecuted with extreme vigour.
Garreau and Claude Allouez, with other missionaries, worked along the
shores of Superior, establishing missions among the Sacs and Foxes
and Pottawatomies. In 1668, Marquette established his famous mission
at Sault Ste. Marie, and three years later founded the mission of St.
Ignace on the Straits of Mackinaw.

It would take a volume to describe the adventures of these early
Fighters of the Faith, their trials and sacrifices, their successes and
failures. The briefness of our sketch compels us to move quickly from
these absorbing scenes to the first great event in the history of Lake
navigation, and to the beginning of that encroachment of the English
which was to develop a hundred years of war along the Inland Seas.
While the Jesuit Fathers were sacrificing their lives among the savages
and while the Indian wars of extermination were still in progress, the
French farther east had already begun to feel the hostile influence
of the English. To check this influence La Salle and Count Frontenac
brought about the erection of Fort Frontenac, in 1673, on the present
site of Kingston. At this time, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, a
young man of eminence and learning, was of the supreme faith that he
was destined to discover a water passage through the American continent
to China and Japan, and the building of Fort Frontenac was only the
first step in the gigantic scheme which he planned to carry out. A part
of this scheme was the building of a vessel of considerable size in
which La Salle planned not only to make a complete tour of the Lakes
but in which he hoped to discover the route that would lead to the
Orient. Five years later, the young adventurer made the portage around
Niagara Falls, and at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, in Niagara County,
New York, where is now located the town of La Salle, he began the
construction of the first vessel ever to sail the Inland Seas.

There are different estimates as to the size of the ship, but that it
was somewhere between fifty and sixty tons there is little doubt.
Assisting in this work were Tonty and Hennepin, and it took all of the
persuasive powers of the three to keep the _Griffin_, as the vessel
had been named, from the hostile hands of the Senecas as she lay in
her stocks. The ship, when launched, was completely rigged, found
with supplies for a long voyage, and armed by seven pieces of cannon
and a quantity of muskets. She carried two masts and a jib, and was
decorated with the usual ornaments of an ancient ship of war, including
a flying griffin at the jib-boom and a huge eagle aft. For hundreds of
miles about, the Indians came to see this wonderful “floating fort”
before she set sail. Thirty-two souls were to form the crew of the
_Griffin_ in her adventurous search for the route to Cathay, and on
the day that she turned her prow up the Niagara River, La Salle and
his followers fell upon their knees, invoking upon themselves the
mercies of God in an undertaking which, they believed, was to be one of
the most venturesome of their age. With all on board singing the _Te
Deum Laudamus_, the _Griffin_ passed into Lake Erie, and while at the
sight of the great water ahead of them the priests again invoked the
blessings of God, the first ship to sail the Lakes boldly headed into
those “vast and unknown seas of which even their savage inhabitants
knew not the end.”

According to the historian Hennepin, who was a member of the
expedition, days and nights of the wildest speculation, of hope, of
fear, and of anxious anticipation now followed. Rumour filled the seas
ahead of them with innumerable perils. The hardy navigators knew not
at what instant destruction might overtake them in any one of a dozen
ways in which they supposed themselves to be threatened. Each morning
and night the entire crew joined in prayers and in singing the hymns
of the Church. Lake Erie was crossed in safety, and on the eleventh of
August the _Griffin_ entered the Detroit River. Hennepin was enthralled
with its wonderful beauty. “The river was thirty leagues long,” he
says, “bordered by low and level banks, and navigable throughout its
entire length. On either side were vast prairies, extending back to
hills covered with vines, fruit trees, thickets, and tall forest trees,
so distributed as to seem rather the work of art than nature.” Passing
between Grosse Isle and Bois Blanc Island, the _Griffin_ sailed slowly
up the river, frequent stops being made along its course; it passed
the present site of Detroit, and on the day of the festival of Saint
Claire the navigators entered the lake which they gave that name. On
the twenty-third of August, the _Griffin_ entered into Lake Huron, the
Franciscans chanting the _Te Deum_ for the third time, and the entire
crew joining in offering up thanks to the Almighty for the smiling
fortune that had thus far accompanied them on their voyage.

Crossing Saginaw Bay the _Griffin_ lay for two days among the
Thunder Bay islands and then continued her way into the North. Almost
immediately after this, La Salle and his companions were caught in a
terrific storm, and in the height of its fury, when it was thought
that the end had come and that all the demons of this mysterious
world were working their destruction, La Salle made a vow that if God
would deliver them he would erect a chapel in Louisiana to the memory
of St. Anthony de Padua, the tutelary saint of the sailor. As if in
response to this vow, the wind subsided and the storm-beaten _Griffin_
found shelter in Michilimackinac Bay, where a mission had been built
among the Ottawas. Early in September, the _Griffin_ sailed into Lake
Michigan and continued to Washington Island, at the entrance to Green
Bay. Here a party of missionaries and traders had been established for
a year. They had collected a large quantity of furs, valued at about
twelve thousand dollars, and La Salle changed his original plans and
sent the _Griffin_ back to Niagara with this treasure, with the idea of
continuing his own exploration by canoe.

On the eighteenth of September, 1679, La Salle bade adieu to the
_Griffin_ and her crew, and from the point of a headland watched her
white sails until they dropped below the horizon. It was the last
he ever heard or saw of the ship. No sign of her was ever afterward
found, no soul who sailed with her lived to tell the story of her
tragic end. In the years that followed, it was rumoured that Indians
boarded and destroyed her, and massacred her crew. Hennepin was of the
opinion that she was lost in a storm. Others believed that some of her
crew had mutinied and that after murdering their companions they had
joined the Ottawas, where they met their own fate. From time to time in
recent years, relics have been found along the Lakes which have revived
stories of the mysterious disappearance of the _Griffin_, but none of
these finds have yet thrown reasonable light upon the tragic end of
this first vessel to navigate the Inland Seas and of the venturesome
spirits who manned her. By all but a few the _Griffin_ is forgotten,
or has never been known. Yet by the millions who live along the Great
Lakes she should be held in much the same reverence as are the caravels
of Columbus by the whole nation.

[Illustration: Marquette’s Grave, St. Ignace, Michigan.]




II

The Lakes Change Masters


For more than a hundred years after the sailing of the _Griffin_ the
Great Lakes and the country about them were destined to be the scenes
of almost ceaseless war. The fury of the internecine strife of the
Indians was on the wane. Their conflicts of extermination had worked
their frightful end and it now came time for them to give up the red
arena of the Inland Seas to other foes, among whom the last vestiges
of their power were doomed to melt away like snow under the warmth of
the sun. For unnumbered generations they had fought among themselves.
Nations of red men had been born, and nations had died. The Lake
regions were white with their bones and red with their blood, and now
those that remained of them were to be used as pawns in the games of
war between the English and the French, among whom they were still to
play an important though a fatal part.

The romantic voyage of the _Griffin_ marked that era when the French
were gaining possession of the Lakes. Eight years before La Salle’s
expedition, Simon Francis Daumont had taken formal possession of the
Inland Seas in the presence of seventeen different Indian nations. In
1761, a fort had been erected at Mackinaw, and Daniel Deluth, after
whom the city of Duluth was named, planted a colony of French soldiers
among the Sioux and Assiniboines of Minnesota. From this time on, the
power of the French steadily gained in ascendancy and the work of
winning the allegiance of the Indians progressed for a number of years
without interruption. In 1686, Fort Duluth was built on the St. Clair
River, and fifteen years later, in 1701, Cadillac built a fort on the
present site of Detroit, which was destined to play a picturesque and
important part in the century of war that was to follow. Other forts
of the French were at Michilimackinac (Mackinac), Chicago, Green
Bay, and on the Niagara River. Nearly all of the Indians of the Lake
regions had become their allies, with the exception of the Iroquois.
The forests and streams were the haunts of French traders. The Church
was establishing itself more and more firmly among the tribes. The
adventurous trappers of the fur companies were even living among the
savages, and there was fast developing between the red men and the
French that bond of friendship which was to remain almost unbroken
through all of the troublous times that were to follow. The power of
France, at this time, seemed bound to rule the destinies of the Inland
Seas.

On the other hand, the Iroquois were the implacable enemies of the
French and their allies, and the friends of the English. They were
distributed over a territory which embraced the Lake Ontario regions
and which extended to the English settlements of the East, thus
offering a free and safe road of travel to English traders into the
domains of the French. Reduced to less than a quarter of the fighting
strength that they had possessed before the wars of extermination, they
were still the terror of all other Lake tribes, and the English were
not slow to take advantage of the opportunities which their friendship
offered them. At every possible point the Five Nations checked the
movements of the French, and at the same time assisted the English
traders to invade their territory. In 1684, De la Barre, then Governor
of Canada, determined to destroy this last menace to French dominion,
and sent word throughout the Lake regions calling upon his warrior
allies to assemble at Niagara for a great war of extermination upon the
Iroquois. De la Barre himself proceeded to Lake Ontario with a powerful
force of nearly two thousand men, but an epidemic of sickness attacked
his army and the only result of the “campaign of extermination” was a
peaceful conference with the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas.

The failure of De la Barre’s plans was the first great blow to French
dominion. The English traders became more daring and parties penetrated
even as far as Michilimackinac, one of the French strongholds. These
traders were regarded as fair game by the French wherever found, but
though several parties were captured the invasion from the East did not
cease. Alarmed at the growing danger, the French determined to make
another campaign against the Iroquois. To the existence of the Five
Nations they ascribed their peril. With these fierce warriors out of
the way they could easily hold the English back.

In 1687, the Marquis Denonville, who had succeeded De la Barre,
gathered two thousand troops and six hundred Indian warriors at
Montreal, and with the advice that a thousand Indian allies would meet
him at Niagara set out for the land of the Iroquois. On June 23d, the
forces met at Fort Frontenac and from there proceeded to Irondequoit,
in the enemy’s country. Only the Senecas, one branch of the Five
Nations, had gathered to meet the invaders, and in the fierce battle
that followed, the French and their allies were defeated and driven
to the shores of the lake. Satisfied with their victory, the Senecas
did not press the invaders, and Denonville took advantage of his
opportunity to build Fort Niagara, after which he led the remnant of
his defeated army back to Montreal, leaving a garrison of one hundred
men in the new stronghold. During the winter that followed, the Senecas
besieged the fort with such success that less than a dozen of its
defenders escaped with their lives.

News of the defeat of the French spread like wildfire. It penetrated
to the farthest fastnesses of the known wildernesses. English traders
began to swarm into the Lower Lake regions. The Indian nations allied
to the French were thrown into a panic. The war spirit of the Iroquois
was aroused to a feverish height by their victory, and they swarmed to
the invasion of the French dominions. Fort Frontenac was captured and
burned. Both the allies and the French were swept back with tremendous
slaughter, and their power upon the Lower Lakes was broken. “It
seemed,” said an early writer, “as if the Five Nations would sweep over
the entire Lake country, driving all enemies from their shores, and
thus delivering into the hands of the English all that the French had
gained.”

But, in this hour of victory, the shadow of doom was hovering over the
martial people of the Five Nations. For unnumbered years the conquerors
of the New World, the time had at last come for their fall. The War
of the Palatinate was at hand, and the hostilities of the French and
the English spread to land and sea. Rumours came that Frontenac was
about to sweep down upon New York, and the faithful Iroquois turned
back to defend the city of their White Father. They threw themselves
between the invaders and their friends, an unconquerable barrier. New
York was saved, but in the struggle the power of the Five Nations was
broken. For many years they still remained a force to be reckoned
with, but as the conquering Romans of the Wilderness and the terror of
a score of nations, extending even to the Mississippi, their history
was at an end. In their passing it must be said that a braver man, a
truer friend, or a more relentless foe never existed on the American
continent than the Iroquois warrior.

There now came a brief lull in the warfare of the Lakes. The end of
the War of the Palatinate was closely followed by Queen Anne’s War,
but hostilities did not openly break out along the Inland Seas. The
Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 left France technically in possession of
the Lakes, but, even after this treaty, the English claimed as a sort
of inheritance from the Iroquois the regions of Lake Ontario and Lake
Erie. This fact again gave opportunity for plenty of excitement and
trouble. The French had rebuilt Fort Frontenac and were establishing
other strongholds, their object being to hem the English along their
seacoast possessions by means of a string of forts extending from
Canada southward. To frustrate these designs Governor Burnett, of
New York, began the erection of a trading-post at Oswego in 1720.
The French at once reciprocated by rebuilding Fort Niagara of stone,
whereupon, in 1727, the English added a strong fort to their holdings
in Oswego. This all but started active hostilities again. Beauharnois,
the Governor of Canada, flew into a high dudgeon, sent a written demand
for the English to abandon the fort, and threatened to demolish it
unless this was done. The response of the English was to strengthen
their garrison. Instead of carrying out his threat of war, Beauharnois
began the strengthening of all the French forts, a work which continued
for several years. Meanwhile the French trappers, traders, and priests
of the Upper Lakes had been stirring the passions of the Indians
against the encroaching English. The latter, in 1755, built two
warships on Lake Ontario, and it was pointed out to the Western tribes
that these were two of the terrible engines that were intended to work
their destruction. By the time of the breaking out of the Seven Years’
War, the French, though their population was less than a tenth of that
of their enemies, were splendidly prepared for war.

Actual operations in this last struggle between the French and the
English for the possession of the Lakes began in 1756, when De Lery
and De Villier set out with some six hundred men to capture Oswego and
other forts. On the Onondaga River, De Villier encountered Bradstreet
and his English and was completely defeated, more than a hundred of his
men being killed. Meanwhile, from Fort Frontenac, General Montcalm was
preparing to descend upon Oswego, and on the ninth of August, 1756,
he arrived in sight of the English stronghold with three thousand men
under his command. On the twelfth the battle began. From the beginning
it was a surprise to both combatants. The victory of the French was
comparatively easy and complete. The English loss was one hundred and
fifty killed and wounded. Nearly two thousand prisoners were taken, one
hundred and twenty cannon and mortars, six war vessels, and an immense
amount of stores and ammunition. The blow was a terrific one for the
English. Oswego had been their Gibraltar. In it were their shipbuilding
yard, nearly all of their heavy ordnance, and a large part of the
stores that were to supply them during the war. For the first time,
the English realised what a terrible loss they had sustained in the
breaking of the power of the Five Nations.

[Illustration: Monument at Put-in-Bay in Memory of the British and
Americans who Died in the Battle of Lake Erie.]

It was not until 1758 that the English regained a little of their
lost prestige. Everywhere the French had been victorious. But, in the
summer of this year, Colonel Bradstreet attacked Fort Frontenac with
thirty-five hundred men, and after two days of battle the garrison
surrendered. This was as decisive a blow to the French as was the loss
of Oswego to the English. Ten thousand barrels of supplies, nearly a
hundred cannon, and five vessels were destroyed. The French now saw
that the beginning of the end was at hand. Little Fort Niagara was
burned the following year to keep it from falling into the hands of
their enemies, and a little later Fort Niagara surrendered. At this
time French reinforcements were on their way to Niagara, but hearing
of the fall of this last stronghold the ships which bore them were
destroyed at the northern end of Grand Island, in a bay which from that
time has been known as Burnt Ship Bay, and at the bottom of which,
until a comparatively short time ago, the remains of the old vessels
were plainly to be seen. With the fall of Montreal in 1760, the last
flag of the French passed from the Great Lakes. Their warships were
scuttled, their forts in the North surrendered, and within a few months
England was everywhere supreme along the Inland Seas.

There now followed a curious and absorbingly interesting phase of
Lake history. The English had conquered the French--but they had not
conquered the red allies. The warriors of the Upper Lakes could not
be made to understand the situation. “We fight until there are none
of us left to fight,” they said. “Why is it that our French brothers
have run? Shall we run because they have run? We were their friends and
brothers. We are their friends now, and though you have conquered them
we will still fight for them, so long as there are among us men who can
fight.” A more beautiful illustration of the friendship and loyalty of
the Indian warrior could hardly be conceived than this.

And it was largely this loyalty, this loyalty to a race that had been
destroyed in their regions, that was to result in those terrible wars
and massacres which marked the course of English rule along the Lakes,
almost as regularly as mile-posts mark the course of a road. In the
hearts of the savages there was an intense, ineradicable hatred of the
English. They, and not the French, were regarded as the usurpers and
despoilers of the country. This hatred was even greater than that of
the Five Nations toward the French. It was something, as one old writer
says, “beyond description, beyond the power to measure.”

In these days, a fearful fate was rolling up slowly for the string of
forts along the Inland Seas, a doom that came without warning and with
terrible completeness. At the head of the great conspiracy which was
to result in the destruction of all the forts held by the English,
with the exception of that at Detroit, was Chief Pontiac. On May 16,
1763, the first blow fell. By what was called treachery on the part of
the Indians, but what would be termed stratagem in a white man’s war,
Fort Sandusky was captured and its entire garrison, with the exception
of one man, was massacred. Meanwhile a band of Pottawatomies from
Detroit had hurried to the fort at the mouth of St. Joseph’s River, at
the head of Lake Michigan, and, on the morning of the twenty-fifth,
killed the whole of its garrison with the exception of three. Eight
days later Michilimackinac (Mackinac) fell. On the morning of this
fatal day, a large party of Ojibwas were to play a game of ball with
the Sacs, and not a breath of suspicion filled the breasts of the
doomed officers and men. Discipline was relaxed on account of the
game. Excitement ran high. The Indians were in the best of spirits,
and had never seemed more friendly. Their sole thought seemed to be of
the great game. Scores of blanketed squaws and old men had assembled,
and these, without creating suspicion, had gathered close to the open
gates. The game began, and the shouting, struggling savages rushed this
way and that in pursuit of the ball. Now they would surge far from
the stockade, now so close that they would crush against its pickets.
Suddenly the ball shot high into the air and fell inside the fort, and
a hundred yelling savages rushed to the gates. Instantly the scene was
changed. The squaws and the old men threw back their blankets and gave
hatchets and guns to the warriors as they rushed past them. Within a
few minutes, seventeen men were killed and the rest of the garrison
were prisoners. Five of these prisoners were afterward killed by their
captors. The fate of the garrison at Presque Isle was less terrible.
For two days, the defenders of the fort held off the savages and then
surrendered upon the promise that their lives would be spared. The
prisoners were carried to Detroit.

During this time, while the conspiracy was working with such terrible
success at nearly every point, the great Pontiac himself had failed in
his designs upon Detroit. The garrison at this point was the strongest
on the Lakes, being composed of one hundred and twenty men under the
command of Major Gladwin and some forty or fifty traders and trappers.
They were strongly entrenched behind palisades twenty-five feet high,
were well supplied with the necessities of war, and Pontiac regarded
them as invincible unless he could overcome them by stratagem. By
the merest chance a fearful massacre was averted. Early in May Major
Gladwin received warning of Pontiac’s plotting, but paid comparatively
little attention to it until, under a clever pretext, the Indian
chieftain asked that he and a number of his warriors be allowed to
enter the fort. Under their blankets Pontiac and his braves carried
hatchets and short-barrelled rifles, their intention being to take the
unprepared garrison by surprise and during the first excitement of the
fray to throw open the gates for the hundreds of armed savages waiting
near. But when the Indians came within the palisades they found the
garrison under arms and awaiting them.

[Illustration: Old West Blockhouse, Fort Mackinac.

Built by the British, about 1780.]

This frustrated all of the great chief’s carefully laid plans, and the
attack was postponed. Three days later Pontiac again asked admittance
to the fort, but was refused. Knowing that in some way his plot had
been revealed to the English, Pontiac at once began his attack and
for several hours fought desperately to take the stronghold, but was
repulsed again and again with great loss. Desultory fighting, attacks
and counter-attacks, were frequent features of the siege that followed.
Meanwhile twenty boats and a hundred men, together with a large
quantity of supplies, had left Fort Niagara for Detroit under the
command of Lieutenant Cuyler, and these reinforcements were anxiously
awaited by the besieged. They were destined never to reach Detroit.
On June 28th, Lieutenant Cuyler and his command landed on Point Pelee
with the intention of camping there for the night. Hardly had they
drawn their boats upon the beach when they were greeted by a tremendous
volley of musketry, and with frightful yells a horde of savages rushed
down upon them from their ambush. Taken completely by surprise the
English made no resistance but fled precipitately for their boats. Less
than forty men, many of them wounded, escaped in three boats and made
for Fort Sandusky, which they found had been destroyed. All hope of
reaching Detroit was now abandoned and the worn and wounded remnants of
the reinforcing party rowed back to Niagara.

Meanwhile the condition of the garrison at Detroit was becoming
desperate. Both ammunition and food were becoming exhausted, many of
the defenders were wounded or sick, and each day seemed to add to
the strength of the savage besiegers. On the morning of June 30th,
seven weeks after the beginning of the siege, a large number of boats
flying the English flag were seen coming up the river. Joy gave place
to horror when it was seen that these boats were filled with Indians
and with white prisoners, the latter being those who were captured
at Point Pelee. While these savage victors had been making their way
westward, Lieutenant Cuyler and his handful of fugitives were on their
way to Niagara, where they brought news of the destruction of Fort
Sandusky and of the possible fate of Detroit. At Fort Niagara was
the armed schooner _Gladwin_, named after the defender of Detroit,
and on July 21st, she sailed for the besieged fort carrying with her
supplies and a reinforcement of sixty men. On the night of the 23d,
while the schooner was lying becalmed between Fighting Island and the
mainland in the Detroit River, she was attacked by the Indians, who
were completely repulsed. For several days, while slowly making her
way up the river against headwinds and current, the cannon of the
_Gladwin_ spread consternation and havoc among the savages along the
shores. Late in July, Captain Dalzell arrived with a score of barges,
bringing cannon, ammunition, supplies, and an additional force of
three hundred men. Pontiac, however, was still hopeful of success. His
force had been increased by more than a thousand warriors, and this
fact led to the sending of another reinforcement from Fort Niagara.
Six hundred regulars under the command of Major Wilkins left late in
September. Near Pointe-aux-Pins they encountered a terrific gale on
Lake Erie in which seventy men and three officers besides an immense
amount of stores and ammunition were lost, a calamity which compelled
the survivors to return to Niagara. Winter brought partial relief to
Detroit. The great number of Pontiac’s warriors made the struggle for
subsistence a hard one and with the coming of the cold months the
tribes separated to keep from starvation, leaving only a part of their
fighting men to maintain the siege, thus removing for the time being
the immediate danger of the capture and massacre of the garrison.

During the winter that followed, the English prepared to begin a
campaign in the spring of a magnitude heretofore unknown among the
wilderness tribes. The daring and confidence of the Indians were
becoming more and more menacing. On September 14th, one of the most
terrible massacres of the Lake country occurred at Devil’s Hole, three
miles below Niagara Falls. The Devil’s Hole is now visited by thousands
of tourists each year, but probably not one in a hundred knows of
the bloody conflict that gave it its name. On that day, a convoy of
soldiers were returning to Fort Niagara from Fort Schlosser, and in
the gloomy chasm of the “Hole,” which leads from the bluffs above down
to the river, a party of ambushed Senecas were awaiting them. Unaware
of their danger, the soldiers came within a few rods of the ambush,
and in the massacre that followed all but three of the total number of
twenty-four were killed. A strong force from Niagara came to give the
Indians battle and was completely defeated, losing about twoscore of
its men.

The English were now practically wiped out of the Lake country, with
the exception of along the Niagara and at Detroit, and the investment
at the latter place threatened to be successful unless prompt steps
were taken for the relief of the fort with an overwhelming force. It
was not until August of the following year that a force sufficiently
powerful for the campaign was gathered at Fort Schlosser. With three
thousand men, General Bradstreet set out in bateaux to first strike
a blow at the Indians along Lake Erie. Instead of fighting, however,
the Ohio tribes were anxious to make peace with the invaders, and
after a few skirmishes and many promises on the part of the Indians,
Bradstreet reached Detroit. The long siege, which had existed for more
than a year, was broken, treaties of peace were signed with many Indian
tribes, and the English again secured possession at Michilimackinac,
Green Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie. But Pontiac was irreconciliable
and, like Robert Bruce of old, fled into the West with a few of his
followers to await another opportunity to swoop down upon his enemies.

[Illustration: The Monument Erected to those who Fought and Died on
Mackinac Island.]

But the balance of fate still seemed to be with the untamed children
of the wilderness, for Bradstreet’s return to Fort Niagara was marked
by disasters sufficient to offset much that he had achieved. At Rocky
River, near Cleveland, he was caught in a terrific gale and met a
fate similar to that which had overtaken Major Wilkins in the preceding
September. In the rush for shore, twenty-five of his bateaux, six
cannon, and a great quantity of his baggage and ammunition were lost,
together with scores of his men. The force was now divided, a part of
it to make its way through the wilderness, and the remainder to travel
in the uninjured bateaux. Bradstreet reached Niagara on November 4th,
but for twelve weeks the land force fought its way through tangles
of forest and swamp, fighting, starving, and dying of disease and
exposure. The number of those who were lost in the storm and in this
overland march has never been recorded, but it was so large as to
occasion petitions to the government, which was an unusual thing in
those days of war and carnage. From that day to this, at various
times, Lake Erie has given up relics of the lost fleets of Major
Wilkins and General Bradstreet in portions of old bateaux, gun-flints,
musket-barrels, bayonets, cannon balls, and other objects. At one time,
when a sandbar at the mouth of the Rocky River changed its position, a
vast quantity of these relics were revealed, showing that one of the
lost bateaux had sunk there and had been uncovered after a lapse of
many generations.

For a number of years after the subjugation of the Indian tribes,
the peace of the Lakes was disturbed only by the rivalries of the
fur-traders and unimportant skirmishes with the savages. The era
of warships on the Inland Seas had now begun, and by the time the
Revolutionary War broke out, they were patrolled by quite a number of
armed vessels bearing the flag of England. The Lakes were destined to
play but a small part in the struggle for independence, however, and
the most tragic event of these years upon them was the loss in a storm
of the British ship _Ontario_, of twenty-two guns, which went down
between Niagara and Oswego with her entire crew and more than a hundred
of the 8th King’s Own Regiment. At this time, Spain was scheming to
gain a foothold in the Lake regions, and, in 1781, a force under Don
Eugenio Purre left St. Louis in the depth of winter and captured the
English fort at St. Joseph. For only a few hours the flag of Spain
floated over the Lake country, Don Eugenio’s scheme being merely
to secure a “claim” to the regions, and once his banner had risen
triumphantly above the captured fort he abandoned his position and
retreated to St. Louis.

Several times during the Revolutionary War it was proposed that an
attempt be made to capture Detroit, but no efforts were made in this
direction, so that when peace was declared and the colonies were
granted their independence, England still remained in possession of the
Great Lakes. It was not until 1796 that the line of forts along their
shores were surrendered into the hands of the Americans. On July 4th
of that year, Forts Niagara, Lewiston, and Schlosser floated for the
first time in history the banner of the new nation, and a week later,
Captain Moses Porter raised the same emblem above Detroit. Thus after
having been the stage of almost ceaseless war for more than a century
and a half did it seem that peace had at last come to the Great Lakes
regions. Yet were the clouds already gathering which a few years later
were to burst forth in another storm of blood along the shores and upon
the waters of the Inland Seas.




III

The War of 1812 and After


The years of peace which followed the surrender of the English along
the Lakes were not ones of rapid development. It was as if this vast
country, bathed in blood for more than a hundred and fifty years, had
fallen into a restful sleep. Until 1800 there was almost no emigration
west. By the new nation, the shores of Lake Erie were still regarded as
in the far wilderness. The fur-trade, it is true, increased in volume,
but not until after 1805 did the traffic of the Lakes begin to show
any decided growth. From then on conditions brightened. Settlers began
going into Ohio. Lake Ontario developed a considerable shipping-trade,
and both the United States and Great Britain began to strengthen their
naval forces, the American ships being almost entirely on Lake Ontario.
At the time of the breaking out of the War of 1812, American interests
on Lake Erie were almost entirely unguarded, the only vessel patrolling
it being a small brig armed with six-pounders which, after its capture
by the British, was named the _Detroit_. To make the situation of
the Americans still worse a curious change had been working among the
Indians and French. The bitter enemies of the English only a few years
before, they now became their staunchest allies, and the first blow
struck was largely by the Ottawas and Chippewas, who joined Captain
Roberts at St. Joseph in an attack upon Mackinac. Lieutenant Hanks,
who was in command of the fort, had no knowledge of the declaration of
war and fell an easy victim to the strategy of Roberts and his Indians
and French. Not a gun was fired in the capture of this important post,
which gave to the victors the key to the entire North, and at once
placed them in a commanding position for the approaching struggle.

[Illustration: Mackinac Island, Showing Old Fort Mackinac.]

Events now began to assume a more warlike aspect along the Lakes.
At Detroit, the Americans had been assembling in force, and on July
12, 1812, General Hull crossed the river into Canada at the head
of twenty-two hundred men, his object being to prevent further
construction on British fortifications which were in progress near
Sandwich. Seven days later, Commodore Earle, in command of the British
naval forces on Lake Ontario, made a futile bombardment of Sacketts
Harbour. Meanwhile at York, now Toronto, Major-General Brock was
assembling his forces, and before Hull crossed the river, he had
established himself at Fort Niagara and had sent reinforcements under
Colonel Proctor to Amherstburg, a few miles down the river from
Detroit, where the British were to act as a check to Hull. The latter
had prepared to march upon Malden when General Brock’s appearance at
the head of a large body of British and Indian troops sent him in
precipitate retreat to Detroit.

Before his attack upon the Americans, Brock sought an interview with
the Indian chief Tecumseh and succeeded in winning his friendship to
the British cause. On August 15th, the attack upon Detroit was made,
beginning with a bombardment from guns situated across the river. The
Americans in their trenches were eager for battle. Never had a garrison
been more confident of repulsing an enemy. As the British and Indians
swept up to the attack, the men stood behind their shotted guns with
lighted matches in their hands. When the enemy was less than five
hundred yards away, and as his men, anxiously awaiting the order to
fire, were sighting along their guns, General Hull suddenly commanded
the white flag to be hoisted above the fort. Never were two combatants
more thoroughly astounded. With a powerful force, strongly entrenched,
Hull had surrendered without firing a shot. Two thousand men longing
for battle and with the odds all in their favour became the prisoners
of less than eight hundred British and six hundred Indians. It was a
humiliating defeat. In an hour the prowess of the Americans had dropped
to the lowest ebb. Hull’s cowardice not only placed the British in
supreme control of the Upper Lake region but added greatly to the
foes of the Americans. Those Indian tribes that had remained neutral
at once turned to the British, and the disaffected militia of Canada
were moved into enthusiastic support of Brock. On this same day Hull
was directly responsible for one of the most horrible massacres of
the Lake country. The commander at Fort Dearborn, which stood on the
present site of Chicago, had received orders from Hull to evacuate his
position, and, on the morning of Brock’s bombardment of Detroit, the
fort’s entire garrison of seventy soldiers, together with many women
and children, set out from its protection. They had gone as far as
what is now Eighteenth Street when they were attacked from the rear
by Miami Indians and a merciless slaughter followed. When only twenty
men remained, the little force surrendered, and the captives were
distributed among the savages.

At about this time there occurred an event on Lake Erie which somewhat
lightened the gloom occasioned by the American reverses. Commodore
Chauncey, in command of the American naval forces on Ontario, had sent
Commander Jesse D. Elliott up to Erie to begin the construction of a
navy. Elliott was a born fighter and not slow to grasp opportunities
that came his way, and when he learned that the British ships _Detroit_
and _Caledonia_ were anchored under Fort Erie, he set out from Black
Rock with one hundred and twenty-eight men, ran his boats alongside
the two ships, and captured them in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict
which began at three o’clock in the morning. The two vessels were
at once got under way and the _Caledonia_ was brought within the
protection of an American battery near Black Rock. The _Detroit_ was
less fortunate and was compelled to haul to within a few hundred
yards of a British battery. Elliott refused to abandon her until his
ammunition gave out, and even then succeeded in bringing his prize
to Squaw Island, where she was within the range of both American and
British batteries. No sooner would one side gain possession of her than
her captors would be driven off by the guns of the other, and in these
attacks and counter-attacks the vessel was destroyed. Elliott, however,
had the nucleus for his new fleet in the captured _Caledonia_.

At the beginning of the war, it was believed by both British and
American officers that at least one of the decisive battles for the
mastery of the Lakes would be fought somewhere on the Niagara frontier,
and no sooner had Brock arranged civil and military matters in the
West after the fall of Detroit than he hastened back to this scene of
action. Meanwhile the Americans had been preparing to attack Queenston,
near Niagara Falls, and from that point begin their invasion of Canada.
The British were strongly entrenched upon the Heights but their force
was considerably inferior in number to that of Colonel Van Rensselaer,
who was in command of the Americans. On the evening of October 12th,
a dozen boats began ferrying the troops across the river, while at
the same time, Colonel Chrystie, with three hundred men, and Colonels
Stranahan, Mead, and Bloom were marching to Lewiston. Early on the
morning of the 13th, the British opened fire, in the face of which
the Americans began scaling the Heights, driving the enemy back as
they advanced. At the time of the crossing of the Americans, Brock was
at Fort George but lost no time in hastening to the field of battle.
In a little marshy plot at the foot of the summit on which the final
struggle occurred, now marked by a small stone monument and overgrown
with long grass and weeds, a bullet struck him through the body and he
fell mortally wounded. This was a terrible blow to the British, but,
in the face of the calamity, they gallantly mustered their forces for
the recapture of the Heights. There were still about fifteen hundred
Americans across the river, and if once they were allowed to join
Colonel Van Rensselaer a position would be achieved of even greater
importance than that of the British at Detroit and Mackinac. With
one thousand men, the British began a furious attack of the Heights,
which were defended by not more than three hundred of the Americans
who had crossed the river. The battle was one of the most desperate
and at the same time one of the most picturesque of the war, parties
of the combatants being at times on ground so precipitous that it
was difficult to maintain a footing. The Americans were gradually
beaten back, and, notwithstanding the fact that a superior force was
only a short distance away, they were compelled to surrender, those
surrendered including all that had crossed the river, the majority of
whom took no part in this last battle of the Heights. Ninety Americans
were killed, about one hundred wounded, and over eight hundred became
prisoners of war. The British lost less than one hundred and fifty men
killed and wounded.

[Illustration: Once the Scene of Bloodshed and Strife, these Old Trees
Stand where French, Indian, and British Fought Years ago.]

Thus far almost unbroken disaster had followed the American land
forces in the Lake regions, much of which must be ascribed to the
incompetence of commanding officers. Another fatal mistake was made a
few weeks after the battle of Queenston Heights when, on November 28th,
another invasion of Canada was attempted. Three thousand men under
General Smyth were to comprise this expedition. At three o’clock in
the morning, twenty-one boats left the American shore near Black Rock,
but met with such a warm reception at the hands of the British that a
number of the boats were compelled to fall back, and in the general
excitement only a part of the force landed. Captain King, in command of
one division, captured two batteries after a desperate struggle, spiked
the guns, and with the assistance of Commander Angus and his men
would have won a complete victory had not the latter, for some reason
that has never been explained, retreated in his boats. As a consequence
Captain King and a number of his men were captured, and thus a second
attempt at a Canadian invasion fizzled out in complete disaster. This
was practically the end of the campaign of the year 1812. There had
been several minor naval events besides those which I have described
and a few small operations on land, but all of them were unimportant.

The following year opened more auspiciously for the Americans, who
were the first to begin active hostilities. On April 25th, Commodore
Chauncey set sail with a squadron of fourteen vessels and seventeen
hundred troops to attack York (Toronto). At this time York was poorly
defended notwithstanding the fact that a 24-gun ship was almost
completed in the harbour and an immense quantity of supplies were
stored there. The Americans began disembarking early in the morning
of the 27th, under the command of Brigadier-General Pike, while the
armed schooners beat up to the fort and opened on it with their long
guns. A strong wind forced the small boats, in which the troops were
being carried, so close to the works that the landing instead of
being made at a safe distance as had been planned was in the face of
a galling fire. Despite this, General Pike assembled his men on the
beach and began an immediate assault, the Canadians and English being
driven from their works with heavy loss. In the moment of defeat, the
garrison fired their powder magazine, and in the terrific explosion
that followed, fifty-two of the victors were killed and one hundred
and eighty wounded. Altogether the Americans lost seventy killed in
both the land and naval forces, and the British one hundred and eighty
killed and wounded and two hundred and ninety prisoners. The 24-gun
ship was burned, and another vessel, the _Gloucester_, was added to the
American fleet.

This victory was of tremendous importance to the Americans, and it
was determined to at once follow it up by an attack on Fort George,
where the British General Vincent was stationed with a force of over
two thousand men, fifteen hundred of whom were regulars. On May 26th,
Commodore Chauncey reconnoitred the enemy’s position and afterward
held their interest while the _Conquest_ and _Tompkins_ destroyed
a battery some distance down the lake. A part of General Vincent’s
regulars attempted to prevent a landing at this point, but they were so
terribly cut up by the short-range fire of the ships that they could
offer but little opposition. So great was their loss that the British
made little further effort to hold their position, blew up their fort,
and retreated. Of the Americans, eighteen were killed and forty-seven
wounded. The British loss was fifty-two killed, nearly three hundred
wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners.

This last blow lost the Niagara frontier to the British. General
Vincent at once gave orders that Forts Chippewa and Erie and all public
property as far down as Niagara Falls should be destroyed. The magazine
at Fort Erie was fired, and a little later, Lieutenant-Colonel Preston,
in command of the Americans at Black Rock, took possession of what
remained of the stronghold, thus giving Perry an opportunity to get
out of the Niagara River five of the vessels which were to play such
an important part in the naval history of Lake Erie. Sacketts Harbour
was now in much the same condition that York (Toronto) had been, and
was even more poorly defended. The British planned to regain a part
of their lost prestige by its capture, and on May 27th, Commodore Sir
James Lucas Yeo sailed with a large fleet and a strong land force under
Sir George Prevost to make the attack. On the 29th, eight hundred of
the British regulars landed, but despite the astonishing inadequacy of
the American garrison they were beaten back with a loss of fifty-two
killed and two hundred and eleven wounded, while the Americans lost
but twenty-three killed and one hundred and fourteen wounded. The
British squadron returned to Kingston, and for several weeks thereafter
co-operated with the army forces and made several unimportant naval
captures while Chauncey awaited the completion of the new ship _Pike_.
During July, General Dearborn was recalled from his command at Fort
George because of the capture by the British of Lieutenant-Colonel
Boerstler and seven hundred men, and during this same month Black Rock
was captured by the enemy and recaptured by the Americans, but it was
not until the 30th that an important blow was struck by either side.
On this day the Americans again descended upon York, destroyed eleven
transports, burned the barracks, and captured a considerable quantity
of supplies and ammunition.

Both the Americans and the British were now looking for a decisive
naval battle between Yeo and Chauncey upon Lake Ontario. The squadrons
were quite evenly matched with the advantage, if any, in favour of
the Americans. Both commanders watched for a favourable opportunity
to attack, but not until the 11th of August was a gun fired. After an
almost harmless long-distance cannonade between the fleets, the _Julia_
and _Growler_, two of Chauncey’s vessels, became separated from the
main squadron and were cut off and captured by Yeo. For a month, the
two fleets were chasing or evading each other, and it was not until
the 11th of September that they approached close enough for another
engagement, which was only slight. These “chase-and-run tactics”
continued until the 28th, when the squadrons came together again in
York Bay. In the action that followed, Yeo’s ships were badly damaged
and ran for protection into Burlington Bay. This victory, although not
resulting in the capture of the British fleet, completely established
Chauncey’s supremacy and for the remainder of the season Yeo remained
at Kingston.

For some months past, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, acting under
Commodore Chauncey, had been devoting his energies to the creating
of a fleet on Lake Erie, and with such energy that on the memorable
morning of September 10th, when from the masthead of the _Lawrence_
at Put-in-Bay was seen the approaching squadron of Captain Robert
Barclay, he had under his command nine vessels carrying a total of
fifty-four guns and five hundred and thirty-two men. These vessels
were the _Lawrence_, _Niagara_, _Caledonia_, _Ariel_, _Scorpion_,
_Somers_, _Porcupine_, _Tigress_, and the _Trippe_. Barclay’s fleet was
composed of the _Detroit_, _Queen Charlotte_, _Lady Prevost_, _Hunter_,
_Chippeway_, and _Little Belt_, carrying a total of sixty-three guns
and four hundred and forty men. It is interesting to note, according
to Theodore Roosevelt’s _Naval War of 1812_, that notwithstanding
the superior number of their guns the British ships were capable of
throwing a broadside of only 459 pounds as against 936 pounds from the
American squadron, a fact which shows the overwhelming superiority of
Perry’s fleet and incidentally robs his victory of some of its glory.

In my examination of the many and various accounts of the naval
battle of Lake Erie, I have found that the most complete and authentic
report is that of Mr. Roosevelt, who goes with minute detail into the
preparation, comparative strength, and handling of the two squadrons,
and inasmuch as this battle of Erie is one of the most thrilling
episodes of our Inland Seas, I have secured the very kind permission of
Mr. Roosevelt to use a part of his description of the actual contest.
Soon after daylight, on September 10th, Perry got under way and
advanced toward the enemy in battle form.

[Illustration: A View of the Historic Battle-ground on Mackinac Island.]

    “As, amid light and rather baffling winds, the American
    squadron approached the enemy” [says Roosevelt], “Perry’s
    straggling line formed an angle of about fifteen degrees with
    the more compact one of his foes. At 11.45, the _Detroit_
    opened the action by a shot from her long 24, which fell short;
    at 11.50, she fired a second which went crashing through the
    _Lawrence_, and was replied to by the _Scorpion’s_ long 32.
    At 11.55, the _Lawrence_, having shifted her port bow-chaser,
    opened with both the long 12’s, and at meridian began with
    her carronades, but the shot from the latter all fell short.
    At the same time, the action became general on both sides,
    though the rearmost American vessels were almost beyond the
    range of their own guns, and quite out of range of the guns
    of their antagonists. Meanwhile, the _Lawrence_ was already
    suffering considerably as she bore down on the enemy. It was
    twenty minutes before she succeeded in getting within good
    carronade range, and during that time the action at the head
    of the line was between the long guns of the _Chippeway_ and
    _Detroit_, throwing 123 pounds, and those of the _Scorpion_,
    _Ariel_, and _Lawrence_, throwing 104 pounds. As the enemy’s
    fire was directed almost exclusively at the _Lawrence_ she
    suffered a great deal. The _Caledonia_, _Niagara,_ and _Somers_
    were meanwhile engaging, at long range, the _Hunter_ and _Queen
    Charlotte_, ... while from a distance the three other American
    gun-vessels engaged the _Prevost_ and _Little Belt_. By 12.20
    the _Lawrence_ had worked down to close quarters, and at 12.30
    the action was going on with great fury between her and her
    antagonists, within canister range. The raw and inexperienced
    American crews committed the same fault the British so often
    fell into on the ocean and overloaded their carronades. In
    consequence, that of the _Scorpion_ upset down the hatchway in
    the middle of the action, and the sides of the _Detroit_ were
    dotted with marks from shot that did not penetrate. One of the
    _Ariel’s_ long 12’s also burst. Barclay fought the _Detroit_
    exceedingly well, her guns being most excellently aimed, though
    they actually had to be discharged by flashing pistols at the
    touchholes, so deficient was the ship’s equipment. Meanwhile,
    the _Caledonia_ came down too, but the _Niagara_ was wretchedly
    handled, Elliott keeping at a distance which prevented the use
    either of his carronades or of those of the _Queen Charlotte_,
    his antagonist; the latter, however, suffered greatly from
    the long guns of the opposing schooners, and lost her gallant
    commander, Captain Finnis, and first lieutenant, Mr. Stokes,
    who were killed early in the action; her next in command,
    Provincial Lieutenant Irvine, perceiving that he could do no
    good, passed the _Hunter_ and joined in the attack on the
    _Lawrence_ at close quarters. The _Niagara_, the most efficient
    and best-manned of the American vessels, was thus almost kept
    out of the action by her captain’s misconduct. At the end of
    the line the fight went on at long range between the _Somers_,
    _Tigress_, _Porcupine_, and _Trippe_ on one side, and _Little
    Belt_ and _Lady Prevost_ on the other; the _Lady Prevost_
    making a very noble fight, although her 12-pound carronades
    rendered her almost helpless against the long guns of the
    Americans. She was greatly cut up, her commander, Lieutenant
    Buchan, was dangerously, and her acting first lieutenant, Mr.
    Roulette, severely wounded, and she began falling gradually to
    leeward.

    “The fighting at the head of the line was fierce and bloody to
    an extraordinary degree. The _Scorpion_, _Ariel_, _Lawrence_,
    and _Caledonia_, all of them handled with the most determined
    courage, were opposed to the _Chippeway_, _Detroit_, _Queen
    Charlotte_, and _Hunter_, which were fought to the full as
    bravely. At such close quarters the two sides engaged on about
    equal terms, the Americans being superior in weight of metal,
    and inferior in number of men. But the _Lawrence_ had received
    such damage in working down as to make the odds against Perry.
    On each side almost the whole fire was directed at the opposing
    large vessel or vessels; in consequence the _Queen Charlotte_
    was almost disabled, and the _Detroit_ was frightfully
    shattered, especially by the raking fire of the gunboats,
    her first lieutenant, Mr. Garland, being mortally wounded,
    and Captain Barclay so seriously injured that he was obliged
    to quit the deck, leaving his ship in command of Lieutenant
    George Inglis. But on board the _Lawrence_ matters had gone
    even worse, the combined fire of her adversaries having made
    the grimmest carnage on her decks. Of the 103 men who were fit
    for duty when the action began, 83, or over four fifths, were
    killed or wounded. The vessel was shallow, and the wardroom,
    used as a cockpit, to which the wounded were taken, was mostly
    above water, and the shot came through it continually, killing
    and wounding many men under the hands of the surgeon.

    “The first lieutenant, Yarnall, was three times wounded,
    but kept to the deck through all; the only other lieutenant
    on board, Brooks, of the marines, was mortally wounded.
    Every brace and bowline was shot away, and the brig almost
    completely dismantled; her hull was shattered to pieces,
    many shot going completely through it, and the guns on the
    engaged side were by degrees all dismounted. Perry kept up
    the fight with splendid courage. As the crew fell one by one,
    the commodore called down through the skylight for one of the
    surgeon’s assistants; and this call was repeated and obeyed
    till none were left; then he asked, ‘Can any of the wounded
    pull a rope?’ and three or four of them crawled up on deck to
    lend a feeble hand in placing the last guns. Perry himself
    fired the last effective heavy gun, assisted only by the purser
    and chaplain. A man who did not possess his indomitable spirit
    would have then struck. Instead, however, Perry determined to
    win by new methods, and remodelled the line accordingly, Mr.
    Turner, in the _Caledonia_, when ordered to close, had put his
    helm up, run down on the opposing line, and engaged at very
    short range, though the brig was absolutely without quarters.
    The _Niagara_ had thus become next in line astern of the
    _Lawrence_, and the sloop _Trippe_, having passed the three
    schooners ahead of her, was next ahead. The _Niagara_ now,
    having a breeze, steered ahead for the head of Barclay’s line,
    passing over a quarter of a mile to windward of the _Lawrence_,
    on her port beam. She was almost uninjured, having so far taken
    very little part in the combat, and to her Perry shifted his
    flag. Leaping into a rowboat, with his brother and four seamen,
    he rowed to the fresh brig, where he arrived at 2.30, and at
    once sent Elliott astern to hurry up the three schooners. The
    _Trippe_ was now very near the _Caledonia_. The _Lawrence_,
    having but fourteen sound men left, struck her colors, but
    could not be taken possession of before the action recommenced.
    She drifted astern, the _Caledonia_ passing between her and her
    foes. At 2.45, the schooners having closed up. Perry, in his
    fresh vessel, bore up to break Barclay’s line.

    “The British ships had fought themselves to a standstill.
    The _Lady Prevost_ was crippled and sagged to leeward, though
    ahead of the others. The _Detroit_ and _Queen Charlotte_ were
    so disabled that they could not successfully oppose fresh
    antagonists. There could thus be but little resistance to
    Perry, as the _Niagara_ stood down, and broke the British line,
    firing her port guns into the _Chippeway_, _Little Belt_, and
    _Lady Prevost_, and the starboard ones into the _Detroit_,
    _Queen Charlotte_, and _Hunter_, raking on both sides. Too
    disabled to tack, the _Detroit_ and _Charlotte_ tried to wear,
    the latter running up to leeward of the former; and, both
    vessels having every brace and almost every stay shot away,
    they fell foul. The _Niagara_ luffed athwart their bows, within
    half pistol-shot, keeping up a terrific discharge of great guns
    and musketry, while on the other side the British vessels were
    raked by the _Caledonia_ and the schooners so closely that some
    of their grape-shot, passing over the foe, rattled through
    Perry’s spars. Nothing further could be done, and Barclay’s
    flag was struck at 3 P.M. after three and a quarter hours’ most
    gallant fighting.”

In this conflict off Put-in-Bay, the American loss was twenty-seven
killed and ninety-six wounded. Of these, twenty-two were killed and
sixty-one wounded aboard the _Lawrence_. The British loss was forty-one
killed and ninety-four wounded, the loss falling most heavily on the
_Detroit_ and _Queen Charlotte_.

Immediately after the battle, Perry wrote his famous dispatch to
General Harrison: “We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships,
two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop”; and in a postscript he added,
“Send us some soldiers to help take care of the prisoners, who are
more numerous than ourselves.”

It is interesting to note what became of the vessels which played such
an important part in this tragic drama of Lake Erie. The _Lawrence_,
afterward repaired, was sunk in Misery Bay for preservation. Long
afterward a part of her stem was raised and kept as a memorial. For
years the _Niagara_ was a training ship on Lake Erie, and was then
sunk near the Lawrence. The _Ariel_, _Little Belt_, _Chippeway_, and
_Trippe_ were destroyed by the British at Buffalo. The _Detroit_ was
also sunk near the _Lawrence_, but in 1835, she was raised and rigged
by a Captain Miles. She was afterwards purchased by a Niagara man,
and as a spectacle for a crowd of curious people was allowed to break
herself to pieces on the rocks above the Falls. The _Queen Charlotte_,
_Lady Prevost_, and the _Hunter_ were used in the Lake trade, and the
_Caledonia_ became the _General Wayne_. Both the _Scorpion_ and the
_Tigress_ were recaptured by the British on Lake Huron.

The effects of Perry’s victory over Barclay’s squadron were immediate.
The British at once gave up all hope of retaining their possessions
on the Upper Lakes, and General Proctor began the evacuation of Forts
Detroit and Malden. With all the boats that he could get into his
possession he began a precipitate flight up the river Thames, where he
was joined by the Indian chief Tecumseh and his warriors. Encouraged
by this reinforcement he determined to select his own position for
giving battle to the Americans, who were hurrying across country from
Amherstburg under the command of General Harrison. Meanwhile, a number
of the smaller American war vessels made their way up the Thames and
Proctor prepared to meet them with his own armed boats. Harrison’s
force, which outnumbered Proctor two to one, came up to the enemy
close to the river, and the fierce charge of Colonel Johnson and his
Kentucky horsemen almost immediately broke the enemy’s line. After a
desperate struggle the regulars surrendered, but Tecumseh, who had from
one thousand to two thousand warriors, continued to fight until he fell
mortally wounded, when his braves broke and fled. The armed boats in
the river were destroyed to keep them from falling into the hands of
the Americans. Only a few years ago, two of these were discovered and
raised. An accompanying illustration shows one of these vessels just
after it was brought above the water, with a heap of old cannon balls
amidships.

[Illustration: An Old British Gunboat Discovered in the River Thames.]

Perry’s victory and Harrison’s defeat of the British virtually decided
the war along the Lakes, although, during the following winter, the
British prepared to make one more tremendous effort to regain a part
of the supremacy they had lost. This effort was to be made on Lake
Ontario. During the whole of the winter of 1813-14, both Yeo and
Chauncey strained every resource to prepare themselves for this
final conflict, and it was during this time that the largest ships of
war that ever floated on the Lakes were built, among them being the
American ship _Superior_, to carry sixty-two guns, and the British
ships _Prince Regent_, fifty-eight, and the _Princess Charlotte_,
forty-two. The two fleets were pretty evenly matched, each squadron
having eight ships, but with the Americans leading in tonnage, number
of men, and guns. Yeo, however, was prepared for battle earlier than
Chauncey, and taking advantage of this he prepared to attack Oswego,
which was garrisoned by less than three hundred men and was in a
wretched state of defence. On the 3d of May he set sail, having on
board his squadron a detachment of over a thousand troops. The fire of
the fort was drawn on the fifth, but it was not until the following day
that the battle began in earnest, when five of the British warships
began a terrific bombardment under cover of which eight hundred troops
and two hundred seamen were landed. The little garrison fought with
desperate valour and when they were finally driven from their position
the British had lost ninety-five men, a number a third as great as the
American force opposed to them. The Americans lost six men killed and
thirty-eight wounded, the remainder escaping to the Falls.

On May 19th, Yeo transferred his operations to Sacketts Harbour, where
he began a strict blockade, much to the discomfiture of Chauncey, who
still lacked important material for the completion of the _Superior_.
It was while attempting to capture several small boats with a part of
this material that two British gunboats, three cutters, and a gig,
carrying several heavy guns and one hundred and eighty men, started
up Sandy Creek on the thirtieth, and ran into an ambush laid by Major
Appling and one hundred and twenty American riflemen. In the terrific
volleys that followed, the British suffered heavily, eighteen of their
number being almost immediately killed and fifty wounded. The entire
force was captured with a loss on the American side of but one wounded.
On June 6th, Commodore Yeo raised his blockade and from then until July
31st, when Chauncey brought out his squadron, nothing of importance was
accomplished with the exception of two or three successful cutting-out
expeditions on the part of the Americans. Even after this date, until
the close of navigation, the two fleets acted merely in the capacity
of watch-dogs, neither daring to attack the other. During the greater
part of this period, Yeo was penned up in Kingston, while Chauncey,
whose superior force would have made his co-operation of tremendous
value to the land forces under General Brown, peremptorily refused this
assistance, saying that his object was the destruction of the enemy’s
fleet and not to “become a subordinate or appendage of the army.” On
the other hand, he could not get Yeo to fight, so that his powerful
force remained practically useless.

Meanwhile General Brown undertook his contemplated invasion of Canada,
sending Generals Scott and Ripley to the attack of Fort Erie, which
soon surrendered. A few days later, on July 5th, General Riall with
a force of nearly 2000 British met the Americans near Chippewa, and
one of the fiercest and most important battles of the war was the
result. Notwithstanding the superior numbers of the enemy, the victory
fell to the Americans, whose loss was 61 killed and 255 wounded as
against 236 killed and 322 wounded on the British side. It was at this
critical moment, when a successful and complete invasion of Canada
might have been made, that General Brown wrote to Chauncey asking for
his co-operation. Soon after this, General Riall was reinforced by 800
men under Sir George Gordon Drummond, and on the 25th of July, General
Scott was sent against them with a force of 1200 men.

Scott was unaware of the full strength of the enemy until he found
Riall and Drummond drawn up to meet him at Lundy’s Lane. This was at
five o’clock in the afternoon, and with the idea of impressing upon the
British that the entire American army was at his back, General Scott at
once began the attack. The struggle was one of intense courage on both
sides and continued until 10.30 at night, when the British were driven
from the field, leaving General Riall a prisoner. The American loss
had also been so severe that they retired from the field, abandoning a
captured battery. During the night, this battery was again manned by
the British and a bloody fight ensued the following morning before it
was recaptured. At Lundy’s Lane, the Americans lost 171 killed and 571
wounded; the British 84 killed and 559 wounded. General Scott had been
severely wounded in the struggle, and General Brown was laid up with
injuries at Back Rock, so that the command fell upon General Ripley who
at once made preparations to recross into the American frontier. Brown
sent positive orders that this move should not be made and that General
Ripley should hold Fort Erie. On August 2d, General Drummond, who had
been reinforced by over 1000 men, laid siege to this stronghold, and
for two weeks desultory fighting occurred around it. On the night of
the 14th, at twelve o’clock, a terrific assault was begun upon the
works and continued until daylight. The British had captured one of
the bastions and it was while holding this position that a fearful
explosion occurred directly under their feet, killing and wounding the
greater portion of them and striking the decisive blow of the siege.
The American loss was 17 killed and 56 wounded, while the British lost
221 killed and 174 wounded.

[Illustration: Scene when Admiral Dewey Passed through the Soo Locks.]

For several weeks, both sides continued to strengthen their positions,
and by the middle of September, 5000 Americans under Generals Brown
and Porter were ready for an attack on the British. On the 17th, Riall
was engaged by the entire American force and was driven from the
position he had taken, with a loss of about 500 in killed and wounded.
Meanwhile, General Izard’s division was hurrying to the frontier and
with his arrival the American force was increased to 8000. Riall and
Drummond in the face of these overwhelming odds retreated to Fort
George and Burlington Heights, and on November 4th, Fort Erie was blown
up, General Izard believing that it would be of no further use to the
Americans. Active operations along the frontier then ceased for the
winter.

During this breaking of British power along the Niagara frontier, there
had occurred one or two interesting events on the Upper Lakes. Now that
the British had lost their fleet on Erie, and that they had become
almost fugitives from the American forces, those that remained of them
seemed endowed with almost superhuman courage and ability. Captain
Sinclair had sailed up into Lake Huron with the _Niagara_, _Caledonia_,
_Ariel_, _Scorpion_, and _Tigress_, and had burnt the fort and barracks
of St. Joseph, when the first of these exploits occurred. On August
4th, Sinclair had made an unsuccessful attack on Fort Michilimackinac
(Mackinac), had burned a blockhouse, and then departed for Lake Erie,
leaving the _Scorpion_ and _Tigress_ on Lake Huron. On the 3d of
September, four small boats filled with British made an attack on the
_Tigress_ under cover of darkness, and after a brief hand-to-hand
struggle captured her. The commander of the _Scorpion_ had no knowledge
of this attack, and on the 5th, he innocently ran within a couple of
miles of the _Tigress_, which was still flying the American flag. Early
the following morning, the _Tigress_ ran close up to the _Scorpion_,
cleared her deck with a volley of musketry, and captured her without
resistance being made. Meanwhile on the night of August 12th, a daring
British expedition in small boats captured the armed schooners _Somers_
and _Ohio_, with another armed ship, the _Porcupine_, lying near. In
this exploit, seventy British seamen in small boats had captured two
well-armed vessels carrying ninety men and with a strong sistership a
few cable-lengths away, an achievement which has few rivals in naval
history.

But these latter events, brilliant though they were, were of but slight
importance. The British were defeated and broken from end to end of the
Lakes, and peace was at hand. On December 24, 1814, fifteen days before
the battle of New Orleans, peace was declared at Ghent, and with the
signing of the treaty the sanguinary history of the Lakes, a story that
had covered more than two centuries of ceaseless war and bloodshed,
was at an end. From this time on, their history was to be one of
colonization and commerce.

For a number of years previous to the War of 1812, there had been a
growing tendency on the part of the people of the East to emigrate
into the West, but the unsettled conditions of the whole Lake
region, threatened by Indian war and the bloody feuds of rival
trading-companies, held the bulk of the pioneers along Lake Ontario.
Now the floodgates burst loose. Thousands of settlers hurried into
Ohio, and others pushed on through the wilderness into Michigan. In
1818, the _Walk-in-the-Water_, the first steamer to float upon the
Upper Lakes, was launched in Lake Erie, and began making trips from
Buffalo to Detroit, charging eighteen dollars per passenger for the
journey. Other vessels engaged in the passenger trade and emigrants
were enabled to travel entirely by water. By 1820, Ohio possessed
a population of over half a million. Nineteen out of twenty of the
west-bound pioneers stopped somewhere along the shores of Lake Erie,
and at this date Michigan’s population was less than nine thousand.
But with the coming of other steamers, not only Michigan, but Illinois
and Wisconsin began to receive a part of the westward-flowing tide.
The Erie Canal had been opened as early as 1825, and the rapidity
of the growth of commerce on the Inland Seas may be judged by the
fact that in 1836 more than three thousand canal-boats were employed
upon it, a large part of their traffic being the transportation of
emigrants and their effects to the larger vessels on Lake Erie.
During this year, there were ninety steamboat arrivals at Detroit, and
one of these vessels, the _United States_, carried as high as seven
hundred emigrants on a single trip. From that day to this, the ships
of the Great Lakes have never been able to more than keep pace with
the demands of trade. In 1836, vessel-men earned as high as eighty
per cent. on the cost of their vessels. To-day they are still earning
thirty.

Beginning with 1839, the emigrant travel to Chicago was so great that
a line of eight vessels engaged in this traffic alone, each vessel
making the trip once in sixteen days. It was now impossible to build
ships fast enough to keep pace with the developing commerce. During
the ten years between 1830 and 1840, the population of Michigan
increased from 31,000 to 212,000, and practically the whole of it came
by lake. In 1840, Wisconsin’s population was less than 31,000; ten
years later, it was 305,000. By 1846, the value of the commerce of the
Lakes was already enormous. Its value for that year is estimated to
have been over eighty millions of dollars. In 1835, the American Fur
Company built the _John Jacob Astor_, the first large ship to sail
Lake Superior, and the trade in copper began soon after. With the
discovery of the rich mineral deposits, hundreds of prospectors began
flocking into the North, men with capital hurried to the regions of
the red metal, and, in the race after wealth, vessel-men did not wait
to build ships on Superior but hauled their vessels bodily across the
mile portage at Sault Ste. Marie. In 1855 was built the Falls Canal,
and from that date, the commerce of Superior became an important factor
in the traffic of the Lakes. All that was needed to make it the most
important body of fresh water on the globe was the discovery of iron.
This discovery, and the part that iron has played in the making of our
nation, have been described in preceding pages.

[Illustration: Map of the Great Lakes Region]




INDEX


  A

  Aborigines, warlike, of the early history of the Lakes, 163

  Adams, Mayor, of Buffalo, 127

  Aillon, Father Joseph de la Roche d’, mission formed by, 168

  Algonquin, a tribe of Indians, 164

  _Alpena_, the, of Lake Michigan, 102

  American Fur Company, the, 220

  American Shipbuilding Company, the, 15, 16

  Argosy, the huge, of the Lakes, 26

  _Ariel_, the battle-ship, 217

  Assiniboines, the, of Minnesota, 176

  Astor, John Jacob, 220

  _Atlanta_, the loss of the, 102

  _Atlantic_, loss of, with valuable cargo, 110


  B

  _Bannockburn_, the mystery of the, 103

  Barre, Governor De la, of Canada, 177

  Beauharnois, Governor, of Canada, 1727, 180

  Beaver Island, 88

  Belle Isle, a great pleasure ground, 85

  _B. F. Jones_, the cargo of, 60

  “Bread Basket of the World,” the future, 60

  Brock, General, the death of, 84

  Brule, Stephen, discovers Lake Superior, 166

  Buffalo, shipyards at, 10

  Burnett, Governor, of New York, 180


  C

  Cabins on a freighter, 138

  Calbick, James A., President of the Lumber Carriers’ Association, 51

  _Caledonia_, the capture of, 198

  Canada, the fertile regions of western, 63

  Canadian Niagara Falls Company, the, 133

  Canals, the, at Sault Ste. Marie, 27

  Cargoes of the Great Lakes, 1

  Caron, Joseph Le, discovers Lake Ontario, 166

  “Carriers,” the, of the Great Lakes, 24

  Cayuga Indians, the, 165

  Cheapness of travel on the Lakes, 75

  Chicago, shipyards at, 10

  _Chicora_, the passenger steamer, 42

  “City of the Five Great Lakes,” the, 48

  _City of St. Ignace_, the, a passenger steamer, 74

  Cleveland, shipyards at, 10

  Cliff stamp mill, the, 32

  Coal, immense amount consumed, 27

  Cole, Thomas F., President of the Oliver Mining Company, 32

  Collisions, danger of, 94

  Commerce, the, on the Lakes, 11, 49

  Construction of a Lake ship, 23

  _Cordurus_, the freighter, 100

  Coulby, Harry, President of the Pittsburg Steamship Company, 12

  _Cruise of a Lonely Heart, The_, 93

  Cuyler, Lieutenant, defeat of, 187


  D

  _Dacotah_, the loss of the, 104

  Dakotas, the powerful tribe of the, 164

  Daumont, Simon Francis, takes possession of the Lakes, 175

  Davidson, James, mentioned, 40

  _Dean Richmond_, the treasure ship, 108

  Deluth, Daniel, a fort erected by, 1761, 176

  Denonville, Marquis, 178

  Detroit, shipyards at, 10;
    great industry at, 15;
    tonnage passing, 27;
    the defence of, 188

  Detroit _Journal_, the, 42

  Detroit River, the, 27

  Detroit Shipbuilding Company, the, 17

  Detroit _Tribune_, the, 42

  Development, the, of the region, 6

  Devil’s Hole, the massacre at, 189

  Dining-room on a freighter, 144

  Dividends on an investment in a Lake freighter, 61

  Douglas, G. L., 14

  Duluth, the “highway” to, 3;
    the great future of, 123


  E

  Earle, Commodore, on Lake Ontario, 195

  _Earling_, the loading of the, 43

  Early history of the Lakes, 159 _ff._

  Electrical Development Company, the, 133

  Elevators, the building of, 63

  Elliott, Commander Jesse D., 197

  Elwood, H. C., of the Chamber of Commerce in Buffalo, 116

  English, settlements of the olden time on the Lakes, 177;
    traders, 179

  Erie Basin, the, 131

  Erie Canal, transportation on, 7;
    the widening of, 63;
    the new era for, 132

  Escarpments, the worn, of the Lakes, 162

  Extent of the ore deposits, 36


  F

  Five Nations, the Indian tribes known as the, 165

  _Flagg_, a cargo of copper on the, 66

  Flour, amount carried on the Lakes, 50

  Flying Dutchman, the, of the Lakes, 103

  Food, the various kinds of, on a freighter, 153

  Forests of Minnesota, the, 53

  Fort Niagara, the remains of, 84

  Foxes, the extermination of the, 165

  Freight, amount of, on the Great Lakes, 25

  Freighters, the largest fleet of, iii;
    the luxuriance of the, 20

  Fresh-water seas, iii

  Frontenac, Fort, built, 1673, 170;
    taken by English, 1758, 182

  “Frozen Ship,” the mystery of the, 111

  Fuel, the loading of, 65

  Fur trade, the increase of the, 194


  G

  _George W. Perkins_, the record of the, 45

  Georgian Bay, a trip past, 86

  _Gilcher_, the loss of the, 102

  Gilchrist, J. C., the head of the Gilchrist Transportation Company, 13

  Glacial Age, the, in North America, 162

  Gladwin, Major, defends Fort Detroit, 186

  _G. P. Griffin_, the burning of the, 105

  “Grain Age,” the beginning of the, 63

  “Grand Army,” the, of the Lakes, 52

  Great Lakes, the (see Inland Seas)

  _Griffin_, the, 84;
    the romantic loss of, 111;
    the history of the, 171 _ff._

  “Groves” as pleasure resorts, 81

  “Guests’ quarters,” the, on a freighter, 139


  H

  _Harry Berwind_, a private room on the, 139

  Hatch-bag, playing of, 150

  Hazard, Captain Oliver, 205

  _Hudson_, the loss of the, 102

  Hull, General, invades Canada, 195;
    cowardice of, 196

  Huron, Lake, a trip up, 3


  I

  Ice Age, the waning of the, 162

  “Ice devils,” the damage done by, 99

  Indian canoes, fleets of, 165

  Industrial supremacy, 5

  Inland Seas, the, commercial life of, iv;
    the leviathans of, 3;
    the spirit of, 4;
    normal condition, 7;
    shipbuilding on, 11;
    the wonders of, 12;
    fortune-making on, 18;
    cargoes on, 26;
    commerce of, 48;
    death of the lumber fleets of, 52;
    cheap transportation on, 62;
    transportation of copper on, 66;
    passenger traffic on, 68;
    summer life, 68 _ff._;
    Admiral Dewey visits, 73;
    marine tragedies of, 77;
    the spring rush on, 89;
    dangers of navigation, 91;
    danger of ice, 96;
    mysteries of, 103;
    struggle for supremacy of, 117;
    greatest ship on the, 137;
    early history of, 159 _ff._;
    missions established on, 169;
    change of masters, 175;
    England supreme, 183;
    peace on, 193;
    naval battle of Lake Erie, 206

  “Inner life,” the, of a great freighter, 137

  Iron, the prominence of, 28

  Iron ore, the transportation of, 8

  _Ironsides_, the steamer, 104

  Iroquois, the, of Lake Ontario, 165


  J

  Jackson, Captain James, the heroism of, 95

  Jesuits, the missions established by the, 169


  K

  _Kent_, the wreck of the, 109

  King Strang, the Mormon, 88


  L

  Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, the, 125

  _Lady Elgin_, the sinking of the, 104

  Lake Carriers’ Association, the, 46

  Lakeside inns, life at the, 82

  Laurentian River, the, 161

  _Lawrence_, the attack on the, 207

  _Lexington_, lost with a cargo of whisky, 110

  Life of the Great Lakes, iii

  Little Venice, mentioned, 85

  Livingston, William, President of the Lake Carriers’ Association,
      40, 46

  Lorain, shipyards at, 10

  Loyalty, the, of the Indians, 183

  Lumber Carriers’ Association, the, 50

  Lumber industry, the extinction of, 52


  M

  Mackinaw Island, 78

  _Maid of the Mist_, the, 83

  Manitou Island, a wreck near, 110

  Manitowoc, shipyards at, 10

  Mapleson Opera Company, the, 42

  Mason, F. Howard, 126

  _Mataafa_, the steel ship, 105

  Matchedash Bay, 166

  McKenzie, Captain, peculiar situation of, 100

  Mesaba, the, as a wilderness, 34

  Mesaba range, the richness of the, 40

  Mess-room, the, on a freighter, 154

  Mexican mahogany woodwork, 73

  Miami Indians, the, 197

  Michilimackinac, the fort at, 176;
    the destruction of the garrison at, 185

  Mines, the working of, 37

  Mitchell, Captain John, 14

  Mohawks, the, 165

  Montreal, the fall of, 1760, 183


  N

  _Nashua_, the disappearance of, 102

  Neuters, a tribe of Indians, 165

  New York Steel Company, the, 125

  Niagara Falls, money expended above, 9

  Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, 133

  Niagara Falls Power Company, the, 133

  Nicolet, Jean, 167

  North Tonawanda, the growth of, 130


  O

  “Observation room,” the, of a freighter, 142

  Ohio River, the country north of, 8

  Ojibwas, the, 164

  Oliver Mining Company, the, 32

  Oneida Indians, the, 165

  Onondaga Indians, the, 165

  _Ontario_, the battle-ship, 192

  Ontario Power Company, the, 134

  Ore beds, the, of Minnesota, 4

  Ore docks, the, at Duluth, 43

  Origin, the, of the Great Lakes, 161 _ff._

  _Ostrich_, the resting place of the, 110

  Oswego, a trading-post at, 180

  Ottawas, the tribe of the, 164

  Owners, the ship, 1


  P

  Palatinate, the War of the, 179

  Passenger steamers, the, 69

  Passenger traffic, the, 68 _ff._

  Pay-rolls, the, of Buffalo, 126

  Perry, Commodore, the victory of, 211

  Pessano, Antonio C., 15

  _Pewabic_, the, in Thunder Bay, 106;
    the finding of, 109

  Phœnix mine, an accident in the, 32

  Pike, Brigadier-General, 201

  Pilot-house, the, on a Lake steamer, 149

  Pine wood, the total amount from Michigan, 57

  “Pittsburg of the North,” the, 124. (See Duluth)

  Pittsburg Steamship Company, the, 12

  “Plate department,” the, of a shipyard, 22

  Point Pelee, the battle of, 187

  Pontiac, the Indian chief, 85

  Port Arthur, the shipping of, 62

  Porter, Moses, 193

  Pottawatomies, a tribe of Indians, 164

  Purre, Don Eugenio, departure of, 192

  Put-in-Bay, historical events at, 84;
    the great naval battle of, 210


  Q

  Queen Anne’s War, 180

  _Queen of the West_, the loss of the, 99 _ff._

  Queenston, the attack on, 198

  Queenston Heights, the battle of, 84


  R

  Richardson, W. C., 40

  Riveting machines, the, 24

  Roberts, Captain, at St. Joseph, 195

  Rocky River, the change of position of, 191

  Romans of the Wilderness, the, 180

  Roosevelt, President Theodore, account by, 206

  Ruggles’ Grove, overlooking the Lake, 79


  S

  Sacketts Harbour, operations at, 213

  Sacs, a tribe of Indians, 165

  Sailors on the Lakes, 1

  Sandusky, Port, the capture of, 184

  Sault Ste. Marie canals, the, 27

  Savages, the first, near the Lakes, 164

  Schantz, A. A., General Manager, 72

  _Scorpion_, the battle-ship, 218

  Sellwood, Captain Joseph, 29

  Seneca Indians, the, 165

  Seven Years’ War, the beginning of the, 181

  Shattuck’s Grove, an inexpensive resort, 79

  Sheadle, J. H., 14

  Ship-builders, the, of the Lakes, vi

  Ships, the, of the Great Lakes, 1

  Shuffle-board, the playing of, 150

  Signals in code used on the Lakes, 156

  Silver-ware on a freighter, 144

  Sinclair, Captain, on Lake Huron, 217

  Sioux Indians, the, 165

  Snyder, W. P., 30

  Social equality on the Lakes, the, 70

  “Soo,” records of tonnage at the, 27

  St. Clair, Lake, a summer at, 83

  Steam shovels, the work of, 38

  Steel Corporation, the, 122

  St. Mary’s River, the, 87

  “Stripping,” the work of, 39

  Suez Canal, the, in 1908, 6

  Summer life on the Lakes, the, 68 _ff._

  _Superior_, the steamer, 98

  Superior, Lake, commerce on, 10

  Supremacy, the struggle for, 114


  T

  Taxes in Michigan, the lapse of, 58

  _Te Deum Laudamus_, the singing of, 171

  Thames, the battle of the, 85

  _Thomas F. Cole_, the steamer, 19

  “Thousand-mile highway,” the, 3, 13

  Toledo, shipyards at, 10

  Toledo Shipbuilding Company, the, 18

  Tomlinson, G. Ashley, 14;
    an opinion of, 36

  Tonawandas, the twin, 46

  Tower, Charlemagne, Ambassador to Germany, 1884, 34

  Tragedies, the, of the Lakes, 95

  “Twin Cities,” the, 54

  “Two Lost Tows,” the, 102


  U

  _United States_, the emigrant ship, 220

  Upper Peninsula, the, 87

  Utes, the, of White River, 41

  Utrecht, the Treaty of, 1713, 180


  V

  Van Rensselaer, Colonel, 199

  Vermilion ranges, the, 29

  Vessels of the Lakes, the construction of, 10 _ff._


  W

  _Walk-in-the-Water_, the first steamboat of the upper Lakes, 219

  Wallace, James C., of Cleveland, 16

  War of 1812, the, 194 _ff._

  _W. B. Kerr_, capacity of the, 61

  West Superior, shipyards at, 10

  _Western Reserve_, the, 98

  Westinghouse, George, an opinion by, 133

  _Westmoreland_, loss of the, 110

  _W. F. Sauber_, the, 96;
    the sinking of, 97

  Whisky, a valuable cargo, 110

  White River Utes, the, 41

  Wickwire Steel Company, the, 125

  _William H. Stevens_, the treasure ship, 108

  Wolvin, A. B., 40


  Y

  _Yale_, the steamer, 96

  Yellow pine of Louisiana, the, 58

  Yeo, Sir James Lucas, 203

  _Young Sion_, the disappearance of the, 109




_American Waterways_


The Romance of the Colorado River

The Story of its Discovery in 1540, with an account of the Later
Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell
through the Line of the Great Canyons.

By Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

Member of the United States Colorado River Expedition of 1871 and 1872

_435 pages, with 200 Illustrations, and Frontispiece in Color. $3.50
net_

“His scientific training, his long experience in this region, and his
eye for natural scenery enable him to make this account of the Colorado
River most graphic and interesting. No other book equally good can be
written for many years to come--not until our knowledge of the river is
greatly enlarged.”--_The Boston Herald._

“Mr. Dellenbaugh writes with enthusiasm and balance about his chief,
and of the canyon with a fascination that make him disinclined to
leave it, and brings him thirty years later to its description with
undiminished interest.”--_New York Tribune._


The Ohio River

A COURSE OF EMPIRE

By Archer B. Hulbert

Associate professor of American History, Marietta College, Author of
“Historic Highways of America,” etc.

_390 pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net_

An interesting description from a fresh point of view of the
international struggle which ended with the English conquest of the
Ohio Basin, and includes many interesting details of the pioneer
movement on the Ohio. The most widely read students of the Ohio Valley
will find a unique and unexpected interest in Mr. Hulbert’s chapters
dealing with the Ohio River in the Revolution, the rise of the cities
of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Louisville, the fighting Virginians, the
old-time methods of navigation, etc.

“A wonderfully comprehensive and entirely fascinating book.”--_Chicago
Inter-Ocean._


Narragansett Bay

_Its Historic and Romantic Associations and Picturesque Setting_

By Edgar Mayhew Bacon

Author of “The Hudson River,” “Chronicles of Tarrytown,” etc.

_340 pages, with 50 Drawings by the Author, and with Numerous
Photographs and a Map. $3.50 net_

Impressed by the important and singular part played by the settlers
of Narragansett in the development of American ideas and ideals, and
strongly attracted by the romantic tales that are inwoven with the
warp of history, as well as by the incomparable setting the great bay
affords for such a subject, the author offers this result of his labor
as a contribution to the story of great American Waterways, with the
hope that his readers may be imbued with somewhat of his own enthusiasm.

“An attractive description of the picturesque part of Rhode Island.
Mr. Bacon dwells on the natural beauties, the legendary and
historical associations, rather than the present appearance of the
shores.”--_N. Y. Sun._


The Great Lakes

By James Oliver Curwood

_With about 80 Illustrations. Probable price $3.50 net_

This profusely illustrated book, as entertaining as it is informing,
has the twofold advantage of being written by a man who knows the Lakes
and their shores as well as what has been written about them. The
general reader will enjoy the romance attaching to the past history
of the Lakes and not less the romance of the present--the story of
the great commercial fleets that plough our inland seas, created to
transport the fruits of the earth and the metals that are dug from the
bowels of the earth. To the business man who has interests in or about
the Lakes, or to the prospective investor in Great Lakes enterprises,
the book will be found suggestive. Comparatively little has been
written of these fresh-water seas, and many of his readers will be
amazed at the wonderful story which this volume tells.


The St. Lawrence River

_Historical--Legendary--Picturesque_

By George Waldo Browne

Author of “Japan--the Place and the People,” “Paradise of the Pacific,”
etc.

_385 pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net_

While the St. Lawrence River has been the scene of many important
events connected with the discovery and development of a large portion
of North America, no attempt has heretofore been made to collect and
embody in one volume a complete and comprehensive narrative of this
great waterway. This is not denying that considerable has been written
relating to it, but the various offerings have been scattered through
many volumes, and most of these have become inaccessible to the general
reader.

This work presents in a consecutive narrative the most important
historic incidents connected with the river, combined with descriptions
of some of its most picturesque scenery and delightful excursions into
its legendary lore. In selecting the hundred illustrations care has
been taken to give as wide a scope as possible to the views belonging
to the river.


The Niagara River

By Archer Butler Hulbert

Professor of American History, Marietta College; author of “The Ohio
River,” “Historic Highways of America,” etc.

_350 pages, with 70 Illustrations and Maps. $3.50 net_

Professor Hulbert tells all that is best worth recording of the history
of the river which gives the book its title, and of its commercial
present and its great commercial future. An immense amount of carefully
ordered information is here brought together into a most entertaining
and informing book. No mention of this volume can be quite adequate
that fails to take into account the extraordinary chapter which is
given to chronicling the mad achievements of that company of dare-devil
bipeds of both sexes who for decades have been sweeping over the Falls
in barrels and other receptacles, or who have gone dancing their dizzy
way on ropes or wires stretched from shore to shore above the boiling,
leaping water beneath.


The Hudson River

FROM OCEAN TO SOURCE

_Historical--Legendary--Picturesque_

By Edgar Mayhew Bacon

Author of “Chronicles of Tarrytown,” “Narragansett Bay,” etc.

_600 Pages, with 100 Illustrations, including a Sectional Map of the
Hudson River. $3.50 net_

“The value of this handsome quarto does not depend solely on the
attractiveness with which Mr. Bacon has invested the whole subject,
it is a kind of footnote to the more conventional histories, because
it throws light upon the life and habits of the earliest settlers. It
is a study of Dutch civilization in the New World, severe enough in
intentions to be accurate, but easy enough in temper to make a great
deal of humor, and to comment upon those characteristic customs and
habits which, while they escape the attention of the formal historian,
are full of significance.”--_Outlook._


The Connecticut River

AND THE

Valley of the Connecticut

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES FROM MOUNTAIN TO SEA

_Historical and Descriptive_

By Edwin Munroe Bacon

Author of “Walks And Rides in the Country Round About Boston,” etc.

_500 Pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net_

From ocean to source every mile of the Connecticut is crowded with
reminders of the early explorers, of the Indian wars, of the struggle
of the Colonies, and of the quaint, peaceful village existence of the
early days of the Republic. Beginning with the Dutch discovery, Mr.
Bacon traces the interesting movements and events which are associated
with this chief river of New England.


The Columbia River

_Its History--Its Myths--Its Scenery--Its Commerce_

By William Denison Lyman

Professor of History in Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington

_Fully Illustrated. Probable price, $3.50 net_

This is the first effort to present a book distinctively on the
Columbia River. It is the intention of the author to give some special
prominence to Nelson and the magnificent lake district by which it is
surrounded. As the joint possession of the United States and British
Columbia, and as the grandest scenic river of the continent, the
Columbia is worthy of special attention.


_In Preparation_:

_Each will be fully illustrated and will probably be published at $3.50
net_

  1.--Inland Waterways
        By Herbert Quick

  2.--The Mississippi River
        By Julius Chambers

  3.--The Story of the Chesapeake
        By Ruthella Mory Bibbins

  4.--Lake George and Lake Champlain
        By W. Max Reid
    Author of “The Mohawk Valley,” “The Story of Old Fort Johnson,” etc.




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 190: “irreconciliable” probably is a misprint for “irreconcilable”.

Page 226: Index entry for “Ship-builders” referenced page v, but the
term was split across pages vi-vii, and is shown here as being on page
vi.





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