“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.