900 feet in depth-one vast spring of purest crystal
water, so cold, that during summer months its waters are like ice itself,
and so clear, that hundreds of feet below the surface the rocks stand out
as distinctly as though seen through plate-glass. Follow in fancy the
outpourings of this wonderful basin; seek its future course in Huron,
Erie, and Ontario, in that wild leap from the rocky ledge which makes
Niagara famous through the world. Seek it farther still, in the quiet
loveliness of the Thousand Isles; in the whirl and sweep of the Cedar
Rapids; in the silent rush of the great current under the rocks at the
foot of Quebec. Ay, and even farther away still, down where the lone
Laurentian Hills come forth to look again upon that water whose earliest
beginnings they cradled along the shores of Lake Superior. There, close
to the sounding billows of the Atlantic, 2000 miles from Superior, these
hills--the only ones that ever last-guard the great gate by which the St.
Lawrence seeks the sea.

There are rivers whose current, running red with the silt and mud of
their soft alluvial shores, carry far into the ocean the record of their
muddy progress; but this glorious river system, through its many lakes
and various names, is ever the same crystal current, flowing pure from
the fountain-head of Lake Superior. Great cities stud its shores; but
they are powerless to dim the transparency of its waters. Steamships
cover the broad bosom of its lakes and estuaries; but they change not the
beauty of the water-no more than the fleets of the world mark the waves
of the ocean. Any person looking at the map's of the region bounding the
great lakes of North America will be struck by the absence of rivers
flowing into Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron from the south; in fact,
the drainage of the states bordering these lakes on the south is
altogether carried off by the valley of the Mississippi-it follows that
this valley of Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface of
the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some 73,000 square miles,
are therefore an immense reservoir held high over the level of the great
Mississippi valley, from which they are separated by a barrier of slight
elevation and extent.

It is not many years ago since an enterprising Yankee proposed to
annihilate Canada, dry up Niagara, and "fix British creation" generally,
by diverting the current of Lake Erie, through a deep canal, into the
Ohio River;