more killed by the loss of the pioneer craft than was transatlantic steam
navigation ended by the disapproving verdict of the scientists. Nowhere in
the world is there such a spectacle of maritime activity, nowhere such a
continuous procession of busy cargo-ships as in the Detroit River, and
through the colossal locks of the "Soo" canals. In 1827 the first
steamboat reached the Sault Ste. Marie, bearing among her passengers
General Winfield Scott, on a visit of inspection to the military post
there, but she made no effort to enter the great lake. About five years
later, the first "smoke boat," as the Indians called the steamers, reached
Chicago, the pigmy forerunner of the fleet of huge leviathans that all the
summer long, nowadays, blacken Chicago's sky with their torrents of smoke,
and keep the hurrying citizens fuming at the open draw of a bridge. All
side-wheelers were these pioneers, wooden of course, and but sorry
specimens of marine architecture, but they opened the way for great
things. For some years longer the rushing torrent of the Ste. Marie's kept
Lake Superior tightly closed to steamboats, but about 1840 the richness of
the copper mines bordering upon that lake began to attract capital, and
the need of steam navigation became crying. In 1845 men determined to put
some sort of a craft upon the lake that would not be dependent upon the
whims of wind and sails for propulsion. Accordingly, the sloop "Ocean," a
little craft of fifteen tons, was fitted out with an engine and wheels at
Detroit and towed to the "Soo." There she was dragged out of the water and
made the passage between the two lakes on rollers. The "Independence," a
boat of about the same size, was treated in the same way later in the
year. Scarcely anything in the history of navigation, unless it be the
first successful application of steam to the propulsion of boats is of
equal importance with the first appearance of steamboats in Lake Superior.
It may be worth while to abandon for a moment the orderly historical
sequence of this narrative, to emphasize the wonderful contrast between
the commerce of Lake Superior in the days of the "Independence" and
now--periods separated by scarcely sixty years. To-day the commerce of
that lake is more than half of all the great lakes combined. It is
conducted in steel vessels, ranging from 1500 to 8500 tons, and every year
sees an increase in their size. In 1901 more than 27,000,000 tons of
freight were carried