in Lake Superior vessels, a gain of nearly 3,000,000
over the year before. The locks in the "Soo" canal, of which more later,
have twice had to be enlarged, while the Canadian Government has built a
canal of its own on the other side of the river. The discovery and
development of the wonderful deposits of iron ore at the head of the lake
have proved the greatest factors in the upbuilding of its commerce, and
the necessity for getting this ore to the mills in Illinois, Ohio, and
Pennsylvania, has resulted in the creation of a class of colossal
cargo-carriers on the lake that for efficiency and results, though not for
beauty, outdo any vessel known to maritime circles.

[Illustration: A VANISHING TYPE ON THE LAKES]

At the present time, when the project of a canal to connect the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans at the Central American Isthmus has almost passed out
of the sphere of discussion and into that of action, there is
suggestiveness in the part that the canal at the "Soo" played in
stimulating lake commerce. Until it was dug, the lake fleets grew but
slowly, and the steamers were but few and far between. Freight rates were
high, and the schooners and sloops made but slow passages. From an old
bill, of about 1835, we learn that freight rates between Detroit and
Cleveland, or Lake Erie points and Buffalo, were about as follows: Flour,
thirty cents a barrel; all grain, ten cents a bushel; beef, pork, ashes,
and whisky, thirteen cents a hundred pounds; skins and furs, thirty-one
cents a hundred weight; staves, from Detroit to Buffalo, $6.25 a thousand.
In 1831 there were but 111 vessels of all sorts on the lakes. In five
years, the fleet had grown to 262, and in 1845, the year when the first
steamer entered Lake Superior, to 493. In 1855, the year the "Soo" canal
was opened, there were in commission 1196 vessels, steam and sail, on the
unsalted seas. Then began the era of prodigious development, due chiefly
to that canal which Henry Clay, great apostle as he was of internal
improvements, said would be beyond the remotest range of settlements in
the United States or in the moon.

At the head of Lake Superior are almost illimitable beds of iron ore which
looks like rich red earth, and is scooped up by the carload with steam
shovels. Tens of thousands of men are employed in digging this ore and
transporting it to the nearest lake port--Duluth and West Superior being
the largest shipping points. Railroads built and equipped f