are superior to those provided on most of the ocean
liners, and vastly better than anything offered by the "ocean tramps."
Many of the ships have special guest-cabins fitted up for their owners,
rivalling the cabins _de luxe_ of the ocean greyhounds. The speed of the
newer ships will average from fourteen to sixteen knots, and one of them
in a season will make as many as twenty round trips between Duluth and
Cleveland. Often one will tow two great steel barges almost as large as
herself, great ore tanks without machinery of any kind and mounting two
slender masts chiefly for signaling purposes, but also for use in case of
being cut adrift. For a time, the use of these barges, with their great
stowage capacity in proportion to their total displacement, was thought to
offer the cheapest way of carrying ore. One mining company went very
heavily into building these craft, figuring that every steamer could tow
two or three of them, giving thus for each engine and crew a load of
perhaps twenty-four thousand tons. But, seemingly, this expectation has
been disappointed, for while the barges already constructed are in active
use, most of the companies have discontinued building them. Indeed, at the
moment of the preparation of this book, there were but two steel barges
building in all the shipyards of the great lakes.

Another form of lake vessel of which great things were expected, but which
disappointed its promotors, is the "whaleback," commonly called by the
sailors "pigs." These are cigar-shaped craft, built of steel, their decks,
from the bridge aft to the engine-house, rounded like the back of a whale,
and carried only a few feet above the water. In a sea, the greater part of
the deck is all awash, and a trip from the bridge to the engine-house
means not only repeated duckings, but a fair chance of being swept
overboard. The first of these boats, called the "101," was built in
sections, the plates being forged at Cleveland, and the bow and stern
built at Wilmington, Del. The completed structure was launched at Duluth.
In after years she was taken to the ocean, went round Cape Horn, and was
finally wrecked on the north Pacific coast. At the time of the Columbian
Exposition, a large passenger-carrying whaleback, the "Christopher
Columbus," was built, which still plies on Lake Michigan, though there is
nothing discernible in the way of practical advantage in this design for
passenger vessels. For cargo carrying there would se