han
Copper Harbor, and more picturesque. Landing a few of our company, we
sailed to Ontonagon, the largest of these copper-mine towns (perhaps two
thousand in population), and situated upon a sand reach at the mouth of
its river, which leads to the Great Minnesota Mine, eighteen miles
distant.

Early in the clear morning of the 5th of August, we were moving up
Allouez Bay. Sounding slowly over its bar, and passing Minnesota Point
and Island, between the mouths of the Rivers St. Louis and Nemadji, we
arrived at Superior City, our destined haven.

_Superior City_, by its pretentious name, great distance, and our
expectations, had risen to much importance in our imagination, but the
actual scene presented a wide contrast. A large town--or metropolis--on
a poor harbor, without interior resources or communications, had been
hastily projected. It is called the head of ocean navigation, and the
terminus of many proposed but as yet imaginary railroads. While the
titles to all the land are still in litigation, the wilderness shades
its streets, and, saving the rare arrival of the Indian mail carrier on
snow shoes, during six months of intense cold, they are isolated from
all humanity. Its grand prospectus, some five years before, had drawn
there about three thousand people; and soon afterward, starved and
disappointed, nearly all, save perhaps five hundred, had deserted. About
two miles of streets, planked from the mud, with frame dwellings, had
been constructed, and they had already attained the first municipal
blessing--_taxes-_-to the total of $45,000, payable by this feeble
remnant of a settlement, mainly of abandoned dwellings. Should the
railroads so frequently surveyed and designed to terminate here be
really built, Superior City may see, to some extent, in future years,
somewhat of that prosperity which its projectors, blinded by their
hopes, had thought already realized.

Few positions are more picturesque. In front, the shores of Portland and
Minnesota rise in beautiful grandeur, and the bay and harbor, although
imperfect, are richly wooded and very graceful; while, all the way
thither, from La Pointe, the lake's waters, lying among the mountains,
shadowed by their heavy foliage, remind one much of the scenery of the
Lower Danube. This _ghost of a city_ had not much left of interest, and
we passed our day in arranging for the journey across the country
southward to St. Paul.

And here we found ourselves really _pi