late-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, two thousand 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 currents, 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. Steam-ships
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 a map 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 the Mississippi is at a much lower level than the surface
of the lakes. These lakes, containing an area of some seventy-three
thousand 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.

Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."

THE RED RIVER PLAIN

The plain through which Red River flows is fertile beyond description.
At a little distance it seems one vast level plain, through which the
windings of the river are marked by a dark line of woods fringing the
whole length of the stream. Each tributary has also its line of
forest,--a line visible many miles away over the great sea of grass. As
one tr