CHAPTER I

THE GREAT LAKES

Standing in Lake Park, Chicago, beside the statue of General Logan, the supporter of Douglas and, later, of Lincoln, one has behind him the most marvellous city of modern times, and before him the southwesternmost of the Great Lakes. In front, glitter the waters over which La Salle journeyed three centuries ago. As in those days, they respond to the play of wind and weather, now calm as a sheet of glass, and now swept by sudden gales into turbulent waves and breakers; but the aspect of the land is such that were La Salle to visit it he would not recognize the spot. In place of a wilderness with an occasional group of low-lying Indian wigwams he would see a mighty city of buildings towering one hundred and fifty feet above the street and reaching down from twenty-five to fifty feet below ground. In place of a few canoes with their loads of furs and crews of savages, emerging from the narrow mouth of the Chicago River, seven thousand freighters and steamers with an aggregate tonnage greater than that floated in any other port in the world touch annually at the wharves along her splendid harbor front. These vessels and thousands of trains, running on tracks whose mileage is more than a third of that of the whole railway system of the United States, bring to her stockyards, her grain elevators, and her markets the herds and flocks of the western plains, the crops of the wheat-fields of the Northwest, and the merchandise of Europe and of Asia.

Chicago is the greatest distributing centre of this region, but the ports of Lake Erie handle many important industries whose traffic never enters Lake Michigan. The copper of the upper Michigan peninsula, the iron ore of the Wisconsin and Minnesota ranges, the coal of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and many a minor industry have had their share in building up the modern empire of the Great Lakes. The body of water about which this empire has risen is made up of five lakes: Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario, which together form the greatest inland waterway of the world. These lakes have an area of more than half that of the Black Sea or the Caspian, while Lake Superior is the largest body of fresh water on the globe. The four upper lakes are so nearly level that one canal with a single lock has given them a navigable length of over fourteen hundred miles. Lake Ontario, however, is effectively separated from the others by Niagara Falls and its attendant rapids. Other great inland bodies of water are directly connected with the ocean by navigable straits. The Mediterranean Sea is entered from the Atlantic by the Strait of Gibraltar, the Black Sea is connected in its turn with the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus; but Niagara closes direct navigation between the Great Lakes and the sea.

Canals have done much in the last hundred years to alleviate the natural inaccessibility of the lake system. Eighty-five years ago the Erie Canal gave a water route from the eastern end of Lake Erie to the Hudson River and thus to the Atlantic Ocean. Five years later the Welland Canal passed round Niagara Falls and connected Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and a third canal soon connected Lake Erie with the Ohio River. To-day a second era of canal building is upon us. The Welland Canal has been widened, making it possible for boats of moderate draught to go from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and thence by numerous small cuts around the rapids of the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. The Erie Canal is being enlarged, and engineers dream of a time when it will be made sufficiently wide and deep for sea-going vessels to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Erie. The Hennepin Canal at Chicago will open a route from Lake Michigan by the Illinois and Mississippi rivers into the Gulf of Mexico. Each state bordering on the Great Lakes as well as every province of the Dominion of Canada is to-day planning extensions of this canal system.

On the lonely shores past which La Salle and later explorers voyaged have been built villages, towns, and cities. This region is to-day the clearing-house of the commerce of the central plain of North America. From the western terminals of the lake routes railways pass over the plains and mountains of the Northwest to the Pacific; from their eastern ports stretch lines to the seaboard cities of the Atlantic. The farms of the Northwest send yearly one hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, six hundred million bushels of oats, and a billion bushels of corn to Chicago and Buffalo and thence to the eastern states and Europe. Coming from the west, the transcontinental roads pay tribute at Chicago and then choose between the route north of Lake Erie via Detroit, or south via Cleveland. They unite at Buffalo and follow the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson and then to New York or Boston; or they pass the Alleghanies farther south and reach the coast at Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Norfolk. In any case, by land or water, from the north or from the west, these products come to the Great Lakes, and are carried from their ports to the factories and markets of the East, or to steamers bound for Europe. This combination of land and water transportation makes the Great Lakes the keystone of American industry.

We have spoken of the four upper lakes as united commercially into one great sea. Before Lake Superior could be entered from the others one formidable obstacle had to be overcome. Between Lake Superior and Lake Huron was a ledge of rocks half a mile long over which the waters ran in swirling rapids, forming the Sault (or Rapids of) Ste. Marie. At this point the famous “Soo” Canal has been constructed with a single lock which is the largest and costliest in the world, though it will soon be surpassed by those at the entrance of the Panama Canal. This canal was built in 1855, when the presence of iron and copper deposits in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota was first discovered. To-day the tonnage passing yearly through it runs up into figures that are almost beyond belief; but these figures form the best single index of the traffic of the Great Lakes. In the seven open months of 1907 there passed through the “Soo” one hundred million tons of freight valued at four hundred and fifty million dollars. This tonnage is nine times that of the Suez Canal. The mines whose discovery made necessary the cutting of the “Soo” Canal supply a large part of this freight. Of iron ore alone they send thirty-three million tons to the foundries and furnaces of Pittsburg and other centres, where the raw material is manufactured into articles of iron and steel which form the basis of modern civilized existence. From the deposits of the upper Michigan peninsula comes yearly one-seventh of the world’s supply of copper.

These figures give some idea of the importance of the Great Lakes in the economic development of the United States. Three hundred years have seen this region converted from a wilderness peopled by Indian tribes to the uses of modern civilization. This time might well be shortened, since at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Great Lakes and bordering lands were still occupied by the red man and a few small villages and trading stations of the whites. It is indeed wonderful what changes a century has witnessed.

[Illustration: The “Soo” Canal. Copyright, 1904, by Detroit Photographic Co. Photograph of ships in a canal taken from shore.]