[145] Lake Ontario, which lies nearest to the Atlantic, is 172 miles in length, about 60 miles in extreme breadth, and 483 miles in circumference. Lake Erie is about 265 miles in length, from 30 to 60 miles in breadth, and 529 miles in circumference; while Lake Huron is 240 miles long, from 186 to 220 miles wide, and 1000 miles in circumference. Michigan, which is connected with Lake Huron by a navigable strait, is 300 miles in length, 75 miles in width, and 920 miles in circumference, having a superficies of 16,200 square miles. But Lake Superior is the largest of all the lakes, being no less than 360 miles in length, and 140 miles in breadth, with a circumference of 1116 miles; the line of coast formed by the margins of these lakes extends to upwards of 4000 miles, while they are all, nearly throughout their entire length and breadth, navigable for vessels of the largest description, their depth varying, except within a short distance of the shores, from 12 to 200 fathoms. [146] Chicago, situated on the south-west shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of a river of the same name, was in 1830 a mere station in the midst of a forest where a few Americans traded with the Indians in furs. Ten years afterwards it had 4470 inhabitants; but in 1850 these had increased to 27,620, and in 1853 to 60,552. In 1860, when I visited that place, it had become a great city, with somewhere about 150,000 inhabitants, numerous handsome stone buildings, and magnificent stores; those for grain capable of containing, according to the annual report of the Chicago Board of Trade, 5,475,000 bushels of corn, with a capacity for shipping no less than 1,835,000 bushels each day. Indeed, I witnessed the loading of a brigantine with 9000 bushels of wheat from one of these stores in two hours! [147] The first vessel ever built on western waters was the brig _Dean_, launched at Alleghany City, Pa., in 1806. [148] In a letter I received, January 5th, 1855, from Mr. E. P. Dorr, the President of the Buffalo Board of Trade, he says: “The Welland Canal, as it now stands, is used almost wholly by American vessels. It is the key of the other canals; its length is 28 miles, and there are 28 locks, as Lake Erie is 256 feet above Lake Ontario: but a new and enlarged canal is in process of construction, which, when finished, will admit vessels of large tonnage.”