The year 1836 marks an important era in the navigation of the Great Lakes, for in that year the first cargo of grain from Lake Michigan arrived at Buffalo, brought by the brig _John Kenzie_ from Grand River. It consisted of three thousand bushels of wheat. Previous to that date the commerce of the lakes had been all westward, and, curiously enough, the cargoes carried west consisted for the most part of flour, grain and other supplies for the new western settlements. In 1840 a regular movement of grain from west to east had been established. In the early years of the grain trade the loading and unloading of vessels was a very slow and irksome business. As much as two or three days might be required to unload a cargo of 5,000 bushels. In the winter of 1842-43 the first grain elevator was built at Buffalo, and a new system of handling grain introduced which was to prove of incalculable benefit to the trade. The schooner _Philadelphia_, of 123 tons, was the first to be unloaded by the elevator. The Canadian steam traffic on Lake Erie commenced with the steamers _Chippewa_ and _Emerald_, plying between Chippewa and Buffalo; the _Kent_, which foundered in 1845; the _Ploughboy_, owned by a company in Chatham, and the _Clinton_, owned by Robert Hamilton, of Queenston. A much larger Canadian steam traffic developed on Lake Huron. One of the earliest passenger steamers on the Georgian Bay was the _Gore_, of 200 tons, built at Niagara in 1838, and called after the Lieutenant-Governor of that name. That boat, which had plied for some years between Niagara and Toronto, was placed on the route between Sturgeon Bay and Sault Ste. Marie. On Lake Huron proper, the _Bruce Mines_ was probably the earliest Canadian steamer. She was employed in carrying copper ore from the Bruce mines to Montreal, and was wrecked in 1854. Shortly after, on the completion of the Northern Railway, in 1854, the company, with a view to developing their interests, entered into a contract with an American line of steamers to run from Collingwood to Lake Michigan ports tri-weekly and once a week to Green Bay. In 1862 six large propellers were put on the route. Later, a line of first-class passenger steamers began to ply twice a week from Collingwood and Owen Sound to Duluth at the head of Lake Superior. Among the steamers of that line, which became very popular, were the _Chicora_, _Francis Smith_, _Cumberland_, and _Algoma_. These in turn were superseded by the magnificent steamers of the Canadian Pacific and other lines elsewhere referred to. [Illustration: THE “EMPIRE.” Built at Cleveland in 1844; a notable steamer in her day, being the largest, the fastest, and the most handsomely fitted-up vessel on the Upper Lakes at that time; ran many years between Buffalo and Chicago.]