The Hagarty and Crangle Line, running between ports at the head of lakes Superior and Michigan to ports on the River St. Lawrence, has two large steel steamers, the _Algonquin_ and the _Rosedale_, on the Upper Lakes, and the steamer _Persia_ which plies between the head of Lake Ontario and Montreal. Hamilton has three “Merchants Lines” in the Upper Lakes’ shipping business—Mackay’s, Fairgreaves’, and Thomas Myles & Sons, owning in addition to other lake craft such fine steel and composite steamers as the _Sir L. Tilley_, _Lake Michigan_, _Arabian_ and the _Myles_. The Calvin Company’s Line, of Garden Island, Kingston, has four steamers, four lake barges, and four tug steamers running between Lake Superior ports, Kingston and Montreal. The Collins Bay Rafting Company has on the same route three steamers, three lake barges, and two tug steamers. The Jacques & Co.’s Line has two steamers running from the head of Lake Erie and one from the head of Lake Ontario to Montreal. The Great Northern Transit Company, with headquarters at Collingwood, has four freight and passenger steamers—the _Majestic_, _Pacific_, _Atlantic_, and _Northern Belle_—keeping up a well-appointed service twice a week from Collingwood to Sault Ste. Marie, and having connection with the Northern Railway to Toronto. The _Majestic_, built at Collingwood, is a steel screw steamer, 230 feet long, 36 feet wide, 1,600 tons register, and cost $125,000. She has compound condensing engines of 1,200 horse-power, and is fitted up internally with great elegance. The North Shore Navigation Company has five excellent steamers plying on the Georgian Bay and northern shores of Lake Huron from Collingwood and Owen Sound to Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island, where connections are made with American lines of steamers to Chicago and other ports on Lake Michigan. The steamers are the _City of Collingwood_, 1,400 tons; _City of Midland_, 1,300 tons; _City of Toronto_, 800 tons; _City of Parry Sound_ and _City of London_, each 600 tons. Reference will be made hereafter to steamers plying on Lake Ontario and the River St. Lawrence. THE TRANSPORTATION BUSINESS. In the matter of transportation it may be interesting to learn how a consignment of wheat is “handled” from the time it leaves the field in Manitoba, where it is grown, until it reaches its destination in Liverpool or London. When there were only a few hundred thousand bushels to be sent to the seaboard, the means of transport were very simple and primitive. It was carried on men’s backs from one conveyance to another, and floated down rivers or shallow canals in small boats or on rafts of timber. But when the thousands became millions the problem of cheap transportation became a serious one. American ingenuity rose to the occasion and invented the most marvellous of labour-saving appliances—THE GRAIN ELEVATOR. [Illustration: C. P. R. GRAIN ELEVATOR AT FORT WILLIAM, ONT.]