After the ore, lumber, one billion one hundred and sixty-five million feet [Footnote: Monthly Summary of Internal Commerce of the United States, December, 1911.] in one year (1911); a waning amount from the vanishing forests that once completely encircled these lakes. Alexander Pope, whose "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day" I have quoted (and would there were a Homer, Pope, or Kipling to sing this true legend), speaks of _Argo_ seeing "her kindred trees descend from Pelion to the Main"--from the mountain to the sea, where Jason's boat was launched. So, with the departure of the _Griffin_ from her Green Bay Island, might a prophetic poet have seen her masts beckoning all the kindred trees to the water, in which one hundred and sixty billion feet of pine have descended from the forests of Michigan alone, [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 57.] and that is but one of the circling States. And there is this singular fact to be added, that nearly a third of the annual cargo goes to the "Tonawandas," [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 54.] the "greatest lumber towns" in the world that have grown up practically on the very site of the shipyard at the mouth of Cayuga Creek, a little way above the falls. And after the ore and lumber, grain--the fleece of the fields, immensely more valuable than that of the forests; one hundred and fifty million bushels in one year and eleven million barrels of flour--a fortnight's bread supply for the entire world. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 49.] And after ore and lumber and grain, fuel and other bulky necessities of life. The casual relation between the pioneer building and journey of the _Griffin_ and these statistics cannot, of course, be established, but what no inspired human prophecy could have divined, or even the wildest dreaming of La Salle have imagined, is as sequential as the history that has been made to trace all new-world development in the wake of the caravels of Columbus. The storms of nature and the jealousies in human breasts thwarted La Salle's immediate ambitions, but what has come into that northern valley has followed closely in the path of his purposes, the path traced by his ship built of the trees of Niagara and furnished by the chandleries of Paris. The mystery of the vanishing of this pioneer vessel only enhances the glory of its venture and service--as its loss but gave new foil to the hardihood of La Salle and Tonty. We can imagine the golden-brown skins scattered over the blue waters as the bits of the body of the son of the king of Colchis strewn by Medea to detain the pursuers of the Argonauts. It was the first sacrifice to the valley for the fleece. In the depths of these Lakes or on their shores were buried the bones of these French mariners who, first of Europeans, trusted themselves to sails and west winds on those uncharted seas.