“And in looking into the future we must take another item into consideration,” said President Livingstone to me. “And that is package freight. It is almost impossible to estimate the amount that is carried, but it is enormous, and has already saved the country millions in transportation.” There is one other “item” that is carried in the ships of the Inland Seas--not a very large one, judging by bulk alone, but one which shows that the possibilities of romance are not yet gone from modern commerce. Perhaps, sometime in the not distant future, you may have the fortune to see a Lake ship under way. She is long, and black, and ugly, you may say; she carries neither guns nor fighting men, nor is she under convoy of a man-o’-war. Yet it may be she carries a richer prize than any galleon that ever sailed the Spanish Main. She is a “treasure ship” of the Inland Seas, bringing down copper from the great Bonanzas of the North. The steamer _Flagg_ holds the record, carrying down as she did in 1906 $1,250,000 worth of metal. [Illustration: A Shaft on One of the Ranges.] Once a copper ship was lost---- But I will keep that story a little longer, for it properly belongs in “The Romance and Tragedy of the Inland Seas,” in which I pledge myself to show that the great salt oceans are not the only treeless and sandless wastes rich in mysterious, romantic, and tragic happenings. IV Passenger Traffic and Summer Life In a previous article I have shown how the saving to the people of the United States by reason of Great Lake freight transportation is more than five hundred million dollars a year, or, in other words, an indirect “dividend” to the nation of six dollars for every man, woman, and child in it. Yet in describing how this enormous saving was accomplished I touched upon but one phase of what I might term the “saving power” of the Lakes. To this must be added that dividend of millions of dollars which indirectly goes into the pockets of the people because of the cheapness of water transportation and because of the extraordinarily low cost at which one may enjoy, both afloat and ashore, the summer life of the Lakes. These two phases of Lake life are among the least known, and have been most neglected. [Illustration: The “North West.” One of the finest passenger steamers on the Great Lakes.]