Well, there is one particular “tub” which offers this cheap transportation once a week, which cost a little over a million and a quarter dollars! Every bit of woodwork in the parlours, promenades, and dining-rooms is of Mexican mahogany. It carries with it a collection of oil paintings which cost twenty-five thousand dollars. Every one of four hundred state-rooms is equipped with a telephone and there is a telephone “central,” so that passengers may converse with one another or with the ship’s officers without leaving their berths. There are reading-rooms, and music-rooms, and writing-rooms, magnificently upholstered and furnished; and on more than one of these Lake palaces passengers may amuse themselves at shuffle-board, quoits, and other games which fifty millions of Americans believe are characteristic only of ocean craft. Another of these “tubs”--the _Eastern States_--broke Lake records in 1907 by berthing and feeding fifteen hundred people on a single trip; and the new _City of Cleveland_ will accommodate two thousand without crowding. Notwithstanding the extreme cheapness of their rates of transportation, Lake passenger vessels constantly vie with one another in maintaining a high standard of appearance and comfort. This is illustrated in the interesting case of the _City of St. Ignace_, which was built a number of years ago at a cost of $375,000. Since that time, in painting, decorating, refurnishing, etc., and not including the cost of broken machinery or expense of crew, nearly $500,000 have been spent in the maintenance of this vessel, a sum considerably greater than her original cost. A Government law says that thirty per cent. of the cost of a vessel must be expended in this kind of maintenance before that particular boat can change its name. The _City of St. Ignace_ could have changed her name four times! And the case of the _St. Ignace_ is only one of many. [Illustration: Hickory Island at the Mouth of Detroit River. From a Photograph by Manning Studio, Detroit. ]