This possibility of the actual overcrowding, of the Lakes is one that I have discussed with half a hundred captains and owners. It offers a new “future” for romance and tragedy on the Great Lakes. Since the day the first strong-hearted explorers sailed up the Inland Seas on the _Griffin_, the unusual, the tragic, and the romantic have made up thrilling chapters in their history--chapters in battle, piracy, and adventure, whose heroes and their exploits rank on even terms with Paul Jones, Kidd, Morgan, Hudson, and other worthies of the open seas. The romance of the old days, as upon the ocean, is gone; a new romance has taken its place--the romance of iron and steel and steam; and a new and greater peril than that born of wind and storm, many believe, is fast developing to face the fresh-water mariner of the future. This is the peril of collision--not as it exists to-day, but as it may exist a few years from now. Already this peril is an ever-present menace upon the Great Lakes, and hardly a day passes during the season of navigation that collisions do not occur. The Lakes, it is probable, will never be able to take entire care of the enormous commerce of the East and West, and as a result ships will continue to increase until, like the streets of a great city with their rushing automobiles and unceasing pandemonium of cars, vans, and seething multitudes, these water highways will become dangerously crowded with the vehicles of trade. Already the Lake Carriers’ Association seems to foresee the danger of future navigation on the Inland Seas, and has recommended that east and west courses be established, so that up-bound vessels will be far out of the path of down-bound ships. This is but the first step toward government legislation, many believe, that will bring about the “cutting up of the Lakes into roads,” when vessels bound for given ports will have prescribed courses to travel, from which they will deviate, unless with good cause, at the risk not only of their safety, but of a heavy fine. Thus, it is probable, will the Lakes be made navigable for the myriad ships of the future, when, in the words of one ship-owner, “A pall of smoke will hover overhead day and night for seven months in the year, and when the world will witness water commerce as it has never existed before, and as it will never exist elsewhere on the globe.” This is looking into the future; but one acquainted with the Lake life of to-day cannot but see the picture. And this picture brings one to the real motif of this chapter--a description of the “human interest side” of America’s vast “unsalted seas,” that side in which the romantic and the tragic and not the realities of statistics and economic progress play the absorbing parts, and which should serve to make them of interest to hundreds of thousands of people who have yet their first trips to take upon them.