One of the most thrilling and interesting pages in the history of Great Lakes navigation, despite the comparative smallness of these fresh-water seas, is made up of “mysterious disappearances.” Ships have sailed from one port for another, and though at no time, perhaps, were they more than ten to thirty miles from shore, they have never been heard from again. Of some not even a spar or a bit of wreckage has been found. Only a few years ago the magnificent passenger steamer _Chicora_ left St. Joseph, Michigan, for Chicago on a stormy winter night. She was one of the finest, staunchest, and best-manned vessels on the Lakes. She sailed out into Lake Michigan--and thence into oblivion. Not a soul escaped to tell the story of her end. Through the years that have passed no sign of her has ever been found. Wreckers have sought for her, people along the shore have watched for years; but never a memento has the lake given up from that day to this. And this is only one of the many mysteries of the Inland Seas. [Illustration: A Treacherous Sea in its Garb of Greatest Beauty. One phase of Lake navigation.] Captains and sailors theorise and wonder to this day on the loss of the _Atlanta_, which went down in Lake Superior; and wonderful stories are told of the disappearance of the _Nashua_, the _Gilcher_, and the _Hudson_, and of the nameless vessels spoken of by old Lake mariners as “The Two Lost Tows” of Huron. The disappearance of these tows remains to this day unexplained. During the night the line which held them to their freighter consort parted and unknown to the steamer they fell behind. With the coming of dawn search was made for them, but in vain. What added to the uncanniness of the simultaneous disappearance of the two vessels was the fact that there was no storm at the time. No trace of the missing ships has ever been found. Almost as mysterious was the disappearance of the crack steamer _Alpena_ in Lake Michigan. When last seen she was thirty miles from Chicago. From that day to this no one has been able to say what became of her. Of the fifty-seven people who rode with her that tragic night, not one lived to tell the tale.