Of all Lake mysteries, that of the _Bannockburn_ is one of the freshest in the memory. The ill-fated vessel left Duluth in the days of the “ice devils,” a big, powerful freighter with a crew of twenty-two men. What happened to her will never be known. She went out one morning, was sighted the next evening--and that was the last. Not a sign of her floated ashore, not one of her crew was found. For eighteen months the ice-cold waters of Lake Superior guarded their secret. Then one day an oar was found in the driftwood at the edge of the Michigan wilderness. Around the oar was wrapped a piece of tarpaulin, and when this was taken off, a number of rude letters were revealed scraped into the wood--letters which spelled the word B-a-n-n-o-c-k-b-u-r-n. This oar is all that remains to-day to tell the story of the missing freighter. And now, by certain superstitious sailors, the _Bannockburn_ is supposed to be the Flying Dutchman of the Inland Seas and there are those who will tell you in all earnestness that on icy nights, when the heaven above and the sea below were joined in one black pall, they have descried the missing _Bannockburn_--a ghostly apparition of ice, scudding through the gloom. And this is but one more illustration of the fact that all of the romance in the lives of men who “go down to the sea in ships” is not confined to the big oceans. Unnumbered thousands of tourists travel over the Lakes to-day with hardly a conception of the unrevealed interests about them. What attracts them is the beauty and freshness of the trip; when they go upon the ocean they wonder, and dream, and read history. Tragedy has its allurement for the pleasure-seeker, as well as romance; and while certain phases of tragedy are always regrettable, it is at least interesting to be able at times to recall them. The Lake traveller, for instance, would feel that his trip had more fully repaid him if his captain should say, pointing to a certain spot, “There is where Perry and his log ships of war met the British: the battle was fought right here”; or, “There is where the _Lady Elgin_ went down, with a loss of three hundred lives.” [Illustration: A View of the “Zimmerman.” After a collision with another freighter.]