Destined to be one of the greatest if not the greatest manufacturing city on earth, Buffalo is also one of the most beautiful. To-day she possesses four hundred miles of asphalt pavement--more smooth pavement than is found in Paris, Washington, or any other city. She is the greatest “home city” in America. Out of a population of more than four hundred thousand people, the home-owning population is only thirty thousand below the total registered vote. As a convention city she has only one rival, and that is Detroit. Nature has showered blessings upon her without stint. And I confidently believe that many of the young men and women of Buffalo will live to see the day when one city will stretch along the entire Niagara frontier, with a population exceeded by that of only one or at most two other American cities. [Illustration: Some of the Grain Elevators at Duluth, which Have a Combined Storage Capacity of 35,550,000 Bushels.] VII A Trip on a Great Lakes Freighter In my previous chapters I have described nearly every phase of Lake shipping, with the exception of one, which, while not being vitally concerned with the story of our fresh-water marine, is still one of the most interesting, and perhaps the least known of all. That is the “inner life” of one of our Great Lakes freighters; the life of the crew and the favoured few who are privileged to travel as passenger guests of the owners upon one of these steel monsters of the Inland Seas. In more than one way our Lake marine is unusual; in this it is unique. Recently one of the finest steel yachts that ever sailed fresh water came up the St. Lawrence to the Lakes. Its owner was a millionaire many times over. With his wife he had cruised around the world, but for the first time they had come to the Lakes. I had the fortune to converse with him upon his yacht about the craft of other countries, and as we lay at anchor in the Detroit River there passed us the greatest ship on the Inland Seas--the _Thomas F. Cole_; and, addressing his wife, I asked, “How would you like to take a cruise on a vessel like that?”