The fifth variety is a silicious hematite found with manganese, which, when mixed with other ores, produces an excellent quality of iron. Very little of this ore has been mined as yet, and its relative value is not ascertained. The best iron cannot be manufactured from one variety, but by mixing ores strength and ductility both are obtained. England sends to Russia and Sweden for magnetic ores to mix with those produced in Lancashire, for the manufacture of steel. The fires of Sheffield would soon go out if the manufactures in that town were dependent on English ore alone. The iron-masters there could not make steel good enough for a blacksmith's use, to say nothing of that needed for cutlery, if they were cut off from foreign magnetic ores. Here, at Lake Superior, those necessary for the production of the best of steel lie side by side. A mixture of the hematite and magnetic gives a metal superior, in every respect, to any that England can produce. This one fact settles the question of the future of this region. It is to become one of the great iron-marts of the world. It is to give, by and by, the supremacy to America in the production of steel. It is already settled, by trial, that every grade of iron now in use in arts and manufactures can be produced here at Lake Superior by mixing the various ores. The miners are a hardy set of men, rough, uncouth, but enterprising. They live in small cottages, make excellent wages, drink whiskey, and rear large families. How happens it that in all new communities there is such an abundance of children? They throng every doorway, and by every house we see them tumbling in the dirt. Nearly every woman has a child in her arms. We cannot expect to see the refinements and luxuries of old communities in a country where the stumps have not yet been cleared from the streets, and where the spruces and hemlocks are still waving above the cottages of the settlers, but here are the elements of society. These hard-handed men are developing this region, earning a livelihood for themselves and enriching those who employ them. Towns are springing into existence. We find Ishpeming rising out of a swamp. Imagine a spruce forest standing in a bog where the trees are so thick that there is hardly room enough for the lumbermen to swing their axes, the swamp being a stagnant pool of dark-colored water covered with green slime! An enterprising town-builder purchased this bog for a song, and has laid out a city. Here it is,--dwelling-houses and stores standing on posts driven into the mud, or resting on the stumps. He has filled up the streets with the _débris_ from the mines. Frogs croak beneath the dwellings, or sun themselves on the sills. The town is not thus growing from the swamp because there is no solid land, but because the upland has exhaustless beds of iron ore beneath, too valuable to be devoted to building purposes.