cutting canals, the four upper lakes have been united into one great waterway over which passes a large proportion of the productive wealth of the United States. Yearly one hundred million tons of freight pass through this lock, which is twice the record of London and Liverpool combined in their twelve-month season. With the opening of the “Soo” Canal the old conventional type of lake vessel began to disappear, and the designs were accommodated to the special demands of trade and natural conditions. The sailing vessel is coming to be a thing of the past, and the men who navigated the turbulent waters and were caught in gales and ice-jams in their wooden schooners rejoice in its disappearance. Since 1873 the shipyards have built less and less of this type of ship, and in our own day the steel vessel has come to take its place. The canoe served its purpose for fur trade, and the schooner for lumber; but the mineral industries of Lake Superior, and a little later the grain crops of the West, demanded a different kind of vessel. With the coming of steam power and the development of the “Soo” Canal came into being the style of vessel which has been well described as a “steel trough with a lid on it.” These vessels are built solely to carry as much cargo as is consistent with safety. They are huge steel freighters five and six hundred feet long, with a hold whose capacity is from six to twelve thousand tons of iron ore or a like amount of wheat. Astern is the machinery with a smoke stack and a row of cabins visible above the deck, and three or four hundred feet off--the length of a city block--is the deck-house, containing officers’ quarters with the wheel-house and bridge. Within this house is invariably to be found a man of rare skill and experience. To the casual observer the narrow lake passages and the crowded, winding channels and flats of the rivers would seem to preclude so long and unwieldy a craft, but the lake sailor can navigate her with the string of barges which she often has in tow through any passage with skill and ease. The bows of these vessels are high and rounded to meet and part the heavy waves of the frequent lake storms, and the whole shell is built with special regard to strength, both to resist these gales and to bear the impact of the thousands of tons of wheat and iron which are to be poured from grain elevators and iron bins into their holds. A crew of twenty-five men can handle one of these vessels, but they have no easy time on long stretches between ports. They must be ever on the alert in their short, swift trips from lake to lake.