Grain is handled in much the same manner as iron ore. Millions of bushels come into the ports of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior,--to Fort William, Duluth, West Superior, Milwaukee, Chicago, and minor ports,--and are stored in huge fireproof buildings on the water front, known as grain elevators. These structures are of all sizes, holding from thirty and forty thousand bushels of wheat to a million or more. They are equipped with machinery for scouring, cleaning, and drying the grain, and for pouring it into the vessels. The unloading is done either by means of an endless chain of buckets which work on a long spout or “leg” lowered into the hatch, or by “pipes” or shafts from the elevators into the fifteen or twenty hatches. Down these pipes the grain rushes with a buzzing sound at the rate of one hundred and twenty-five thousand bushels an hour. For the unloading process the grain is drawn out by suction through similar pipes, the force supplied by powerful engines which give a pressure of several hundred pounds to the square inch. In 1907 grain came into the lake ports which would have made, when converted into flour, forty-three million barrels of flour. Reckoning that two hundred and fifty one-pound loaves can be made from a barrel, this grain would have supplied the world with ten billion loaves of bread. Chicago and Buffalo, the principal gateways of entrance and exit for grain, have large systems of elevators with a capacity of millions of bushels, and in the winter months these are not sufficient, but the ice-bound vessels as they wait in the harbors of Chicago and Lake Superior become floating storage warehouses, ready to sail east with their cargoes the moment navigation is open. These cargo freighters, with the huge barges of similar construction that they tow behind them in lines of two or three, are the most characteristic vessels of the lakes. Another style of ship, of which much was expected at the time of its invention, was the whaleback, a long, cigar-shaped steel craft whose decks were so low that they were constantly washed by the waves. These boats were designed, as are all lake boats, to have the greatest possible empty space for cargo, a condition made possible by the fact that in their short voyages they do not need to carry large stores of coal or provisions. The whaleback is a blunt-ended hulk with rounded gunwales, which from its appearance and from its manner of rooting and rolling about in the waves has gained the lake nickname of the “pig.” These vessels are unique and picturesque, but not so successful as the usual style of freighters. Moreover, they have reached their maximum size and cannot be improved or enlarged without change of shape. [Illustration: Grain Elevator and Lumber Jam. Copyright, 1902, by Detroit Photographic Co. In the distance a grain elevator with numerous silos. In the foreground, a logjam on the surface of the water.]