The commerce of the great American lakes has enormously increased within recent years, as the statistics of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal sufficiently prove. In 1872 the registered tonnage that passed through the canal was under a million tons; in 1880 it was only 1,734,000 tons; and in 1886 it had increased to 4,219,000 tons. The growth of the trade continues. The navigation, it will be remembered, is only open for about seven months of the year, usually commencing about the first week of May, and closing in the first week of December. If it were open all the year round, like that of the Suez Canal, the difference of business, in favour of the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, as compared with the Suez and other great canals, would be much more marked than it is. The tonnage carried through the canal in 1886 was made up of— Coal 1,009,000 tons. Iron ore 2,089,000 ” Copper 39,000 ” Salt 159,000 ” Iron and steel 115,000 ” Wheat 18,991,000 bushels. Flour 1,759,000 barrels. On the St. Mary’s Falls Canal in 1888 there were carried no less than 6,411,000 net tons (2000 lbs.) of freight and 25,558 passengers, the freight including nearly 19 million bushels of wheat, over 2½ million tons of lumber (timber), about 2¼ million tons of coal, and 2,190,000 barrels of flour. The total number of vessels that used the canal in that year was 7803, of which 5305 were steamers. The average cargo carried by each vessel, large and small, was about 822 tons, being an increase of 40 per cent. on that of the previous year. This is a development that can hardly be paralleled in the history of transportation. Taking the navigation season at seven months, it means an average of 916,000 tons per month passing through the canal, or at the rate of about 11 million tons a year, which is roughly about double the tonnage that makes use of the Suez Canal.