"Sunday, October 23—133d Day: Everybody pretty weak. Slept or rested all day, and then managed to get in enough wood before dark. Read part of divine service. Suffering in our feet. No foot-gear.

"Monday, October 24—134th Day: A hard night.

"Tuesday, October 25—135th Day.

"Wednesday, October 26—136th day.

"Thursday, October 27—137th Day: Iverson broken down.

"Friday, October 28—138th Day: Iverson died during early morning.

"Saturday, October 29th—139th Day: Dressier died during the night.

"Sunday, October 30—140th Day: Boyd and Cortz died during the night. Mr. Collins dying."

This is the last entry. The hand that penned it, as the manuscript shows, was as firm and steady as though the writer were sitting in his library at home. Words are spelled out in full, punctuation carefully observed. How long after these words were set down DeLong too died, none may ever know; but when Melville, whom Nindemann and Noros had found after sore privations, reached the spot of the death camp, he came upon a sorrowful scene. "I came upon the bodies of three men partly buried in the snow," he writes, "one hand reaching out, with the left arm of the man reaching way above the surface of the snow—his whole left arm. I immediately recognized them as Captain DeLong, Dr. Ambler, and Ah Sam, the cook.... I found the journal about three or four feet in the rear of DeLong—that is, it looked as though he had been lying down, and with his left hand tossed the book over his shoulder to the rear, or to the eastward of him."

How these few words bring the whole scene up before us! Last, perhaps, of all to die, lying by the smoldering fire, the ashes of which were in the middle of the group of bodies when found, DeLong puts down the final words which tell of the obliteration of his party, tosses the book wearily over his shoulder, and turns on his side to die. And then the snow, falling gently, pitifully covers the rigid forms and holds them in its pure embrace until loyal friends seek them out, and tell to the world that again brave lives have been sacrificed to the ogre of the Arctic.

While DeLong and his gallant comrades of the United States Navy were dying slowly in the bleak desert of the Lena delta, another party of brave Americans were pushing their way into the Arctic circle on the Atlantic side of the North American continent. The story of that starvation camp in desolate Siberia was to be swiftly repeated on the shores of Smith Sound, and told this time with more pathetic detail, for of Greely's expedition, numbering twenty-five, seven were rescued after three years of Arctic suffering and starving, helpless, and within one day of death. They had seen their comrades die, destroyed by starvation and cold, and passing away in delirium, babbling of green fields and plenteous tables. From the doorway of the almost collapsed tent, in which the seven survivors were found, they could see the row of shallow graves in which their less fortunate comrades lay interred—all save two, whom they had been too weak to bury. No story of the Arctic which has come to us from the lips of survivors, has half the pathos, or a tithe of the pitiful interest, possessed by this story of Greely.

Studying to-day the history of the Greely expedition, it seems almost as if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest Passage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years, conducting, meanwhile, scientific observations, and pressing exploratory work with all possible zeal. The enterprise was part of a great international plan, by which each of the great nations was to establish and maintain such an observation station within the Arctic circle, while observations were to be carried on in all at once. The United States agreed to maintain two such stations, and the one at Point Barrow, north of Alaska, was established, maintained, and its tenants brought home at the end of the allotted time without disaster.

Greely was a lieutenant in the United States Army, and his expedition was under the immediate direction of the Secretary of War—at that time Robert Lincoln, son of the great war President. Some criticism was expressed at the time and, indeed, still lingers in the books of writers on the subject, concerning the fitness of an army officer to direct an Arctic voyage. But the purpose of the expedition was largely to collect scientific facts bear-on weather, currents of air and sea, the duration and extent of magnetic and electrical disturbances—in brief, data quite parallel to those which the United States signal service collects at home. So the Greely expedition was made an adjunct to the signal service, which in its turn is one of the bureaus of the War Department. Two army lieutenants, Lockwood and Klingsbury, and twenty men from the rank and file of the army and signal corps, were selected to form the party. An astronomer was needed, and Edward Israel, a young graduate of the University of Michigan, volunteered. George W. Rice volunteered as photographer. Both were enlisted in the army and given the rank of sergeant.

It is doubtful if any polar expedition was ever more circumstantially planned—none has resulted more disastrously, save Sir John Franklin's last voyage. The instructions of the War Department were as explicit as human foresight and a genius for detail could make them. Greely was to proceed to some point on Lady Franklin Bay, which enters the mainland of North America at about 81 deg. 44' north latitude, build his station, and prepare for a two-years' stay. Provisions for three years were supplied him. At the end of one year it was promised, a relief ship should be sent him, which failing for any cause to reach the station, would cache supplies and dispatches at specified points. A year later a second relief ship would be sent to bring the party home, and if for any reason this ship should fail to make the station, then Greely was to break camp and sledge to the southward, following the east coast of the mainland, until he met the vessel, or reached the point at which fresh supplies were to be cached. No plan could have been better devised—none ever failed more utterly.

Arctic travel is an enigma, and it is an enigma never to be solved twice in the same way. Whalers, with the experience of a lifetime in the frozen waters, agree that the lessons of one voyage seldom prove infallible guides for the conduct of the next. Lieutenant Schwatka, a veteran Arctic explorer, said in an official document that the teachings of experience were often worse than useless in polar work. And so, though the Washington authorities planned for the safety of Greely according to the best guidance that the past could give them, their plans failed completely. The first relief ship did, indeed, land some stores—never, as the issue showed, to be reached by Greely—but the second expedition, composed of two ships, the "Proteus" and the "Yantic," accomplished nothing. The station was not reached, practically no supplies were landed, the "Proteus" was nipped by the ice and sunk, and the remnant of the expedition came supinely home, reporting utter failure. It is impossible to acquit the commanders of the two ships engaged in this abortive relief expedition of a lack of determination, a paucity of courage, complete incompetence. They simply left Greely to his fate while time still remained for his rescue, or at least for the convenient deposit of the vast store of provisions they brought home, leaving the abandoned explorers to starve.

The history of the Greely expedition and its achievements may well be sketched hastily, before the story of the catastrophe which overwhelmed it is told. As it was the most tragic of expeditions save one, Sir John Franklin's, so, too, it was the most fruitful in results, of any American expedition to the time of the writing of this book. Proceeding by the whaler "Proteus" in August, 1881, to the waters of the Arctic zone, Greely reached his destination with but little trouble, and built a commodious and comfortable station on the shores of Discovery Bay, which he called Fort Conger after a United States Senator from Michigan. A month remained before the Arctic night would set in, but the labor of building the house left little time for explorations, which were deferred until the following summer. Life at the station was not disagreeable. The house, stoutly built, withstood the bitter cold. Within there were books and games, and through the long winter night the officers beguiled the time with lectures and reading. Music was there, too, in impressive quantity, if not quality. "An organette with about fifty yards of music," writes Lieutenant Greely, "afforded much amusement, being particularly fascinating to our Esquimau, who never wearied grinding out one tune after another." The rigid routine of Arctic winter life was followed day by day, and the returning sun, after five months' absence, found the party in perfect health and buoyant spirits. The work of exploration on all sides began, the explorers being somewhat handicapped by the death of many of the sledge dogs from disease. Lieutenant Greely, Dr. Pavy, and Lieutenant Lockwood each led a party, but to the last named belong the honors, for he, with Sergeant Brainard and an Esquimau, made his way northward over ice that looked like a choppy sea suddenly frozen into the rigidity of granite, until he reached latitude 83 deg. 24' north—the most northerly point then attained by any man—and still the record marking Arctic journey for an American explorer.

Winter came again under depressing circumstances. The first relief ship promised had not arrived, and the disappointment of the men deepened into apprehension lest the second, also, should fail them. Yet they went through the second winter in good health and unshaken morale, though one can not read such portions of Greely's diary as he has published, without seeing that the irritability and jealousy that seem to be the inevitable accompaniments of long imprisonment in an Arctic station, began to make their appearance. With the advent of spring the commander began to make his preparations for a retreat to the southward. If he had not then felt entire confidence in the promise of the War Department to relieve him without fail that summer, he would have begun his retreat early, and beyond doubt have brought all his men to safety before another winter set in or his provisions fell low. But as it was, he put off the start to the last moment, keeping up meanwhile the scientific work of the expedition, and sending out one party to cache supplies along the route of retreat. August 9, 1883, the march began—just two years after they had entered the frozen deep—Greely hoping to meet the relief ship oh the way. He did not know that three weeks before she had been nipped in the ice-pack, and sunk, and that her consort, the "Yantic," had gone impotently home, without even leaving food for the abandoned explorers. Over ice-fields and across icy and turbulent water, the party made its way for five hundred miles—four hundred miles of boating and one hundred of sledging—fifty-one days of heroic exertion that might well take the courage out of the stoutest heart. Sledging in the Arctic over "hummock" ice is, perhaps, the most wearing form of toil known to man, and with such heavy loads as Greely carried, every mile had to be gone over twice, and sometimes three times, as the men would be compelled to leave part of the load behind and go back after it. Yet the party was cheerful, singing and joking at their work, as one of the sergeants records. Finally they reached the vicinity of Cape Sabine, all in good health, with instruments and records saved, and with arms and ammunition enough to procure ample food in a land well stocked with game. But they did not worry very much about food, though their supply was by this time growing low. Was not Cape Sabine the spot at which the relief expeditions were to cache food, and could it be possible that the great United States Government would fail twice in an enterprise which any Yankee whaler would gladly take a contract to fulfill? And so the men looked upon the wilderness, and noted the coming on of the Arctic night again without fear, if with some disappointment. Less than forty days' rations remained. Eight months must elapse before any relief expedition could reach their camp, and far away in the United States the people were crying out in hot indignation that the authorities were basely leaving Greely and his devoted companions to their fate.

Pluckily the men set about preparing for the long winter. Three huts of stone and snow were planned, and while they were building, the hunters of the party scoured the neighboring ice-floes and pools for game—foxes, ptarmigan, and seals. There were no mistaken ideas concerning their deadly peril. Every man knew that if game failed, or if the provisions they hoped had been cached by the relief expeditions somewhere in the vicinity, could not be found, they might never leave that spot alive. Day by day the size of the rations was reduced. October 2 enough for thirty-five days remained, and at the request of the men, Greely so changed the ration as to provide for forty-five days. October 5 Lieutenant Lockwood noted in his diary:

"We have now three chances for our lives: First, finding American cache sufficient at Sabine or at Isabella; second, of crossing the straits when our present ration is gone; third, of shooting sufficient seal and walrus near by here to last during the winter."

How delusive the first chance proved we shall see later. The second was impractical, for the current carried the ice through the strait so fast, that any party trying to cross the floe, would have been carried south to where the strait widened out into Baffin's Bay before they could possibly pass the twenty-five miles which separated Cape Sabine from Littleton Island. Moreover, there was no considerable cache at the latter point, as Greely thought. As for the hunting, it proved a desperate chance, though it did save the lives of such of the party as were rescued. All feathered game took flight for the milder regions of the south when the night set in. The walrus which the hunters shot—two, Greely said, would have supplied food for all winter—and the seal sunk in almost every instance before the game could be secured.

The first, and most hopeful chance, was the discovery of cached provisions at Cape Sabine. To put this to the test, Rice, the photographer, who, though a civilian, proved to be one of the most determined and efficient men in the party, had already started for Sabine with Jens, the Esquimau. October 9 they returned, bringing the record of the sinking of the "Proteus," and the intelligence that there were about 1300 rations at, or near Cape Sabine. The record left at Cape Sabine by Garlington, the commander of the "Proteus" expedition, and which Rice brought back to the camp, read in part: "Depot landed ... 500 rations of bread, tea, and a lot of canned goods. Cache of 250 rations left by the English expedition of 1882 visited by me and found in good condition. Cache on Littleton Island. Boat at Isabella. U.S.S. 'Yantic' on way to Littleton Island with orders not to enter the ice. I will endeavor to communicate with these vessels at once.... Everything in the power of man will be done to rescue the (Greely's) brave men."

This discovery changed Greely's plans again. It was hopeless to attempt hauling the ten or twelve thousand pounds of material believed to be at Cape Sabine, to the site of the winter camp, now almost done, so Greely determined to desert that station and make for Cape Sabine, taking with him all the provisions and material he could drag. In a few days his party was again on the march across the frozen sea.

How inscrutable and imperative are the ways of fate! Looking backward now on the pitiful story of the Greely party, we see that the second relief expedition, intended to succor and to rescue these gallant men, was in fact the cause of their overwhelming disaster—and this not wholly because of errors committed in its direction, though they were many. When Greely abandoned the station at Fort Conger, he could have pressed straight to the southward without halt, and perhaps escaped with all his party—he could, indeed, have started earlier in the summer, and made escape for all certain. But he relied on the relief expedition, and held his ground until the last possible moment. Even after reaching Cape Sabine he might have taken to the boats and made his way southward to safety, for he says himself that open water was in sight; but the cheering news brought by Rice of a supply of provisions, and the promise left by Garlington, that all that men could do would be done for his rescue, led him to halt his journey at Cape Sabine, and go into winter quarters in the firm conviction that already another vessel was on the way to aid him. He did not know that Garlington had left but few provisions out of his great store, that the "Yantic" had fled without landing an ounce of food, and that the authorities at Washington had concluded that nothing more could be done that season—although whalers frequently entered the waters where Greely lay trapped, at a later date than that which saw the "Yantic's" precipitate retreat. Had he known these things, he says himself, "I should certainly have turned my back to Cape Sabine and starvation, to face a possible death on the perilous voyage along shore to the southward."

But not knowing them, he built a hut, and prepared to face the winter. It is worth noting, as evidence that Arctic hardships themselves, when not accompanied by a lack of food, are not unbearable, that at this time, after two years in the region of perpetual ice, the whole twenty-five men were well, and even cheerful. Depression and death came only when the food gave out.

The permanent camp, which for many of the party was to be a tomb, was fixed a few miles from Cape Sabine, by the side of a pool of fresh water—frozen, of course. Here a hut was built with stone walls three feet high, rafters made of oars with the blades cut off, and a canvas roof, except in the center, where an upturned whaleboat made a sort of a dome. Only under the whaleboat could a man get on his knees and hold himself erect; elsewhere the heads of the tall men touched the roof when they sat up in their sleeping bags on the dirt floor. With twenty-five men in sleeping bags, which they seldom left, two in each bag, packed around the sides of the hut, a stove fed with stearine burning in the center for the cooking of the insufficient food to which they were reduced, and all air from without excluded, the hut became a place as much of torture as of refuge.

The problem of food and the grim certainty of starvation were forced upon them with the very first examination of the caches of which Garlington had left such encouraging reports. At Cape Isabella only 144 pounds of meat was found, in Garlington's cache only 100 rations instead of 500 as he had promised. Moldy bread and dog biscuits fairly green with mold, though condemned by Greely, were seized by the famished men, and devoured ravenously without a thought of their unwholesomeness. When November 1 came, the daily ration for each man was fixed at six ounces of bread, four ounces of meat, and four ounces of vegetables—about a quarter of what would be moderate sustenance for a healthy man. By keeping the daily issue of food down to this pitiful amount Greely calculated that he would have enough to sustain life until the first of March, when with ten days' double rations still remaining, he would make an effort to cross the strait to Littleton Island, where he thought—mistakenly—that Lieutenant Garlington awaited him with ample stores. Of course all game shot added to the size of the rations, and that the necessary work of hunting might be prosecuted, the hunters were from the first given extra rations to maintain, their strength. Fuel, too, offered a serious problem. Alcohol, stearine, and broken wood from a whaleboat and barrels, were all employed. In order to get the greatest heat from the wood it was broken up into pieces not much larger than matches.

And yet packed into that noisome hovel, ill-fed and ill-clothed, with the Arctic wind roaring outside, the temperature within barely above freezing, and a wretched death staring each man in the face, these men were not without cheerfulness. Lying almost continually in their sleeping bags, they listened to one of their number reading aloud; such books as "Pickwick Papers," "A History of Our Own Times," and "Two on a Tower." Greely gave daily a lecture on geography of an hour or more; each man related, as best he could, the striking facts about his own State and city and, indeed, every device that ingenuity could suggest, was employed to divert their minds and wile away the lagging hours. Birthdays were celebrated by a little extra food—though toward the end a half a gill of rum for the celebrant, constituted the whole recognition of the day. The story of Christmas Day is inexpressibly touching as told in the simple language of Greely's diary:

"Our breakfast was a thin pea-soup, with seal blubber, and a small quantity of preserved potatoes. Later two cans of cloudberries were served to each mess, and at half-past one o'clock Long and Frederick commenced cooking dinner, which consisted of a seal stew, containing seal blubber, preserved potatoes and bread, flavored with pickled onions; then came a kind of rice pudding, with raisins, seal blubber, and condensed milk. Afterward we had chocolate, followed later by a kind of punch made of a gill of rum and a quarter of a lemon to each man.... Everybody was required to sing a song or tell a story, and pleasant conversation with the expression of kindly feelings, was kept up until midnight."



But that comparative plenty and good cheer did not last long. In a few weeks the unhappy men, or such as still clung to life, were living on a few shrimps, pieces of sealskin boots, lichens, and even more offensive food. The shortening of the ration, and the resulting hunger, broke down the moral sense of some, and by one device or another, food was stolen. Only two or three were guilty of this crime—an execrable one in such an emergency—and one of these, Private Henry, was shot by order of Lieutenant Greely toward the end of the winter. Even before Christmas, casualties which would have been avoided, had the party been well-nourished and strong, began. Ellison, in making a gallant dash for the cache at Isabella, was overcome by cold and fatigue, and froze both his hands and feet so that in time they dropped off. Only the tender care of Frederick, who was with him, and the swift rush of Lockwood and Brainard to his aid, saved him from death. It tells a fine story of the unselfish devotion of the men, that this poor wreck, maimed and helpless, so that he had to be fed, and incapable of performing one act in his own service, should have been nursed throughout the winter, fed with double portions, and actually saved living until the rescue party arrived, while many of those who cared for him yielded up their lives. The first to die was Cross, of scurvy and starvation, and he was buried in a shallow grave near the hut, all hands save Ellison turning out to honor his memory. Though the others clung to life with amazing tenacity, illness began to make inroads upon them, the gallant Lockwood, for example, spending weeks in Greely's sleeping bag, his mind wandering, his body utterly exhausted. But it was April before the second death occurred—one of the Esquimaux. "Action of water on the heart caused by insufficient nutrition," was the doctor's verdict—in a word, but a word all dreaded to hear, starvation.

Thereafter the men went fast. In a day or two Christiansen, an Esquimau, died. Rice, the sharer of his sleeping bag, was forced to spend a night enveloped in a bag with the dead body. The next day he started on a sledging trip to seek some beef cached by the English years earlier. Before the errand was completed, he, too, died, freezing to death in the arms of his companion, Frederick, who held him tenderly until the last, and stripped himself to the shirtsleeves in the icy blast, to warm his dying comrade. Then Lockwood died—the hero of the Farthest North; then Jewell. Jens, the untiring Esquimau hunter, was drowned, his kayak being cut by the sharp edge of a piece of ice. Ellis, Whisler, Israel, the astronomer, and Dr. Pavy, the surgeon, one by one, passed away.

But why continue the pitiful chronicle? To tell the story in detail is impossible here—to tell it baldly and hurriedly, means to omit from it all that makes the narrative of the last days of the Greely expedition worth reading; the unflagging courage of most of the men, the high sense of honor that characterized them, the tenderness shown to the sick and helpless, the pluck and endurance of Long and Brainard, the fierce determination of Greely, that come what might, the records of his expedition should be saved, and its honor bequeathed unblemished to the world. And so through suffering and death, despairing perhaps, but never neglecting through cowardice or lethargy, any expedient for winning the fight against death, the party, daily growing smaller, fought its way on through winter and spring, until that memorable day in June, when Colwell cut open the tent and saw, as the first act of the rescued sufferers, two haggard, weak, and starving men pouring all that was left of the brandy, down the throat of one a shade more haggard and weak than they.

Men of English lineage are fond of telling the story of the meeting of Stanley and Dr. Livingston in the depths of the African jungle. For years Livingston had disappeared from the civilized world. Everywhere apprehension was felt lest he had fallen a victim to the ferocity of the savages, or to the pestilential climate. The world rung with speculations concerning his fate. Stanley, commissioned to solve the mystery, by the same America journalist who sent DeLong into the Arctic, had cut his path through the savages and the jungle, until at the door of a hut in a clearing, he saw a white man who could be none but him whom he sought, for in all that dark and gloomy forest there was none other of white skin. Then Anglo-Saxon stolidity asserted itself. Men of Latin race would have rushed into each others' arms with loud rejoicings. Not so these twain.

"Dr. Livingston, I believe," said the newcomer, with the air of greeting an acquaintance on Fifth Avenue. "I am Mr. Stanley."

"I am glad to see you," was the response, and it might have taken place in a drawing-room for all the emotion shown by either man.



That was a dramatic meeting in the tropical jungles, but history will not give second place to the encounter of the advance guard of the Greely relief expedition with the men they sought. The story is told with dramatic directness in Commander (now Admiral) Schley's book, "The Rescue of Greely."

"It was half-past eight in the evening as the cutter steamed around the rocky bluff of Cape Sabine, and made her way to the cove, four miles further on, which Colwell remembered so well.... The storm which had been raging with only slight intervals since early the day before, still kept up, and the wind was driving in bitter gusts through the opening in the ridge that followed the coast to the westward. Although the sky was overcast it was broad daylight—the daylight of a dull winter afternoon.... At last the boat arrived at the site of the wreck cache, and the shore was eagerly scanned, but nothing could be seen. Rounding the next point, the cutter opened out the cove beyond. There on the top of a little ridge, fifty or sixty yards above the ice-foot, was plainly outlined the figure of a man. Instantly the coxswain caught up his boathook and waved his flag. The man on the ridge had seen them, for he stooped, picked up a signal flag, and waved it in reply. Then he was seen coming slowly and cautiously down the steep rocky slope. Twice he fell down before he reached the foot. As he approached, still walking slowly and with difficulty, Colwell hailed him from the bow of the boat.

"'Who all are there left?'

"'Seven left.'

"As the cutter struck the ice Colwell jumped off, and went up to him. He was a ghastly sight. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes wild, his hair and beard long and matted. His army blouse, covering several thicknesses of shirts and jackets, was ragged and dirty. He wore a little fur cap and rough moccasins of untanned leather tied around the leg. As he spoke his utterance was thick and mumbling, and in his agitation his jaws worked in convulsive twitches. As the two met, the man, with a sudden impulse, took off his gloves and shook Colwell's hand.

"'Where are they?' asked Colwell, briefly.

"'In the tent,' said the man, pointing over his shoulder, 'over the hill—the tent's down.'

"'Is Mr. Greely alive?'

"'Yes, Greely's alive.'

"'Any other officers?'

"'No.' Then he repeated absently, 'The tent's down.'

"'Who are you?'

"'Long.'

"Before this colloquy was over Lowe and Norman had started up the hill. Hastily filling his pockets with bread, and taking the two cans of pemmican, Colwell told the coxswain to take Long into the cutter, and started after the others with Ash. Reaching the crest of the ridge and looking southward, they saw spread out before them a desolate expanse of rocky ground, sloping gradually from a ridge on the east to the ice-bound shore, which on the west made in and formed a cove. Back of the level space was a range of hills rising up eight hundred feet with a precipitous face, broken in two by a gorge, through which the wind was blowing furiously. On a little elevation directly in front was the tent. Hurrying on across the intervening hollow, Colwell came up with Lowe and Norman just as they were greeting a soldierly-looking man who had come out of the tent.

"As Colwell approached, Norman was saying to the man: 'There is the Lieutenant.'

"And he added to Lieutenant Colwell:

"'This is Sergeant Brainard.'

"Brainard immediately drew himself up to the position of the soldier, and was about to salute, when Colwell took his hand.

"At this moment there was a confused murmur within the tent, and a voice said: 'Who's there?'

"Norman answered, 'It's Norman—Norman who was in the "Proteus."'

"This was followed by cries of 'Oh, it's Norman,' and a sound like a feeble cheer.

"Meanwhile one of the relief party, who in his agitation and excitement was crying like a child, was down on his knees trying to roll away the stones that held the flapping tent-cloth.... Colwell called for a knife, cut a slit in the tent-cover, and looked in. It was a sight horror. On one side, close to the opening, with his face toward the opening, lay what was apparently a dead man. His jaw had dropped, his eyes were open, but fixed and glassy, his limbs were motionless. On the opposite side was a poor fellow, alive to be sure, but without hands or feet, and with a spoon tied to the stump of his right arm. Two others, seated on the ground in the middle, had just got down a rubber bottle that hung on the tent pole, and were pouring from it into a tin can. Directly opposite, on his hands and knees, was a dark man, with a long matted beard, in a dirty and tattered dressing-gown, with a little red tattered skull-cap on his head, and brilliant, staring eyes. As Colwell appeared he raised himself a little and put on a pair of eye-glasses.

"'Who are you?' asked Colwell.

"The man made no reply, staring at him vacantly.

"'Who are you?' again.

"One of the men spoke up. 'That's the Major—Major Greely."

"Colwell crawled in and took him by the hand, saying: 'Greely, is this you?'

"'Yes,' said Greely in a faint voice, hesitating and shuffling with his words, 'yes—seven of us left—here we are—dying—like men. Did what I came to do—beat the best record.'

"Then he fell back exhausted."

Slowly and cautiously the men were nursed back to life and health—all save poor Ellison, whose enfeebled constitution could not stand the shock of the necessary amputation of his mutilated limbs. The nine bodies buried in the shallow graves were exhumed and taken to the ship, Private Henry's body being found lying where it fell at the moment of his execution. At that time the castaways were too feeble to give even hasty sepulture to their dead. A horrible circumstance, reported by Commander Schley himself, was that the flesh of many of the bodies was cut from the bones—by whom, and for what end of cannibalism, can only be conjectured.

Following the disaster to the Greely expedition, came a period of lethargy in polar exploration, and when the work was taken up again, it was in ways foreign to the purpose of this book. Foreigners for a time led in activity, and in 1895 Fridjof Nansen in his drifting ship, the "Fram," attained the then farthest North, latitude 86 deg. 14', while Rudolph Andree, in 1897, put to the test the desperate expedient of setting out for the Pole in a balloon from Dane's Island, Spitzbergen; but the wind that bore him swiftly out of sight, has never brought back again tidings of his achievement or his fate. Nansen's laurels were wrested from him in 1900 by the Duke of Abruzzi, who reached 86 deg. 33' north. The stories of these brave men are fascinating and instructive, but they are no part of the story of the American sailor. Indeed, the sailor is losing his importance as an explorer in the Arctic. It has become clear enough to all that it is not to be a struggle between stout ships and crushing ice, but rather a test of the endurance of men and dogs, pushing forward over solid floes of heaped and corrugated ice, toward the long-sought goal. Two Americans in late years have made substantial progress toward the conquest of the polar regions. Mr. Walter Wellman, an eminent journalist, has made two efforts to reach the Pole, but met with ill-luck and disaster in each, though in the first he attained to latitude 81 deg. to the northeast of Spitzbergen, and in the second he discovered and named many new islands about Franz Josef Land. Most pertinacious of all the American explorers, however, has been Lieutenant Robert E. Peary, U.S.N., who since 1886, has been going into the frozen regions whenever the opportunity offered—and when none offered he made one. His services in exploration and in mapping out the land and seas to the north of Greenland have been of the greatest value to geographical science, and at the moment of writing this book he is wintering at Cape Sabine, where the Greely survivors were found, awaiting the coming of summer to make a desperate dash for the goal, sought for a century, but still secure in its wintry fortifications, the geographical Pole. Nor is he wholly alone, either in his ambition or his patience. Evelyn B. Baldwin, a native of Illinois, with an expedition equipped by William Zeigler, of New York, and made up of Americans, is wintering at Alger Island, near Franz Josef Land, awaiting the return of the sun to press on to the northward. It is within the bounds of possibility that before this volume is fairly in the hands of its readers, the fight may be won and the Stars and Stripes wave over that mysterious spot that has awakened the imagination and stimulated the daring of brave men of all nations.



CHAPTER VII.

THE GREAT LAKES—THEIR SHARE IN THE MARITIME TRAFFIC OF THE UNITED STATES—THE EARLIEST RECORDED VOYAGERS—INDIANS AND FUR TRADERS—THE PIGMY CANAL AT THE SAULT STE. MARIE—BEGINNINGS OF NAVIGATION BY SAILS—DE LA SALLE AND THE "GRIFFIN"—RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LAKE SEAMEN—THE LAKES AS A HIGHWAY FOR WESTWARD EMIGRATION—THE FIRST STEAMBOAT—EFFECT OF MINERAL DISCOVERIES ON LAKE SUPERIOR—THE ORE-CARRYING FLEET—THE WHALEBACKS—THE SEAMEN OF THE LAKES—THE GREAT CANAL AT THE "SOO"—THE CHANNEL TO BUFFALO—BARRED OUT FROM THE OCEAN.

In the heart of the North American Continent, forming in part the boundary line between the United States and the British possessions to the north, lies that chain of great freshwater lakes bordered by busy and rapidly growing commonwealths, washing the water-fronts of rich and populous cities, and bearing upon their steely blue bosoms a commerce which outdoes that of the Mediterranean in the days of its greatest glory. The old salt, the able seaman who has rounded the Horn, the skipper who has stood unflinchingly at the helm while the green seas towered over the stern, looks with contempt upon the fresh-water sailor and his craft. Not so the man of business or the statesman. The growth of lake traffic has been one of the most marvelous and the most influential factors in the industrial development of the United States. By it has been systematized and brought to the highest form of organization the most economical form of freight carriage in the world. Through it has been made possible the enormous reduction in the price of American steel that has enabled us to invade foreign markets, and promises to so reduce the cost of our ships, that we may be able to compete again in ship-building, with the yards of the Clyde and the Tyne. Along the shores of these unsalted seas, great shipyards are springing up, that already build ships more cheaply than can be done anywhere else in the world, and despite the obstacles of shallow canals, and the treacherous channels of the St. Lawrence, have been able to build and send to tidewater, ocean ships in competition with the seacoast builders. The present of the lake marine is secure; its future is full of promise. Its story, if lacking in the elements of romance that attend upon the ocean's story, is well worth telling.

A decade more than two centuries ago a band of Iroquois Indians made their way in bark canoes from Lake Ontario up Lake Erie to the Detroit River, across Lake St. Clair, and thence through Lake Huron to Point Iroquois. They were the first navigators of the Great Lakes, and that they were not peace-loving boatmen, is certain from the fact that they traveled all these miles of primeval waterway for the express purpose of battle. History records that they had no difficulty in bringing on a combat with the Illinois tribes, and in an attempt to displace the latter from Point Iroquois, the invaders were destroyed after a six-days' battle.

It is still a matter of debate among philosophical historians, whether war, trade, or missionary effort has done the more toward opening the strange, wild places of the world. Each, doubtless, has done its part, but we shall find in the story of the Great Lakes, that the war canoes of the savages were followed by the Jesuit missionaries, and these in turn by the bateaux of the voyageurs employed by the Hudson Bay Company.

After the Iroquois had learned the way, trips of war canoes up and down the lakes, were annual occurrences, and warfare was almost perpetual. In 1680 the Iroquois, 700 strong, invaded Illinois, killed 1200 of the tribe there established, and drove the rest beyond the Mississippi. For years after the Iroquois nation were the rulers of the water-front between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. While this tribe was in undisputed possession, commerce had little to do with the navigation of the Great Lakes. The Indians went up and down the shores on long hunting trips, but war was the principal business, and every canoe was equipped for a fray at any time.

A story is told of a great naval battle that was fought on Lake Erie, nearly two centuries before the first steamer made its appearance on that placid water. A Wyandot prince, so the tale goes, fell in love with a beautiful princess of the Seneca tribe, who was the promised bride of a chief of her own nation. The warrior failed to win the heart of the dusky maiden, and goaded to desperation, entered the Senecas country by night, and carried off the lady. War immediately followed, and was prosecuted with great cruelty and slaughter for a long time. At last a final battle was fought, in which the Wyandots were worsted and forced to flee in great haste. The fugitives planned to cross the ice of the Straits (Detroit) River, but found it broken up and floating down stream. Their only alternative was to throw themselves on the floating ice and leap from cake to cake; they thus made their escape to the Canadian shore, and joined the tribes of the Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippewas. A year later the Wyandots, equipped with light birch canoes, set out to defeat the Senecas, and succeeded in inducing them to give combat on the water. The Senecas made a fatal mistake and came out to meet the enemy in their clumsily-constructed boats hollowed out of the trunks of trees. After much maneuvering the birch canoe fleet proceeded down Lake Erie to the head of Long Point, with the Senecas in hot pursuit. In the center of the lake the Wyandots turned and gave the Senecas so hot a reception that they were forced to flee, but could not make good their escape in their clumsy craft, and were all slain but one man, who was allowed to return and report the catastrophe to his own nation. This closed the war.

Legends are preserved that lead to the belief that there may have been navigators of the Great Lakes before the Indians, and it is generally believed that the latter were not the first occupants of the Lake Superior region. It is said that the Lake Superior country was frequently visited by a barbaric race, for the purpose of obtaining copper, and it is quite possible that these people may have been skilled navigators.



Commercial navigation of the Great Lakes, curiously enough, first assumed importance in the least accessible portion. The Hudson Bay Company, always extending its territory toward the northwest, sent its bateaux and canoes into Lake Superior early in the seventeenth century. To accommodate this traffic the company dug a canal around the falls of the St. Marie River, at the point we now call "the Soo." In time this pigmy progenitor of the busiest canal in the world, became filled with debris, and its very existence forgotten; but some years ago a student in the thriving town of Sault Ste. Marie, poring over some old books of the Hudson Bay Company, noticed several references to the company's canal. What canal could it be? His curiosity was aroused, and with the aid of the United States engineers in charge of the new improvements, he began a painstaking investigation. In time the line of the old ditch was discovered, and, indeed, it was no more than a ditch, two and a half feet deep, by eight or nine wide. One lock was built, thirty-eight feet long, with a lift of nine feet. The floor and sills of this lock were discovered, and the United States Government has since rebuilt it in stone, that visitors to the Soo may turn from the massive new locks, through which steel steamships of eight thousand tons pass all day long through the summer months, to gaze on the strait and narrow gate which once opened the way for all the commerce of Lake Superior. But through that gate there passed a picturesque and historic procession. Canoes spurred along by tufted Indians with black-robed Jesuit missionaries for passengers; the wooden bateaux of the fur traders, built of wood and propelled by oars, and carrying gangs of turbulent trappers and voyageurs; the company's chief factors in swift private craft, making for the west to extend the influence of the great corporation still further into the wilderness, all passed through the little canal and avoided the roaring waters of the Ste. Marie. It was but a narrow gate, but it played its part in the opening of the West.

War, which is responsible for most of the checks to civilization, whether or not it may in some instances advance the skirmish line of civilized peoples, destroyed the pioneer canal. For in 1812 some Americans being in that part of the country, thought it would be a helpful contribution to their national defense if they blew up the lock and shattered the canal, as it was on Canadian soil. Accordingly this was done, of course without the slightest effect on the conflict then raging, but much to the discomfort and loss of the honest voyageurs and trappers of the Lake Superior region, whose interest in the war could hardly have been very serious.

So far as history records the first sailing vessel to spread its wings on the Great Lakes beyond Niagara Falls, was the "Griffin," built by the Chevalier de la Salle in 1679, near the point where Buffalo now stands. La Salle had brought to this point French ship-builders and carpenters, together with sailors, to navigate the craft when completed. It was his purpose to proceed in this vessel to the farthest corners of the Great Lakes, establish trading and trapping stations, and take possession of the country in the name of France. He was himself conciliatory with the Indians and liked by them, but jealousies among the French themselves, stirred up savage antagonism to him, and his ship narrowly escaped burning while still on the stocks. In August of 1679, however, she was launched, a brigantine of sixty tons burden, mounting five small cannon and three arquebuses. Her model is said to have been not unlike that of the caravels in which Columbus made his famous voyage, and copies of which were exhibited at the Columbian Exposition. Bow and stern were high and almost alike. Yet in this clumsy craft La Salle voyaged the whole length of Lake Erie, passed through the Detroit River, and St. Clair River and lake; proceeded north to Mackinaw, and thence south in Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. It was the first time any vessel under sail had entered those waters. Maps and charts there were none. The swift rushing waters of the Detroit River flowed smoothly over limestone reefs, which the steamers of to-day pass cautiously, despite the Government channels, cut deep and plainly lighted. The flats, that broad expanse of marsh permeated by a maze of false channels above Detroit, had to be threaded with no chart or guide. Yet the "Griffin" made St. Ignace in twenty days from having set sail, a record which is often not equaled by lumber schooners of the present time. From Green Bay, La Salle sent the vessel back with a cargo of furs that would have made him rich for life, had it ever reached a market. But the vessel disappeared, and for years nothing was heard of her. Finally La Salle learned that a half-breed pilot, who had shown signs of treachery on the outward trip, had persuaded the crew to run her ashore in the Detroit River, and themselves to take the valuable cargo. But the traitors had reckoned without the savage Indians of the neighborhood, who also coveted the furs and pelts. While the crew were trying to dispose of these the red men set upon them and slew them all. The "Griffin" never again floated on the lakes.

It is difficult to determine the time when sailing vessels next appeared upon the lakes, but it was certainly not for nearly seventy-five years. Captain Jonathan Carver reported a French schooner on Lake Superior about 1766, and in 1772 Alexander Harvey built a forty-ton sloop on the same lake, in which he sought the site of a famous copper mine. But it was long before Lake Superior showed more than an infrequent sail, though on Lake Erie small vessels soon became common. Even in 1820 the furs of Lake Superior were sent down to Chicago in bateaux.

Two small sailing vessels, the "Beaver" and the "Gladwin," which proved very valuable to the besieged garrison at Detroit in 1763, were the next sailing vessels on the lakes, and are supposed to have been built by the English the year previous. It is said, that through the refusal of her captain to take ballast aboard, the "Gladwin" was capsized on Lake Erie and lost, and the entire crew drowned. The "Royal Charlotte," the "Boston," and the "Victory" appeared on the lakes a few years later, and went into commission between Fort Erie (Buffalo) and Detroit, carrying the first year 1,464 bales of fur to Fort Erie, and practically establishing commercial navigation.

It is hard to look clearly into the future. If the recommendations of one J. Collins, deputy surveyor-general of the British Government, had governed the destiny of the Great Lakes, the traffic between Buffalo and the Soo by water, would to-day be in boats of fifteen tons or less. Under orders of the English Government, Collins in 1788 made a survey of all the lakes and harbors from Kingston to Mackinac, and in his report, expressing his views as to the size of vessels that should be built for service on the lakes, he said he thought that for service on Lake Ontario vessels should be seventy-five or eighty tons burden, and on Lake Erie, if expected to run to Lake Huron, they should be not more than fifteen tons. What a stretch of imagination is necessary to conceive of the great volume of traffic of the present time, passing Detroit in little schooners not much larger than catboats that skim around the lakes! Imagine such a corporation as the Northern Steamship Company, with its big fleet of steel steamers, attempting to handle its freight business in sailing vessels of a size that the average wharf-rat of the present time would disdain to pilot. What a rush of business there would be at the Marine Post-Office in Detroit, if some day this company would decide to cut off three of its large steamers and send out enough schooners of the size recommended by the English officer, to take their place! The fleet would comprise at least 318 vessels, and would require not fewer than 1500 seamen to navigate. It is sometimes said that there is a continual panorama of vessels passing up and down the rivers of the Great Lakes, but what if the Englishman had guessed right? Happily he did not, and vessels of 1500 tons can navigate the connecting waters of Lake Huron and Lake Erie much better than those of fifteen tons could in his time. That the early ship-builders did not pay much attention to J. Collins, is evident from the fact that, when the Detroit was surrendered to the Americans in 1796, twelve merchant vessels were owned there of from fifty to one hundred tons each.



At the close of the eighteenth century the American sailor had hardly superseded the red men as a navigator, and lake vessels were not much more plentiful than airships are nowadays. Indeed, the entire fleet in 1799, so far as can be learned, was as follows: The schooners "Nancy," "Swan," and "Naegel;" the sloops "Sagina," "Detroit," "Beaver," "Industry," "Speedwell," and "Arabaska." This was the fleet, complete, of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Michigan.

"A wild-looking set were the first white sailors of the lakes," says Hubbard in his "Memorials of Half a Century." "Their weirdness was often enhanced by the dash of Indian blood, and they are better described as rangers of the woods and waters. Picturesque, too, they were in their red flannel or leather shirts and cloth caps of some gay color, finished to a point which hung over on one side with a depending tassel. They had a genuine love for their occupation, and muscles that never seemed to tire at the paddle and oar. These were not the men who wanted steamboats and fast sailing vessels. These men had a real love for canoeing, and from dawn to sunset, with only a short interval, and sometimes no midday rest, they would ply the oars, causing the canoe or barge to shoot through the water like a thing of life, but often contending against head winds and gaining little progress in a day's rowing."



One of the earliest American sailors on a lake ship bigger than a bateau, was "Uncle Dacy" Johnson, of Cleveland, who sailed for fifty years, beginning about 1850. "When I was a chunk of a boy," says the old Captain in a letter to a New York paper, "I put a thirty-two pound bundle on my back and started on foot to Buffalo. I made the journey to Albany, N.Y., from Bridgeport, Conn., in sixteen days, which was nothing remarkable, as I had $3 in money, and a bundle of food. Many a poor fellow I knew started on the same journey with nothing but an axe. When I arrived at Buffalo I found a very small town—Cleveland, Sandusky, and Erie, were all larger. There were only two lighthouses on the lakes, one at Buffalo, which was the first one built, and the other one at Erie. Buffalo was then called Fort Erie, and was a struggling little town. My first trip as a sailor was made from Buffalo to Erie, which was then considered quite a voyage. From Buffalo to Detroit was looked upon as a long voyage, and a vessel of thirty-two tons was the largest ship on the lakes. In 1813 I was one of a crew of four who left Buffalo on the sloop 'Commencement' with a cargo of whisky for Erie. While beating along shore the English frigate 'Charlotte' captured us and two boatloads of red-coats boarded our vessel and took us prisoners. We were paroled on shipboard the same day, and before night concocted a scheme to get the Englishmen drunk on our whisky. One of our fellows got drunk first, and told of our intentions, the plot was frustrated, and we narrowly escaped being hung."



Once begun, the conquest of the lakes as a highway for trade was rapid. We who live in the days of railroads can hardly appreciate how tremendous was the impetus given to the upbuilding of a region if it possessed practicable waterways. The whole history of the settlement of the Middle West is told in the story of its rivers and lakes. The tide of immigration, avoiding the dense forests haunted by Indians, the rugged mountains, and the broad prairies into which the wheel of the heavy-laden wagon cut deep, followed the course of the Potomac and the Ohio, the Hudson, Mohawk, and the Great Lakes. Streams that have long since ceased to be thought navigable for a boy's canoe were made to carry the settlers' few household goods heaped on a flatboat. The flood of families going West created a demand that soon covered the lakes with schooners and brigs. Landed on the lake shore near some little stream, the immigrants would build flatboats, and painfully pole their way into the interior to some spot that took their fancy. Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois thus filled up, towns growing by the side of streams now used only to turn mill-wheels, but which in their day determined where the prosperous settlement should be.

The steamboat was not slow in making its appearance on the lakes. In 1818, while it was still an experiment on the seaboard, one of these craft appeared on Lake Erie. The "Walk-in-the-Water" was her name, suggestive of Indian nomenclature and, withal, exceedingly descriptive. She made the trip from Buffalo to Detroit, not infrequently taking thirteen days. She was a side-wheeler, a model which still holds favor on the lower lakes, though virtually abandoned on the ocean and on Lake Superior. An oil painting of this little craft, still preserved, shows her without a pilot-house, steered by a curious tiller at the stern, with a smokestack like six lengths of stovepipe, and huge unboxed wheels. She is said to have been a profitable craft, often carrying as many as fifty passengers on the voyage, for which eighteen dollars was charged. For four years she held a monopoly of the business. Probably the efforts of Fulton and Livingstone to protect the monopoly which had been granted them by the State of New York, and the determination of James Roosevelt to maintain what he claimed to be his exclusive right to the vertical paddle-wheel, delayed the extension of steam navigation on the lakes as it did on the great rivers. After four years of solitary service on Lake Erie, the "Walk-in-the-Water" was wrecked in an October storm. Crowded with passengers, she rode out a heavy gale through a long night. At daybreak the cables parted and she went ashore, but no lives were lost. Her loss was considered an irreparable calamity by the settlers at the western end of the lake. "This accident," wrote an eminent citizen of Detroit, "may be considered one of the greatest misfortunes which has ever befallen Michigan, for, in addition to its having deprived us of all certain and speedy communication with the civilized world, I am fearful it will greatly check the progress of immigration and improvement."

It is scarcely necessary to note now that the apprehensions of the worthy citizen of Michigan were unfounded. Steam navigation on the lakes was no more killed by the loss of the pioneer craft than was transatlantic steam navigation ended by the disapproving verdict of the scientists. Nowhere in the world is there such a spectacle of maritime activity, nowhere such a continuous procession of busy cargo-ships as in the Detroit River, and through the colossal locks of the "Soo" canals. In 1827 the first steamboat reached the Sault Ste. Marie, bearing among her passengers General Winfield Scott, on a visit of inspection to the military post there, but she made no effort to enter the great lake. About five years later, the first "smoke boat," as the Indians called the steamers, reached Chicago, the pigmy forerunner of the fleet of huge leviathans that all the summer long, nowadays, blacken Chicago's sky with their torrents of smoke, and keep the hurrying citizens fuming at the open draw of a bridge. All side-wheelers were these pioneers, wooden of course, and but sorry specimens of marine architecture, but they opened the way for great things. For some years longer the rushing torrent of the Ste. Marie's kept Lake Superior tightly closed to steamboats, but about 1840 the richness of the copper mines bordering upon that lake began to attract capital, and the need of steam navigation became crying. In 1845 men determined to put some sort of a craft upon the lake that would not be dependent upon the whims of wind and sails for propulsion. Accordingly, the sloop "Ocean," a little craft of fifteen tons, was fitted out with an engine and wheels at Detroit and towed to the "Soo." There she was dragged out of the water and made the passage between the two lakes on rollers. The "Independence," a boat of about the same size, was treated in the same way later in the year. Scarcely anything in the history of navigation, unless it be the first successful application of steam to the propulsion of boats is of equal importance with the first appearance of steamboats in Lake Superior. It may be worth while to abandon for a moment the orderly historical sequence of this narrative, to emphasize the wonderful contrast between the commerce of Lake Superior in the days of the "Independence" and now—periods separated by scarcely sixty years. To-day the commerce of that lake is more than half of all the great lakes combined. It is conducted in steel vessels, ranging from 1500 to 8500 tons, and every year sees an increase in their size. In 1901 more than 27,000,000 tons of freight were carried in Lake Superior vessels, a gain of nearly 3,000,000 over the year before. The locks in the "Soo" canal, of which more later, have twice had to be enlarged, while the Canadian Government has built a canal of its own on the other side of the river. The discovery and development of the wonderful deposits of iron ore at the head of the lake have proved the greatest factors in the upbuilding of its commerce, and the necessity for getting this ore to the mills in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, has resulted in the creation of a class of colossal cargo-carriers on the lake that for efficiency and results, though not for beauty, outdo any vessel known to maritime circles.



At the present time, when the project of a canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the Central American Isthmus has almost passed out of the sphere of discussion and into that of action, there is suggestiveness in the part that the canal at the "Soo" played in stimulating lake commerce. Until it was dug, the lake fleets grew but slowly, and the steamers were but few and far between. Freight rates were high, and the schooners and sloops made but slow passages. From an old bill, of about 1835, we learn that freight rates between Detroit and Cleveland, or Lake Erie points and Buffalo, were about as follows: Flour, thirty cents a barrel; all grain, ten cents a bushel; beef, pork, ashes, and whisky, thirteen cents a hundred pounds; skins and furs, thirty-one cents a hundred weight; staves, from Detroit to Buffalo, $6.25 a thousand. In 1831 there were but 111 vessels of all sorts on the lakes. In five years, the fleet had grown to 262, and in 1845, the year when the first steamer entered Lake Superior, to 493. In 1855, the year the "Soo" canal was opened, there were in commission 1196 vessels, steam and sail, on the unsalted seas. Then began the era of prodigious development, due chiefly to that canal which Henry Clay, great apostle as he was of internal improvements, said would be beyond the remotest range of settlements in the United States or in the moon.

At the head of Lake Superior are almost illimitable beds of iron ore which looks like rich red earth, and is scooped up by the carload with steam shovels. Tens of thousands of men are employed in digging this ore and transporting it to the nearest lake port—Duluth and West Superior being the largest shipping points. Railroads built and equipped for the single purpose of carrying the ore are crowded with rumbling cars day and night, and at the wharves during the eight or nine months of the year when navigation is open lie great steel ships, five hundred feet long, with a capacity of from six thousand to nine thousand tons of ore. Perhaps in no branch of marine architecture has the type best fitted to the need been so scientifically determined as in planning these ore boats. They are cargo carriers only, and all considerations of grace or beauty are rigidly eliminated from their design. The bows are high to meet and part the heavy billows of the tempestuous lakes, for they are run as late into the stormy fall and early winter season as the ice will permit. From the forward quarter the bulwarks are cut away, the high bow sheltering the forecastle with the crews, while back of it rises a deck-house of steel, containing the officers' rooms, and bearing aloft the bridge and wheel-house. Three hundred feet further aft rises another steel deck-house, above the engine, and between extends the long, flat deck, broken only by hatches every few feet, battened down almost level with the deck floor. During the summer, all too short for the work the busy iron carriers have to do, these boats are run at the top of their speed, and on schedules that make the economy of each minute essential. So they are built in such fashion as to make loading as easy and as rapid as possible. Sometimes there are as many as fourteen or sixteen hatches in one of these great ships, into each of which while loading the ore chutes will be pouring their red flood, and out of each of which the automatic unloaders at Cleveland or Erie will take ten-ton bites of the cargo, until six or seven thousand tons of iron ore may be unloaded in eight hours. The hold is all one great store-room, no deck above the vessel's floor except the main deck. No water-tight compartments or bulkheads divide it as in ocean ships, and all the machinery is placed far in the stern. The vessel is simply a great steel packing-box, with rounded ends, made strong to resist the shock of waves and the impact of thousands of tons of iron poured in from a bin as high above the floor as the roof of a three-story building. With vessels such as these, the cost of carrying ore has been reduced below the level of freight charges in any part of the world.

Yet comfort and speed are by no means overlooked. The quarters of the officers and men are superior to those provided on most of the ocean liners, and vastly better than anything offered by the "ocean tramps." Many of the ships have special guest-cabins fitted up for their owners, rivalling the cabins de luxe of the ocean greyhounds. The speed of the newer ships will average from fourteen to sixteen knots, and one of them in a season will make as many as twenty round trips between Duluth and Cleveland. Often one will tow two great steel barges almost as large as herself, great ore tanks without machinery of any kind and mounting two slender masts chiefly for signaling purposes, but also for use in case of being cut adrift. For a time, the use of these barges, with their great stowage capacity in proportion to their total displacement, was thought to offer the cheapest way of carrying ore. One mining company went very heavily into building these craft, figuring that every steamer could tow two or three of them, giving thus for each engine and crew a load of perhaps twenty-four thousand tons. But, seemingly, this expectation has been disappointed, for while the barges already constructed are in active use, most of the companies have discontinued building them. Indeed, at the moment of the preparation of this book, there were but two steel barges building in all the shipyards of the great lakes.

Another form of lake vessel of which great things were expected, but which disappointed its promotors, is the "whaleback," commonly called by the sailors "pigs." These are cigar-shaped craft, built of steel, their decks, from the bridge aft to the engine-house, rounded like the back of a whale, and carried only a few feet above the water. In a sea, the greater part of the deck is all awash, and a trip from the bridge to the engine-house means not only repeated duckings, but a fair chance of being swept overboard. The first of these boats, called the "101," was built in sections, the plates being forged at Cleveland, and the bow and stern built at Wilmington, Del. The completed structure was launched at Duluth. In after years she was taken to the ocean, went round Cape Horn, and was finally wrecked on the north Pacific coast. At the time of the Columbian Exposition, a large passenger-carrying whaleback, the "Christopher Columbus," was built, which still plies on Lake Michigan, though there is nothing discernible in the way of practical advantage in this design for passenger vessels. For cargo carrying there would seem to be much in the claims of their inventor, Alexander McDougall, for their superior capacity and stability, yet they have not been generally adopted. The largest whaleback now on the lakes is named after Mr. McDougall, is four hundred and thirty feet over all, fifty feet beam, and of eight thousand tons capacity. She differs from the older models in having a straight stem instead of the "pig's nose."



The iron traffic which has grown to such monster proportions, and created so noble a fleet of ships, began in 1856, when the steamer "Ontonagon" shipped two hundred and ninety-six tons of ore at Duluth. To-day, one ship of a fleet numbering hundreds will carry nine thousand tons, and make twenty trips a season. Mr. Waldon Fawcett, who has published in the "Century Magazine" a careful study of this industry, estimates the total ore cargoes for a year at about 20,000,000 tons. The ships of the ore fleet will range from three hundred and fifty to five hundred feet in length, with a draft of about eighteen feet—at which figure it must stop until harbors and channels are deepened. Their cost will average $350,000. The cargoes are worth upward of $100,000,000 annually, and the cost of transportation has been so reduced that in some instances a ton is carried twenty miles for one cent. The seamen, both on quarterdeck and forecastle, will bear comparison with their salt-water brethren for all qualities of manhood. Indeed, the lot of the sailor on the lakes naturally tends more to the development of his better qualities than does that of the salt-water jack, for he is engaged by the month, or season, rather than by the trip; he is never in danger of being turned adrift in a foreign port, nor of being "shanghaied" in a home one. He has at least three months in winter to fit himself for shore work if he desires to leave the water, and during the season he is reasonably sure of seeing his family every fortnight. A strong trades-union among the lake seamen keeps wages up and regulates conditions of employment. At the best, however, seafaring on either lake or ocean is but an ill-paid calling, and the earnings of the men who command and man the great ore-carriers are sorely out of proportion to the profits of the employing corporations. Mr. Fawcett asserts that $11,250 net earnings for a single trip was not unusual in one season, and that this sum might have been increased by $4500 had the owners taken a return cargo of coal instead of rushing back light for more ore. As the vessels of the ore fleet are owned in the main by the steel trust, their earnings are a consideration second to their efficiency in keeping the mills supplied with ore.

The great canal at Sault Ste. Marie which has caused this prodigious development of the lake shipping has been under constant construction and reconstruction for almost half a century. It had its origin in a gift of 750,000 acres of public lands from the United States Government to the State of Michigan. The State, in its turn, passed the lands on to a private company which built the canal. This work was wholly unsatisfactory, and very wisely the Government took the control of this artificial waterway out of private hands and assumed its management itself. At once it expended about $8,000,000 upon the enlargement and improvement of the canal. Scarcely was it opened before the ratio at which the traffic increased showed that it would not long be sufficient. Enlarged in 1881, it gave a capacity of from fourteen feet, nine inches to fifteen feet in depth, and with locks only four hundred feet in length. Even a ditch of this size proved of inestimable value in helping vessels to avoid the eighteen feet drop between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. By 1886 the tonnage which passed through the canal each year exceeded 9,000,000, and then for the first time this great waterway with a season limited to eight or nine months, exceeded in the volume of its traffic the great Suez canal. But shippers at once began to complain of its dimensions. Vessels were constantly increasing both in length and in draught, and the development of the great iron fields gave assurance that a new and prodigious industry would add largely to the size of the fleet, which up to that time had mainly been employed in carrying grain. Accordingly the Government rebuilt the locks until they now are one hundred feet in width, twenty-one feet deep, and twelve hundred feet long. Immediately vessels were built of a size which tests even this great capacity, and while the traffic through De Lessep's famous canal at Suez has for a decade remained almost stationary, being 9,308,152 tons, in 1900, the traffic through the "Soo" has increased in almost arithmetical proportion every year, attaining in 1901, 24,696,736 tons, or more than the combined tonnage of the Suez, Kiel, and Manchester canals, though the "Soo" is closed four months in the year. In 1887 the value of the iron ore shipments through the canal was $8,744,995. Ten years later it exceeded $30,000,000. Meanwhile it must be remembered that the Canadian Government has built on its own side of the river very commodious canals which themselves carry no small share of the Lake Superior shipments. An illustration of the fashion in which superior facilities at one end of a great line of travel compel improvements all along the line is afforded by the fact that since the canal at the "Soo" has been deepened so as to take vessels of twenty-one feet draught with practically no limit upon their length, the cry has gone up among shippers and vessel men for a twenty-foot channel from Duluth to the sea. At present there are several points in the lower lakes, notably at what is called the Lime Kiln Crossing, below Detroit, where twenty-foot craft are put to some hazard, while beyond Buffalo the shallow Welland Canal, with its short locks, and the shallow canals of the St. Lawrence River have practically stopped all effort to establish direct and profitable communication between the great lakes and the ocean. Such efforts have been made and the expedients adopted to get around natural obstacles have sometimes been almost pathetic in the story they tell of the eagerness of the lake marine to find an outlet to salt-water. Ships are cut in two at Cleveland or at Erie and sent, thus disjointed, through the canals to be patched together again at Quebec or Montreal. One body of Chicago capitalists built four steel steamers of about 2500 tons capacity each, and of dimensions suited to the locks in the Welland Canal, in the hopes of maintaining a regular freight line between that city and Liverpool. The vessels were loaded with full cargo as far as Buffalo, there discharged half their freight, and went on thus half-laden through the Canadian canals. But the loss in time and space, and the expense of reshipment of cargo made the experiment an unprofitable one. Scarcely a year has passed that some such effort has not been made, and constantly the wonderful development of the ship-building business on the Great Lakes greatly increases the vigor of the demand for an outlet. Steel ships can be built on the lakes at a materially smaller cost than anywhere along the seaboard. In the report of the Commissioner of Navigation for 1901 it is noted that more than double the tonnage of steel construction on the Atlantic coast was reported from the lakes. If lake builders could send their vessels easily and safely to the ocean, we should not need subsidies and special legislation to reestablish the American flag abroad. By the report already quoted, it is shown that thirty-nine steel steamers were built in lake yards of a tonnage ranging from 1089 tons to 5125. Wooden ship-building is practically dead on the lakes. In June of that year twenty-six more steel steamers, with an aggregate tonnage of 81,000 were on the stocks in the lake yards. Two of these are being built for ocean service, but both will have to be cut in two before they can get through the Canadian canals. It is not surprising that there appears among the people living in the commonwealths which border on the Great Lakes a certain doubt as to whether the expenditure by the United States Government of $200,000,000 for a canal at the Isthmus will afford so great a measure of encouragement to American shipping and be of as immediate advantage to the American exporter, as a twenty-foot channel from Duluth to tide-water.

Though the old salt may sneer at the freshwater sailor who scarcely need know how to box the compass, to whom the art of navigation is in the main the simple practise of steering from port to port guided by headlands and lights, who is seldom long out of sight of land, and never far from aid, yet the perils of the lakes are quite as real as those which confront the ocean seaman, and the skill and courage necessary for withstanding them quite as great as his. The sailor's greatest safeguard in time of tempest is plenty of searoom. This the lake navigator never has. For him there is always the dreaded lee shore only a few miles away. Anchorage on the sandy bottom of the lakes is treacherous, and harbors are but few and most difficult of access. Where the ocean sailor finds a great bay, perhaps miles in extent, entered by a gateway thousands of yards across, offering a harbor of refuge in time of storm, the lake navigator has to run into the narrow mouth of a river, or round under the lee of a government breakwater hidden from sight under the crested waves and offering but a precarious shelter at best. Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee—most of the lake ports have witnessed such scenes of shipwreck and death right at the doorway of the harbor, as no ocean port could tell. At Chicago great schooners have been cast far up upon the boulevard that skirts a waterside park, or thrown bodily athwart the railroad tracks that on the south side of the city border the lake. The writer has seen from a city street, crowded with shoppers on a bright but windy day, vessels break to pieces on the breakwater, half a mile away but in plain sight, and men go down to their death in the raging seas. On all the lakes, but particularly on the smaller ones, an ugly sea is tossed up by the wind in a time so short as to seem miraculous to the practised navigator of the ocean. The shallow water curls into breakers under the force of even a moderate wind, and the vessels are put to such a strain, in their struggles, as perhaps only the craft built especially for the English channel have to undergo. Some of the most fatal disasters the lakes have known resulted from iron vessels, thus racked and tossed, sawing off, as the phrase goes, the rivets that bound their plates together, and foundering. Fire, too, has numbered its scores of victims on lake steamers, though this danger, like indeed most others, is greatly decreased by the increased use of steel as a structural material and the great improvement in the model of the lake craft. Even ten years ago the lake boats were ridiculous in their clumsiness, their sluggishness, and their lack of any of the charm and comfort that attend ocean-going vessels, but progress toward higher types has been rapid, and there are ships on the lakes to-day that equal any of their size afloat.

For forty years it has been possible to say annually, "This is the greatest year in the history of the lake marine." For essentially it is a new and a growing factor in the industrial development of the United States. So far, from having been killed by the prodigious development of our railroad system, it has kept pace with that system, and the years that have seen the greatest number of miles of railroad built, have witnessed the launching of the biggest lake vessels. There is every reason to believe that this growth will for a long time be persistent, that the climax has not yet been reached. For it is incredible that the Government will permit the barrier at Niagara to the commerce of these great inland seas to remain long unbroken. Either by the Mohawk valley route, now followed by the Erie canal, or by the route down the St. Lawrence, with a deepening and widening of the present Canadian canals, and a new canal down from the St. Lawrence to Lake Champlain, a waterway will yet be provided. The richest coast in the world is that bordering on the lakes. The cheapest ships in the world can there be built. Already the Government has spent its tens and scores of millions in providing waterways from the extreme northwest end to the southeastern extremity of this water system, and it is unbelievable that it shall long remain violently stopped there. New devices for digging canals; such as those employed in the Chicago drainage channel, and the new pneumatic lock, the power and capacity of which seem to be practically unlimited, have vastly decreased the cost of canal building, and multiplied amazingly the value of artificial waterways. As it is admitted that the greatness and the wealth of New York State are much to be credited to the Erie canal, so the prosperity and populousness of the whole lake region will be enhanced when lake sailors and the lake ship-builders are given a free waterway to the ocean.

**Transcriber's note: Page 256: changed estopped to stopped.



CHAPTER VIII

THE MISSISSIPPI AND TRIBUTARY RIVERS—THE CHANGING PHASES OF THEIR SHIPPING—RIVER NAVIGATION AS A NATION-BUILDING FORCE—THE VALUE OF SMALL STREAMS—WORK OF THE OHIO COMPANY—AN EARLY PROPELLER—THE FRENCH FIRST ON THE MISSISSIPPI—THE SPANIARDS AT NEW ORLEANS—EARLY METHODS OF NAVIGATION—THE FLATBOAT, THE BROADHORN, AND THE KEELBOAT—LIFE OF THE RIVERMEN—PIRATES AND BUCCANEERS—LAFITTE AND THE BARATARIANS—THE GENESIS OF THE STEAMBOATS—CAPRICIOUS RIVER—FLUSH TIMES IN NEW ORLEANS—RAPID MULTIPLICATION OF STEAMBOATS—RECENT FIGURES ON RIVER SHIPPING—COMMODORE WHIPPLE'S EXPLOIT—THE MEN WHO STEERED THE STEAMBOATS—THEIR TECHNICAL EDUCATION—THE SHIPS THEY STEERED—FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS—HEROISM OF THE PILOTS—THE RACERS.

It is the ordinary opinion, and one expressed too often in publications which might be expected to speak with some degree of accuracy, that river transportation in the United States is a dying industry. We read every now and then of the disappearance of the magnificent Mississippi River steamers, and the magazines not infrequently treat their readers to glowing stories of what is called the "flush" times on the Mississippi, when the gorgeousness of the passenger accommodations, the lavishness of the table, the prodigality of the gambling, and the mingled magnificence and outlawry of life on the great packets made up a picturesque and romantic phase of American life. It is true that much of the picturesqueness and the romance has departed long since. The great river no longer bears on its turbid bosom many of the towering castellated boats built to run, as the saying was, on a heavy dew, but still carrying their tiers upon tiers of ivory-white cabins high in air. The time is past when the river was the great passenger thoroughfare from St. Louis to New Orleans. Some few packets still ply upon its surface, but in the main the passenger traffic has been diverted to the railroads which closely parallel its channel on either side. The American travels much, but he likes to travel fast, and for passenger traffic, except on a few routes where special conditions obtain, the steamboat has long since been outclassed by the railroads.

Yet despite the disappearance of its spectacular conditions the water traffic on the rivers of the Mississippi Valley is greater now than at any time in its history. Its methods only have changed. Instead of gorgeous packets crowded with a gay and prodigal throng of travelers for pleasure, we now find most often one dingy, puffing steamboat, probably with no passenger accommodations at all, but which pushes before her from Pittsburg to New Orleans more than a score of flatbottomed, square-nosed scows, aggregating perhaps more than an acre of surface, and heavy laden with coal. Such a tow—for "tow" it is in the river vernacular, although it is pushed—will transport more in one trip than would suffice to load six heavy freight trains. Not infrequently the barges or scows will number more than thirty, carrying more than 1000 tons each, or a cargo exceeding in value $100,000. During the season when navigation is open on the Ohio and its tributaries, this traffic is pursued without interruption. Through it and through the local business on the lower Mississippi, and the streams which flow into it, there is built up a tonnage which shows the freight movement, at least, on the great rivers, to exceed, even in these days of railroads, anything recorded in their history.

No physical characteristic of the United States has contributed so greatly to the nationalization of the country and its people, as the topography of its rivers. From the very earliest days they have been the pathways along which proceeded exploration and settlement. Our forefathers, when they found the narrow strip of land along the Atlantic coast which they had at first occupied, becoming crowded, according to their ideas at the time, began working westward, following the river gaps. Up the Hudson and westward by the Mohawk, up the Susquehanna and the Potomac, carrying around the falls that impeded the course of those streams, trudging over the mountains, and building flatboats at the headwaters of the Ohio, they made their way west. Some of the most puny streams were utilized for water-carriers, and the traveler of to-day on certain of the railroads through western New York and Pennsylvania, will be amazed to see the remnants of canals, painfully built in the beds of brawling streams, that now would hardly float an Indian birch-bark canoe. In their time these canals served useful purposes. The stream was dammed and locked every few hundred yards, and so converted into a placid waterway with a flight of mechanical steps, by which the boats were let down to, or raised up from tidewater. To-day nothing remains of most of these works of engineering, except masses of shattered masonry. For the railroads, using the river's bank, and sometimes even part of the retaining walls of the canals for their roadbeds, have shrewdly obtained and swiftly employed authority to destroy all the fittings of these waterways which might, perhaps, at some time, offer to their business a certain rivalry.