Lakes themselves are so overcrowded that years ago the Great Lakes Shipping Association took steps to avert the perils of collision by laying down arbitrary east and west routes for vessels under steam. The years of the war saw the shipping industry on the Great Lakes at its apogee. It is true that the fleet was somewhat reduced by the removal of ships commandeered for ocean use, while the shipyards were busy almost exclusively upon vessels of a size suitable for passage through the Canadian canals to tidewater. But the great, long, cigar-shaped steamers carrying 13,000 tons of coal or ore, or 450,000 bushels of wheat, were pushed as never before. The iron and steel mills of Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania were eating up the red sandy ore of the Mesaba range, and converting it into cannon for our friends-and later for our own armies-shells, ship-plates and structural steel of every sort. The even hungrier people of Europe were crying aloud for our foodstuffs and the great granary of the Northwest was pouring its golden tribute into the steel coffers of the ships that carried it as far east as Buffalo-and would have taken it clear to Europe had the ship canal been ready that must surely come at no distant date. A writer in the Outlook, who made an especial study of the part played by lake shipping in feeding Europe under the Hoover regime, sets forth these figures: "The stream of ore and grain and coal pouring through the locks at the Soo, when composed into seasonal figures, is enormous. Lake freighters are monsters, some of them carrying as much as 16,000 tons at a load, and they are locking up and down at few-minute intervals day and night all season long, except during the thickest fogs. Their combined tonnage, with the present estimated shortage of food, would supply Europe in one season with enough white bread to last her for fifteen years! Ninety million tons in a season-the most heroic figures dealt in by the Department of Commerce adding machines ! "Last spring, in spite of the most terrific winter they ever had up there, the locks were opened four days earlier than in the Spring of 1917. During that April four tons of cargo went eastward through the Soo. But last April somebody got behind and pushed hard. Channels were bored open, ships in Lake Superior harbors were coaled and blowing off steam, cargoes were waiting for them in the elevators and in the bins. As a result, for April, 1918, are stacked these figures: "1,474,698 bushels of grain. That, mark you, was the fruit merely of opening navigation a few days ahead of time. One can estimate from it what the lake fleet is capable of in the busy season of midsummer. Much of the tremendous freight-moving capacity of the lake shipping is due to the marvelous apparatus for loading and discharging ships-and the fact that the ships are designed with special view to the celerity of this service. At Duluth the record for loading a grain ship has been 435,000 bushels in two hours and forty minutes. At the other end of the route 456,000 bushels have been deftly withdrawn from the great steel box in less than fourteen hours. At Lake Erie ports they ship coal for the Northwest and huge machines pick up gondolas of coal, holding 100 tons each, swing them through the air and dump their contents into the hold of the waiting vessel. Getting it out again is a harder job, but Duluth has unloaded 10,074 tons of coal in less than seven hours. Of course the high tonnage of a port like Duluth, or of a passage like the Lime Kiln Channel below Detroit, is due to the fact that the same boat makes many round trips in the course of a month. Duluth has more clearances than Liverpool, but not by so many different vessels. A 13,000-ton ship will pass the Lime Kiln loaded with grain for Buffalo, and be back, headed west with a new cargo of coal in five days. Naturally, in the tonnage of Buffalo or Duluth she will count for much more in the course of a season than a ship pulling forth from Liverpool for a month's run to Asiatic waters. We find that on the lakes expedition in loading and unloading are qualities sought in marine architecture and in the management of ships. Most of the big carriers are "liners" making regular trips between docks owned by the same companies, and the latter are equipped with handling facilities that make the famous docks of Hamburg seem second rate in comparison. It is estimated that delay costs a loaded ship $10 a minute, and therefore everything-the ship herself, the locks and canals through which she passes, and the docks to which she ties up for cargo-are designed to avert delay. The Government is keenly alive to this need. The new Livingstone Channel below Detroit was cut out of the limestone bed of the river in order that the lines of vessels that every season waited to get across the neighboring Lime Kiln crossing might be diverted. The new 1,000foot locks at the Soo were not completed before busy seasons saw as many as forty ships waiting to get through the old locks. Even today it sometimes happens at Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit that eager vessel men jockey and jostle in the effort to get their ships up to the overcrowded docks, much as if they were trying to park an automobile at the curb of a crowded theater street. The future of lake shipping and shipbuilding? There seems to be no reason why it should lag behind the past. Europe will presently begin to raise much of its own food again, and the rush of the grain carriers will be perhaps less furious, and the need to extend seasons at both ends beyond the danger point will be past. But always the great Northwest of the United States and Canada will be the granary of the crowded East, and the European world. The rich iron deposits of the Mesaba region seem inexhaustible. For decades, probably centuries, to come they will keep the furnaces of Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio stocked with ore. For these products the lakes already afford the most expeditious and economical road to market. And inevitably, as surely as any obvious development of the industrial field of man can be foreseen, the ship canal from the lakes to the sea will be built. Already men know that it can be done more cheaply than was the Panama Canal. The nation has learned through war's dread needs to think in billions and not in millions. No longer will the money needed to cut the ridge which nature raised between Lake Erie and the Hudson be grudged. An improvement which, costing less than our unhappy governmental experiment in aviation, will bring increaesd prosperity to millions of our people, and open new oceans to the commerce of all peoples cannot long be deferred. And with it concluded lake shipyards and lake sailors will assume first place in the records of the nation's merchant marine. THE MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER VIII AND -- TRIBUTARY RIVERS THE CHANGING PHASES OF THEIR SHIPPING-RIVER NAVIGATION AS A NATIONBUILDING 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 T 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 |