A Summer's Outing, and The Old Man's Story

by Carter H. Harrison

PORT ARTHUR AND LAKE SUPERIOR.

Port Arthur has a beautiful site on a gentle slope, with an elevated bench behind for residences. If it were in the States it would be boomed. It is Canada's only port on Lake Superior, and in Thunder Bay has a grand harbor. The weather is so cool, throughout the summer, that evening fires are rarely dispensed with. This should be considered a terminus for the C.P.R.R., at least for all heavy freights and grain. The road has now two or three 1,200,000 bushel capacity elevators, and I am informed intends immediately to build several more. These will enable it to move the grain from Manitoba, and hold it during the winter and until the opening of navigation.

We had intended continuing by rail to Sudbury, north of Lake Huron, but finding that we should pass all the interesting country by night we halted a day and then boarded the Alberta, the Canadian Pacific railroad steamer, a Clyde-built vessel of some 2,000 tonnage, with clean and comfortable rooms, polite officers and servants, and in every way first-class. The break on the great run from ocean to ocean on this longest of the world's trunk lines, by taking steamer between Owen Sound on Georgian Bay and Port Arthur, is a most agreeable one.

It is charming to sail on a good ship on this the mightiest of fresh-water seas, and to lose sight of land while skimming over its dark green depths. We have had a smooth sea and delicious bracing air, and find nothing to complain of and much to commend. Before closing I wish to say something of the remarkable civility of the officers and employes of this great road. The managers evidently know the value of politeness on the part of those who cater to the traveling community, the hardest and most difficult to satisfy of all others. Four out of five of them pack their trunks for a trip and expect to find the comforts of their home while on the go, and find fault at every turn. This Van Horne seems to know, and has so drilled his people, from the highest to the lowest, that courtesy, the cheapest of valuable commodities, is never lacking.

I am finishing this letter while our ship lies in the great lock at the "Soo." We are again under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. The rush of waters of the great "Sault" fills the air with its roar. This was a few moments since deadened by the greater turmoil from some twenty dynamite blasts in the hard rock through which Uncle Sam is cutting for the huge lock, which is to aid the present one in passing to and fro the mighty traffic of our great system of fresh-water seas. The present lock is wholly inadequate, and steamers often wait for five hours for their turn, and that, too, although it admits several vessels at a time. Over beyond the cascade the Dominion is erecting a vast system of locks on its own ground. The near future will need them all.

A PLEA FOR RECIPROCITY.

We look across the foamy river and see a beautiful little town, the "Canadian Soo." Behind it lifts a gently rising land, all clothed in sweet verdure and making an exquisite picture. There, for thousands of miles east and west and extending several hundreds of miles to the north, are a people in every way our kinsmen. We wander among them and feel that we are among friends of our own clan, and yet I cannot take my satchel ashore without submitting it to the inspection of our custom-house officers. How long will this thing last? Why should two people so closely united by every bond except that of so called nationality, submit to this hampering of their kindly relations? When will the bars be thrown down so that the Canuck and the Yankee can trade as brothers and friends? I may not be a statesman, but what little of statecraft I possess, tells me there should be absolute reciprocity between Americans from the Gulf of Mexico to the frozen seas; reciprocity at least for all productions of the respective countries.

I look out of my window; the ship is sinking down between the massive walls of the lock. In a few moments we will be on a level with Lake Huron, and just below the lock we will land in Michigan. So now we bid adieu to the hospitalities of President Van Horne, and will commend his iron highway to all who love nature and its grand works, and who delight in its sublimest displays.

CHAPTER IX.