The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

DULUTH.

Embarking at a pier, and steering northwest, we pass up the bay, with the long, narrow, natural breakwater, Minnesota Point, on our right hand, and the level plateau of the main-land, with a heavy forest growth, on our left. Before us, on the sloping hillside of the northern shore, lies the rapidly rising town of Duluth, unheard of twelve months ago, but now, to use a Western term, "a right smart chance of a place."

One hundred and ninety years ago Duluth, a French explorer, was coasting along these shores, and sailing up this bay over which we are gliding. He was the first European to reach the head of the lake. He crossed the country to the Upper Mississippi, descended it to St. Paul, where he met Father Hennipen, who had been held in captivity by the Indians.

It is suitable that so intrepid an explorer should be held in remembrance, and the founders of the new town have done wisely in naming it for him, instead of calling it Washington or Jackson, or adding another "ville" to the thousands now so perplexing to post-office clerks.

The new city of the Northwest is sheltered from northerly winds by the high lands behind it. The St. Louis River, a stream as large as the Merrimac, after its turbulent course down the rocky rapids, with a descent altogether of five hundred feet, flows peacefully past the town into the Bay of Superior. The river and lake together have thrown up the long and narrow strip of land called Minnesota Point, reaching nearly across the head of the lake, and behind which lies the bay. It is as if the Titans had thrown up a wide railway embankment, or had tried their hand at filling up the lake. The bay is shallow, but the men who projected the city of Duluth are in no wise daunted by that fact. They have planned to make a harbor by building a mole out into the lake fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. It is to extend from the northern shore far enough to give good anchorage and protection to vessels and steamers.

The work to be done is in many respects similar to what has been accomplished at both ends of the Suez Canal. When M. Lesseps set about the construction of that magnificent enterprise, he found no harbor on the Mediterranean side, but only a low sandy shore, against which the waves, driven by the prevailing western winds, were always breaking.

The shore was a narrow strip of sand, behind which lay a shallow lagoon called Lake Menzaleh. There was no granite or solid material of any description at hand for the construction of a breakwater. Undaunted by the difficulties, he commenced the manufacture of blocks of stone on the beach, mixing hydraulic lime brought from France with the sand of the shore, and moistening it with salt water. He erected powerful hydraulic presses and worked them by steam. After the blocks, which weighed twenty tons each, had dried three months, they were taken out on barges and tumbled into the ocean in the line of the moles, one of which was 8,178 feet, nearly a mile and a half, in length; the other 5,000 feet, enclosing an area of about five hundred acres. More than 100,000 blocks of manufactured stone were required to complete these two walls. They were not laid in cement, for it has been found that a rubble wall is better than finished masonry to resist the action of the waves. Having completed the walls, dredges were set to work, and the area has been deepened enough to enable the largest vessels navigating the Mediterranean to find safe anchorage.

These breakwaters were required for the outer harbor, but an inner basin was needed. To obtain it, M. Lesseps cut a channel through the low ridge of sand to Lake Menzaleh, where the water upon an average was four feet deep. A large area has been dredged in the lake, and docks constructed, and now the commerce of the world between the Orient and the Occident passes through the basin of Port Said.

The Suez Canal, the construction of a large harbor on the sand-beach of the Mediterranean, and another of equal capacity on the Red Sea, is one of the wonders of modern times,—a triumph of engineering skill and of the indomitable will of one energetic man.