THE CASCADE IN WINTER, LAKE SUPERIOR.
In order to fully realize and appreciate the splendor and marvelous beauty of the Pictured Rocks and the scenery adjacent thereto, they must be seen in winter, when they are dressed in their frosty sheets of ice and snow and ornamented with a thousand pillars of pearly white. It is then that they appear like scenes from fairy-land, as pictured in the fantastic creations of poets and painters.
SIGNAL ROCK, CAMP DOUGLAS.
In order to observe the shores more clearly, we took one of the Lake Superior Transit Company’s steamers at Sault Ste. Marie for Duluth, a route which gives opportunity for taking photographs of the incomparable pictured cliffs of Superior. But at Marquette, where the steamer lands, a yacht was engaged in which we were able to approach much of the finest scenery that would otherwise have escaped our attention.
The range of cliffs to which the name of Pictured Rocks has been given, may be regarded as among the most striking and beautiful features of the scenery of the Northwest, and is well worthy the attention of the artist and the observer of geological phenomena. They may be described, in general terms, as a series of sandstone bluffs extending along the shore of Lake Superior for about five miles, and derive their name from the great diversity of colors they display. They are worn into strange shapes by frost and storm, and stained by a thousand dyes in every possible variety of arrangement, far beyond the power of words to describe, and all this profusion is repeated mile after mile, keeping up the interest by some new prospect of sweeping curve, or abrupt angle, or fantastic form. “The ‘Castle,’ the first of the more striking features of the rocks, bears at a distance a great resemblance to an ancient castle, with walls, towers, and battlements. Further on, a mass of detached rock called the ‘Sail Rock’ comes into view, and so striking is its resemblance to a sloop with the jib and mainsail spread, that a short distance out on the lake any one would suppose it a real boat sailing near the beach. But the principal feature of the rocks is the magnificent cave known as the ‘Grand Portal.’ Let the reader imagine himself in a room 400 feet long by 18 feet wide, and 150 to 200 feet high to the arched roof, bulk of yellow sandstone, seamed with decay, and dripping with water. Shout, and the voice is multiplied a hundred-fold by echoes that reverberate several seconds, sharp, metallic. Here the stratum of gravel rises about fifty feet, while at the castle it is nearly down to the water’s level. The waters are undermining the foundations, and wearing holes everywhere in the support of the walls and the roof. The water in the cave increases in depth as you go out towards the lake, from the bare rocks of the back end to about fifty feet at the opening, and a few rods from the shore it is a hundred feet, or more. The cliff on the west, next to the Grand Portal, is hollowing out, forming an immense cave, increasing every year.”
