So we went over in mid-stream, and were not sorry,—receiving as we stepped ashore what is probably a part of every programme, the compliment of being "the bravest lady that ever went over the falls."
Many a pleasant day, or week, one might undoubtedly spend at the Sault Ste. Marie, or at Mackinac; but if you have only turned through the straits and gone southward again to Chicago through Lake Michigan, do not think of saying that you have taken the trip on the Great Lakes. To me the Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land that is not actually a mountain. Ruskin says that for him the flowers lose their light, the river its music, when he tries to divest any given landscape of its associations with human struggle and endeavor. Our New World scenery, of course, has little of that wonderful charm of association; but there is something singularly impressive in the mere silence and vastness of our great Northern solitudes.
We entered Lake Superior late in the afternoon, and the only event of the evening was a magnificent aurora. Toward midnight the gorgeous tints changed to a thin wedge of perfectly white light, against which in a duskier white the sails of passing vessels were distinctly outlined, though no hulls were visible.
At Marquette, in the morning, a party of Finnish emigrants on board left the ship. Half a dozen Americanized Finns, who had evidently been the inspiring cause of this influx of new citizens, had come to the wharf to greet the new arrivals. They had the same short stature, the same stolid features, as their relatives on board; but there was a difference. The white shirt, the clean collar, the smart straw hat and vivid necktie, with a vigorous step, alert manner, decisive tones, and a certain tendency to help the women with their heavy boxes, distinctly individualized those who had been awhile under American influence.
All day we basked in the sunshine on the captain's bridge. Think of being glad to bask in the sunshine on a 4th of August! Between Marquette and Portage River we passed but one house,—one solitary, lonely house, set on the very edge of the "unsalted sea;" before it a vast expanse of limitless waters, behind it an unbroken, limitless forest; no fields, no crops, no roads, only space enough cleared for the tiny cabin and tinier shed. What had lured people there? What kept them alive? No neighbors, no mail, no farm, no apparent object in life, and only one small rowboat to get away in.
Yet they had put a curtain up at the window! No human being could by any possibility look in at that window. Even the curtain could only be detected with an opera-glass from the steamer that passed twice a week. But the sweet instinct of privacy and home had had its way, and every night the little curtain that never shut out anything but the incurious moonlight or the innocent stars was drawn as regularly as the shades of a Fifth Avenue mansion. Later we learned that it was the Life-Saving Station of Lake Superior.
"No nap this afternoon, ladies," said the captain as he left the luncheon-table. "You must be on the lookout for Portage River."
All the afternoon we watched for the little river, eked out by a canal, that enables us to cut off one hundred and twenty miles of what would be the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole trip. So narrow is the opening of the river that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot. The river is hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to see that neither runs aground. It would be impossible for two steamers to pass each other in the river, and the contingency of their meeting is guarded against by the fact that returning steamers have to go round the Point, being too heavily laden with flour from Duluth. As it was, there were but thirteen feet of water in the river, and the Japan drew twelve.
Once in the river, we experienced a most extraordinary transformation. Every one knows what it is to pass in a day or two from northern snow to southern roses, or in a few hours from valley roses to mountain snow; but here, in five minutes, and remaining on precisely the same level, we passed from October to July. The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the little inland river the sun was actually oppressive. Seal-skins were cast aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas. The speed of the steamer was slackened to four miles an hour. You heard no click of machinery or swash of water against the sides: we were gliding on through a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in the distance. Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed us. There was even a little settlement of scattered houses; but the expected steamer had evidently created no excitement in the inmates. It would not stop; it brought them neither mail nor summer boarder: why should they care just to see it pass? One man, painting the window-sashes of his house with his back to the steamer, never even turned or paused from his work, though we were so near that he might have heard what was said about him on the deck. It is not the dweller in the wilderness, but the denizen of cities, that longs for something to happen.
At Hancock the steamer waits several hours, giving an opportunity to visit the wonderful copper-mines. We chanced to be there just at the hour to see one of the unique sights of America,—the working of the man-engine that brings the miners up from their work. Even by machinery it takes them half an hour to reach daylight. The mine is worked to the depth of fifteen hundred feet, and for five hundred we could gaze down into the dark and awful shaft, lit for us by the candles burning in the miners' caps. Two long beams, to which are attached at right angles little platforms at intervals of eight feet, each platform holding one man, work up and down. As each man reaches the level of the platform above on the opposite beam the engine stops just long enough for him to step from one to the other. The long, silent, spectral procession, moving with such shadowy precision and constant motion, with the glimmering lights changing, not fitfully, but with the regularity of well-trained will-o'-the-wisps, made a panorama not easily forgotten. Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and disappeared into the town. Long as we waited, the procession was not yet ended when we had to go back to the Japan.