It is just beyond Hancock that the river broadens into the beautiful expanse so like Lake George. As we glided away from the wharf in the light of a splendid sunset, it was curious to look back at the simple little town, so remote from luxury, even from civilization, so humble in its own wants and pleasures, yet pouring such vast sources of supply into the great world of which it knew nothing and asked nothing, save the privilege of enriching it.
At twilight we entered the canal. I have been up the Saguenay, I have been over the Marshall Pass and through the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, and I have seen many noble scenes in Europe, but no scenery has ever impressed me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of an August afternoon. Nor was it merely a personal impression. There were two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on board. During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low impressive orders of the captain and—if you chanced to be on the captain's bridge—the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house. People spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they remembered it afterward. What made it so impressive? I am sure I do not know. Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and we never were in less danger in our lives. We were moving peacefully through a long, narrow sheet of perfectly calm water, stretching straight as a die from the river to the upper lake. If anything had happened, we could have jumped ashore on either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight came solemnly to fold us in its embrace, as we advanced solemnly and slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and, as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement, and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more danger, from storm or collision or fire, out on the great lake; but the sense of awe had been lifted from us.
We were due at Duluth at four o'clock of the following afternoon. What would she be like, this "zenith city of the unsalted seas," with such a stately avenue of approach? At three o'clock we began to see in the distance what seemed to be her cloud-capped towers and domes and palaces; at half-past three a beautiful little humming-bird, blown from the shore, lit on my scarlet necktie and pecked at this strange flower from the East; at four we were at the wharf.
"I think," said my companion slowly, gazing sorrowfully at the shanties that had made such splendid domes in the distance, "I think I should have called it Delusion, instead of Duluth. It looks like a town in Dickens's 'American Notes' illustrated by Dor?
Surely never was there a more forlorn little town, trying to scramble up a hillside covered with the tall trunks of dead trees and blackened stumps, shut out from one world by the waste of waters before it, shut in from another by dreary, verdureless hills. Surely nobody lived there; those could not be homes, those desolate frame houses where people were "staying" awhile. It seemed as if the whole town, like "Poor Joe," would soon be told by a vigilant policeman to "move on."
And we, who were looking forward to Colorado, needed no policeman to urge us to "move on" by the earliest train to St. Paul.
ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS.
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