ENTRANCE ST. CLAIR CANAL.
Huron is a deep blue like Superior, and unlike the green of shallow Erie. The channel toward the Soo is very tortuous—many windings and sharp turns, marked by buoys and multitudinous beacon lights. All along we had passed great numbers of steamships and barges—ore carriers, but nowhere saw a large sailing craft, only a sail boat here and there. This entire extensive traffic is a steam traffic, and though we see many boats, they are black and sombre, and burdened with coal and ore.
It was late, nearly seven o’clock, when we steamed slowly into the lock basin at the Soo. High fir-clad hills on either hand; a multitude of channels among wooded islands. A new and vigorous manufacturing community growing up on either shore where the electric power is being harnessed. Many buildings, many new residences, some of them large and imposing, covering the sloping hillsides. The rapids are a mile or more in length and half a mile wide. The American canal with its locks is on the south side. One, the old lock, small; the other, large and deep for modern traffic. We were here delayed more than two hours by reason of the pack of boats ahead of us. It was dark when we came out of the lock—a lift of twenty-one feet. But meantime, the hills on either hand had burst out into hundreds of electric lights, betokening a much greater population than I had conceived. As we entered the American lock, a big black ship, almost as large as ours, crept in behind us to the Canadian lock on the river’s further side—one of the Canadian Pacific line going to Fort William.
It was a full moon as we came out of the upper river and lost ourselves in the blackness of Lake Superior. A keen, crisp wind, a heavier swell than on the lakes below. We were continually passing innumerable craft with their dancing night lights. The tonnage that now goes through the Soo canals is greater than that of Suez. How little could the world have dreamed of this a few years ago!
To-day when I came on deck we were just entering the ship canal that makes the short cut by way of Houghton. A cold mist and rain, fir-trees and birches, small and stunted, a cold land. A country smacking strongly of Norway. No wonder the Scandinavians and Finns take to a land so like their own.
At Houghton we were in the center of the copper region. A vigorous town, many handsome residences. But it has been cold all day. Mercury 56 degrees this morning. A sharp wind from the north. The bulk of the passengers are summer tourists in thin gauze and light clothing, and all day they are shivering in the cabin under cover, while we stay warm out on deck.
The food is excellent, and the famous planked white fish is our stand-by.