210 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



160 broad, with a mean depth of 988 feet. It has a super- 

 ficial area of 32,000 square miles. The State of Massa- 

 chusetts might stretch herself out at full length and bathe 

 in its waters. Even then there would be room enough 

 for Rhode Island at her feet and Connecticut at her head, 

 with Vermont stretched along her right and New Hamp- 

 shire on her left. You may take all New England, except- 

 ing Maine, and hide it bodily beneath the waters of this 

 single lake. Lake Michigan is 360 miles long, 108 broad, 

 with a mean depth of 900 feet, and a superficial area of 

 20,000 square miles. It contains 18J millions of cubic 

 yards of water, or, in other words, 3,400 cubic miles. 

 You could sink in this lake the three states of New Jersey, 

 Delaware and Maryland. Lake Huron, with a length of 

 270 miles, and a breadth equal to that of Lake Superior, 

 has a mean depth of 300 feet, a superficial extent equal 

 to that of Lake Michigan, and would swallow up the 

 whole kingdom of Denmark, including the Prussianized 

 duchies. 



You may embark on a sea-worthy steamer at Chicago, 

 and travel for thirty hours without a sight of land; and, 

 after having passed the Straits of Mackinac, and entered 

 Lake Superior, you may steam for two days more without 

 reaching Superior City or Duluth. The voyage from 

 Buffalo to Chicago around the lakes is a thousand miles; 

 from Buffalo to Duluth is eleven hundred miles, or three- 

 fifths the distance from Newfoundland to Ireland. 



The majesty of the tempest is little less on the lakes 

 than on the Atlantic, and the low, perpetual moan of the 

 breaking waves along the beach transports the imaginative 

 listener to Long Branch or Nahant. During a summer 

 day they breathe, like the ocean, a cooling atmosphere on 



