276 . MISCELLANEOUS. 



quite as much as the more picturesque and musical features 

 presented in the summer season. 



Throughout this entire range of country skirting the south 

 shore of Lake Superior, from Marquette to Duluth and ex- 

 tending from the lake a hundred miles to the southward, the 

 ground is now, on the first day of April, covered with snow 

 to a depth of from two to three feet. The lakes and streams 

 are covered with ice twenty to thirty inche^ftthick. Lake 

 Superior itself is frozen all along the shore and for many 

 miles out toward its center. The lighthouse-keeper at Outer 

 Island, which lies twenty miles ut in the lake from Bayfield, 

 reports that no open water is visible from the tower even with 

 the aid of. a powerful telescope, and it is stated that a short 

 distance west of Bayfield the lake is frozen entirely across. 



Teams are passing between the various towns along the 

 lakeshore on the ice, and I have myself just returned from a 

 delightful sleigh-ride to Bayfield, a distance of eighteen miles 

 from Ashland, the entire trip having been made on the ice, 

 and over water measuring from twenty to one hundred feet in 

 depth. Considering the time of year and the extremely mild 

 winter that has prevailed south of here, the novelty of the 

 sensation, as we sped through the keen frosty air, which was 

 rendered musical by the cheerful sound of sleigh-bells, may 

 be more easily imagined than described. Even now the mer- 

 cury runs down to zero or very near it every night. In 

 mid-day it ranges from twenty to forty degrees above. 



The lumbermen are still busily engaged cutting and bank- 

 ing logs, ready to run down on the " June rise." Thousands 

 of men and teams have been employed all winter cutting and 

 banking logs along the streams and railroads, and hundreds 

 of thousands of dollars will be put in circulation when these 

 vast forces are paid off for their winter's work. These lumber- 

 men, or more strictly " loggers," are an interesting sj.o 



