7° 



The National Geographic Magazine 



ESKIMO HUNTER, KING WILLIAMS LAND 



that Proctor Knott ridiculed Duluth, the 

 future great and Zenith City of the un- 

 salted seas. 



Last week, a steel freight steamer with 

 every modern convenience for economic 

 transportation, brought down from Du- 

 luth through the Sault canal and deliv- 

 ered at Buffalo the largest cargo of wheat 

 ever carried by any ship in the world, 

 422,000 bushels ; enough to make 84,000 

 barrels of flour, and at 14 bushels to the 



acre, representing the product of 

 30,000 acres, approximately 50 

 square miles ; and I have it from of- 

 ficial sources that we may take this 

 average. In 1907, in about 232 days 

 of navigation, Duluth shipped in the 

 single item of ore over 13,000,000 

 long tons, and her sister city across 

 the bay over 7,000,000 tons more. 



One-third of all the tonnage under 

 the American flag is employed on 

 the Great Lakes. As an example of 

 the progress of transportation a 

 comparison may be illustrative. In 

 the last fiscal year, of ships of over 

 1,000 tons custom-house measure- 

 ment, there were built in other parts 

 of the United States, 18 steel and 

 wooden steamers, ferry boats and 

 schooners, with a tonnage of 41,355 

 tons. In the same period on the 

 lakes there were built 40 steel 

 steamers, each upward of 1,000 

 tons, and of aggregate custom- 

 house tonnage of 232,366 tons. It 

 may not be out of place to say that 

 more than 30 of these exceeded 

 5,000 tons custom-house measure- 

 ments. The custom-house meas- 

 urement, it must be borne in mind, 

 represents only something more 

 than one-half the actual dead weight 

 carrying capacity of our lake ships 

 at the draft which they can carry 

 through the shallower connecting 

 waters between the lakes themselves. 

 Therefore, it is that a steel steamer 

 of the prevailing type, say from 556 

 to over 600 feet length, 54 to 60 feet 

 beam and 32 feet depth carries 10,- 

 000, or more, long tons of iron ore 

 on a draft of a little over 18 feet to which 

 connecting waters consign her, and 12,- 

 000 to 14,000 tons in such a trade as be- 

 tween Escanaba and the great steel works 

 at the head of Lake Michigan, in which 

 trade the steamer is not required to en- 

 counter the restricted draft compelled in 

 the connection betwen Lake Superior and 

 Lake Huron and Lake Erie, by reason of 

 natural conditions which I have not the 

 time to explain. 



