TRADE OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 



1.3 



Company became a powerful, wealthy, and influential 

 body. 



The completion of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal*, in 

 May, 1855, established an uninterrupted water communi- 

 cation for sea-going vessels between Lake Superior and 

 the ocean. The first ship which sailed from Chicago to 

 Liverpool was the Dean Richmond, in 1856 ; this craft 

 measured 379 tons American measurement, or 266 tons 

 according to the English method of determining the ton- 

 nage of a vessel. Since that period the number of sea- 

 going vessels from the Upper Lake ports has been 

 increasing with great regularity. The trade of Lake 

 Superior is also becoming of unexpected importance. In 

 1859, between the 1st day of June and the 1st No- 

 vember, the value of the different articles which passed 

 through the St. Mary's Canal amounted to 5,703,433 

 doUars, and the number of passengers to 11,622. Fifteen 

 years since three schooners constituted the entire fleet 

 engaged in the Lake Superior trade. The number of 

 vessels which passed through the St. Mary's Canal in the 

 seasons of 1858 and 1859 were respectively 443 and 847, 

 with a tonnage 149,307 and 304,860.f 



The heights and distances enumerated in the subjoined 

 Table, show a profile of this ship route between Anticosti, 

 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Fort William, at the 

 mouth of the Kaministiquia Eiver, Lake Superior. J 



* The Sault Ste. Marie Canal is one mile and an eighth in length, 70 

 feet wide at bottom, and 100 at water-line, depth 12 feet. The average 

 lift of the locks is 17 feet 6 inches. 



t Detroit Advertiser. From official returns. 



X See a Map of the Province of Canada, showing the connection by steam 

 navigation of the region of the great lakes with Europe, by the route of the 

 St. Lawrence and the great lakes, prepared for the Canadian Commissioners 

 of the Paris Exhibition, by Thomas Keefer, C.E., Montreal, 1855. 



