The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes Together with A Brief History of Our Inland Seas By James Oliver Curwood With 72 Illustrations and a Map G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1909 Copyright , 1909 BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD The Knickerbocker Press, New York TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND FAITH IN HIM HAVE BEEN UNFAILING, THE AUTHOR AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES THIS BOOK...

In this volume, it has been my object to tell of the people and of the picturesque life of the Great Lakes, and to set before my readers actual facts about the cities, the commerce, and the future of the greatest fresh-water seas in the world. For some unaccountable reason, the Great Lakes, notwithstanding the fact that more than thirty million people live in the States bordering their shores, and in spite of the still more remarkable fact that they are doing more than anything else on the Ameri

Not long ago, I was on a Lake freighter pounding her way up Huron on the “thousand-mile highway” that leads to Duluth. Beside me was a man who had climbed from poverty to millions. He was riding in his own ship. His interests burned ten thousand tons of coal a year. He was one of the ore kings of the North—as rough as the iron he dug, filled to the brim with enthusiasm and animal energy of the Lake breed; a man who had helped to make the Lakes what they are, as scores of others like him have don

Picture a train of forty-ton freight cars loaded to capacity, the engine and caboose both in New York City, yet extending in an unbroken line entirely around the earth—a train reaching along a parallel from New York to San Francisco, across the Pacific, the Chinese Empire, Turkestan, Persia, the Mediterranean, mid the Atlantic—and you have an idea of what the ships of the Great Lakes carry during a single eight months’ season of navigation. At least you have the part of an idea. For were such a

Not long ago I went to see William Livingstone, President of the Lake Carriers’ Association—Great Admiral, in a way, of the world’s mightiest fleet of steel—an enrolled navy of 593 ships and a tonnage of nearly one million nine hundred thousand. Unconsciously I had come to call this man the Grey Man and the Man who Knows. Both titles fit, as they will tell you from the twin Tonawandas to Duluth. For six consecutive years president of the greatest organisation of its kind on earth, an association

In a previous article I have shown how the saving to the people of the United States by reason of Great Lake freight transportation is more than five hundred million dollars a year, or, in other words, an indirect “dividend” to the nation of six dollars for every man, woman, and child in it. Yet in describing how this enormous saving was accomplished I touched upon but one phase of what I might term the “saving power” of the Lakes. To this must be added that dividend of millions of dollars which

I was watching a blockade of ships in a Lake Erie harbour—a score of striving, crowding, smoking monsters of the Inland Seas, hung under a pall of black smoke, with screeching tugs floundering here and there, megaphone voices shouting curses and orders, and the crashing of chains and steel filling the air. And I thought of a theatre I had visited the night before where, arriving late, I was forced to crush in with the gallery gods and fight for a place in the fifth heaven. In the excitement of t

Is the day approaching when Buffalo and not Chicago will be the second largest city in the United States? and when, at the end of Lake Superior, her back doors filled with the treasures of the earth and with a developed empire about her, Duluth will claim a million inhabitants? Is the day far distant when the world’s greatest manufacturing city will be located on the Niagara River? and when, as steel men all the world over believe, Duluth will be a second and perhaps greater Pittsburg? These are

In my previous chapters I have described nearly every phase of Lake shipping, with the exception of one, which, while not being vitally concerned with the story of our fresh-water marine, is still one of the most interesting, and perhaps the least known of all. That is the “inner life” of one of our Great Lakes freighters; the life of the crew and the favoured few who are privileged to travel as passenger guests of the owners upon one of these steel monsters of the Inland Seas. In more than one

While the modern romance of the Great Lakes, the vast commerce that has grown upon them, the great cities along their shores, and the part they have played in the history of the last generation form, to my mind, one of the most absorbing and at the same time one of the most fruitful subjects for the writer of to-day, it is to the “dim and mysterious ages of long ago” that one must allow his imagination to be carried, if he would understand, in its fullest measure, the part that our Inland Seas s

For more than a hundred years after the sailing of the Griffin the Great Lakes and the country about them were destined to be the scenes of almost ceaseless war. The fury of the internecine strife of the Indians was on the wane. Their conflicts of extermination had worked their frightful end and it now came time for them to give up the red arena of the Inland Seas to other foes, among whom the last vestiges of their power were doomed to melt away like snow under the warmth of the sun. For unnumb

The years of peace which followed the surrender of the English along the Lakes were not ones of rapid development. It was as if this vast country, bathed in blood for more than a hundred and fifty years, had fallen into a restful sleep. Until 1800 there was almost no emigration west. By the new nation, the shores of Lake Erie were still regarded as in the far wilderness. The fur-trade, it is true, increased in volume, but not until after 1805 did the traffic of the Lakes begin to show any decide

Its Historic and Romantic Associations and Picturesque Setting By Edgar Mayhew Bacon Author of “The Hudson River,” “Chronicles of Tarrytown,” etc. 340 pages, with 50 Drawings by the Author, and with Numerous Photographs and a Map. $3.50 net Impressed by the important and singular part played by the settlers of Narragansett in the development of American ideas and ideals, and strongly attracted by the romantic tales that are inwoven with the warp of history, as well as by the incomparable setting

By James Oliver Curwood With about 80 Illustrations. Probable price $3.50 net This profusely illustrated book, as entertaining as it is informing, has the twofold advantage of being written by a man who knows the Lakes and their shores as well as what has been written about them. The general reader will enjoy the romance attaching to the past history of the Lakes and not less the romance of the present—the story of the great commercial fleets that plough our inland seas, created to transport the

Historical—Legendary—Picturesque By George Waldo Browne Author of “Japan—the Place and the People,” “Paradise of the Pacific,” etc. 385 pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net While the St. Lawrence River has been the scene of many important events connected with the discovery and development of a large portion of North America, no attempt has heretofore been made to collect and embody in one volume a complete and comprehensive narrative of this great waterway. This is not denying tha

By Archer Butler Hulbert Professor of American History, Marietta College; author of “The Ohio River,” “Historic Highways of America,” etc. 350 pages, with 70 Illustrations and Maps. $3.50 net Professor Hulbert tells all that is best worth recording of the history of the river which gives the book its title, and of its commercial present and its great commercial future. An immense amount of carefully ordered information is here brought together into a most entertaining and informing book. No ment

Historical—Legendary—Picturesque By Edgar Mayhew Bacon Author of “Chronicles of Tarrytown,” “Narragansett Bay,” etc. 600 Pages, with 100 Illustrations, including a Sectional Map of the Hudson River. $3.50 net “The value of this handsome quarto does not depend solely on the attractiveness with which Mr. Bacon has invested the whole subject, it is a kind of footnote to the more conventional histories, because it throws light upon the life and habits of the earliest settlers. It is a study of Dutch

Historical and Descriptive By Edwin Munroe Bacon Author of “Walks And Rides in the Country Round About Boston,” etc. 500 Pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net From ocean to source every mile of the Connecticut is crowded with reminders of the early explorers, of the Indian wars, of the struggle of the Colonies, and of the quaint, peaceful village existence of the early days of the Republic. Beginning with the Dutch discovery, Mr. Bacon traces the interesting movements and events whi

Its History—Its Myths—Its Scenery—Its Commerce By William Denison Lyman Professor of History in Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington Fully Illustrated. Probable price, $3.50 net This is the first effort to present a book distinctively on the Columbia River. It is the intention of the author to give some special prominence to Nelson and the magnificent lake district by which it is surrounded. As the joint possession of the United States and British Columbia, and as the grandest scenic river o