CHAPTER II.

Saulte Ste. Marie--Indian Embroidery--Lake Superior--Preaching, Singing,
and Card-playing--Silver Islet--Thunder Bay--The Dog River--Flowers at
Fort William--"Forty Miles of Ice"--Icebergs and Warm
Breezes--Duluth--Hotel Belles--Bump of Destructiveness in Porters.


The scenery just before entering the St. Mary River, which unites Lake
Huron and Lake Superior, is very fine. As the steamer threaded the group
of islands with their high, rocky, picturesquely wooded shores, we were
sometimes near enough to distinguish the many varieties of mosses and
ferns just springing into life; then, steaming across the rippling water,
we reached some point whose distant beauty had made us long to carry away
more than a memory of its outlines; and so, winding in and out amongst
the islands of this North American archipelago, we "fetched" the Saulte
Ste. Marie about sunset. [Footnote: The island-studded northern expanse
of Lake Huron is known as Georgian Bay. As the level of Lake Superior is
between thirty and forty feet higher than that of Lake Huron, there is a
corresponding fall at the head of the St. Mary River. This difference of
level prevents direct navigation between the two lakes; consequently, the
Americans have constructed across the extreme north-eastern point of the
State of Michigan a fine canal, which gives them exclusive possession of
the entrance by water to the great inland sea of Lake Superior. When, in
1870, the Red River Expedition, under Colonel (now General Sir) Garnet
Wolseley, sought to make the passage in several steamboats _en
route_ for Thunder Bay, the State authorities of Michigan issued a
prohibition against it. Fortunately, the Cabinet of Washington overruled
this prohibition, and the Expedition was permitted to pass; not, however,