flag, with encroachment on territory in Minnesota surrendered to the United States by the treaty of 1783, extended no later than forty years from that date. In 1823 the expedition of Major Long, visiting Fort William on their eastward return from Lake Winnipeg, found the large fort nearly deserted, the fur trade on this route north of Lake Superior having greatly declined. This traffic had passed to the rivals and successors of the Northwest company, being diverted northward to the Hudson Bay Company, and southward to fur traders of the United States.

John Jacob Astor, a German furrier and merchant of New York, who had the highest enterprise for the extension of domestic and foreign trade, went to Montreal in 1816 and bought all the posts and factories of the Northwest Company south of the line which Franklin's sagacity and foresight had given us as the international boundary. American lads from Vermont were brought out, and under the influence of the American Fur Company lake Superior began to be gradually Americanized. Astor's first agent was Ramsay Crooks, father of Col. William Crooks of St. Paul. Their headquarters were at La Pointe, on an island partly inclosing Chequamegon bay near the head of the lake. Charles H. Oakes, a youth from Vermont, appeared upon the scene. Associated with Oakes was Charles William Wulff Borup, a young Dane, from Copenhagen, and many other names of strong and able men, like William and Allan Morrison. In 1842, the American Fur Company closed its business and sold its interests to Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company, of St. Louis, who were represented by Henry M. Rice. In 1849 Rice retired from the trade, and the fur interests, no longer represented by a powerful company, soon ceased to maintain the ancient supremacy, and gradually melted away before the advent of new interests. Thus practically closed the most remarkable era of early trade and commerce ever connected with the history and fortunes of any people.

The Indian title existed around the entire extent of lake Superior until the year 1820, when, on June 16th, Lewis Cass formally hoisted the United States flag at the entrance of the lake, and made the treaty by which the Indians ceded a tract of land four miles square adjoining the Sault Ste. Marie. A

treaty made six years later opened the south shore to commercial activity, and thenceforward a new life of trade and commerce was gradually developed upon our inland sea. These treaties, and two subsequent ones in 1842 and in 1854, completed the cession of the shores of the great lake, so far as they lie within the United States, and transferred the title from the former Chippewa possessors to our national government.

We can give no better illustration of the transportation in use during that early period than is related by the great Schoolcraft in describing the first advent of a body of United States troops along the shore, after one of the treaties; how they came, sixty men and officers, with a commissariat and a medical department, borne on three great twelve-oar barges, attended by four boats of subsistence and a fleet of canoes, with martial music and with flags flying. As the fleet stretched out in grand procession, Schoolcraft declares it "the most noble and imposing spectacle ever yet seen on the waters of lake Superior."

The advent of the first sail vessels is not yet lost in obscurity. Henry records that in the winter of 1770-71 he built at Pine point on lake Superior, nine miles from the Sault, "a barge fit for the navigation of the lake," and his narration shows it to have been rigged with sails. In August, 1772, he launched, from the same shipyard, a sloop of forty tons. These vessels, used in unremunerative mining operations, were the earliest sailing craft known in the history of lake Superior. Harmon mentioned, in 1800, a vessel of about ninety-five tons burden in use then by the Northwest Company, plying four or five trips each summer between Pine point and Grand Portage.

Schoolcraft relates that on the 9th day of November, 1833, "wheat in bulk, and flour in bags and barrels, were brought down for the first time." This is the earliest record of the shipping of any native products from lake Superior, other than pelts and the commodities exchanged for them.

TRANSPORTATION BY CANALS.

The rapids in the Ste. Marie river were the one great obstacle to good transportation on lake Superior, and in 1837 Gov. Mason, of Michigan, by authority of the legislature, au

thorized the first survey of a proposed canal, and Henry M. Rice, then a young man, carried the chain. A grant of lands was given by congress, 750,000 acres, in 1852; and Erastus Corning, Joseph Fairbanks, and others, constituting the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company, finished the first work on the canal May 21st, 1855.

It should be here noted that Harmon's journal records the fact that previous to the year 1800 the Northwest Company had made a smaller canal and locks at the Sault Ste. Marie of sufficient size for the passage of large loaded canoes without breaking bulk. But no eye can foresee or pen predict the swelling commerce from a double empire-the British and American-in the rapid progress of events yet destined to pass over those mighty lakes, through those gates, in its march to the sea.

God never built a railroad, but He did create and establish rivers, lakes, and oceans. Here there are no charges. They are the highways of the Almighty. They are the ever present and constant competitors of every artificial form of transportation. They confront every railway corporation, and supervise its schedule of rates. The great lakes say to every railway company in the Northwest, "Before you fix your schedules, come and see us." These waterway' potencies are stronger than governmental interferences. Minnesota, by its superb situation, commanding the Mississippi and the western limit of lake navigation at Duluth, has its full measure of satisfaction and protection by means of its waterways.

There has been more than one effort made to extend our great lacustral waterway farther west into the continent. In 1878 a convention was held at Duluth for the purpose of projecting a canal from lake Superior across the state to the Red river. Three routes were proposed: one was the Winnibigoshish line; the second, called the southern route, by the Crow Wing river and Otter Tail lake, to Fergus Falls; and still. another, by Pigeon river, called the international route. Some of these canal routes were deemed as practicable as the improvement of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, connecting Green bay and the Mississippi. This whole project was very seriously considered, and more than one survey was undertaken. The purpose was to penetrate into the world's best

zone of wheat, with water carriage. The project derived some stimulus from the fact that our Canadian neighbors were then building what is known as the "Dawson route," to connect lake Superior through many lakes and water stretches, with the Lake of the Woods. This included an immense lock at Fort Frances, near the mouth of Rainy lake, to pass the Koochiching falls of Rainy river, which was actually nearly completed at an immense cost. The Canadian government really established this route, putting tugs on the lakes, and ox carts on the portages, and thus carried thousands of their emigrants to Manitoba. I doubt not that somewhere in our northern lacustrine region lies the undeveloped form of a great East and West canal, planned by engineers and once confidently expected to be finished; but the iron horse which came to browse in the haunts of the elk and the buffalo has relegated these projects to the limbo of abandoned schemes.

STEAMBOATING ON THE MISSISSIPPI AND MINNESOTA RIVERS.

We must now return a moment to the great Father of Waters, on whose bosom had floated, in the twilight of long ago, Hennepin, Du Luth, Le Sueur, and the intrepid French voyageurs and traders.

May 10th, 1823, occurred a stirring event, the arrival of the first steamboat, the "Virginia," from St. Louis, loaded with stores for Fort Snelling. This was the first steamboat ever seen by our Dakota Indians, and their fright was extreme, as they thought it some supernatural monster. The Virginia opened the upper Mississippi to steam navigation, and up to May 26th, 1826, fifteen steamers had arrived at Fort Snelling. In 1839, about nine steamboats were running pretty regularly to Fort Snelling. In 1847 and 1848 there was organized what was known as the Galena and Minnesota Packet Company. Among the list of the company we find the names of H. L. Dousman, of Prairie du Chien, and H. H. Sibley, of Mendota. This company first purchased the steamer Argo, of which M. W. Lodwick was captain, and our honored vice president, Russell Blakeley, then of Galena, was clerk. In the autumn of 1847 this boat struck a snag near Wabasha and sank. During the next winter the captain and clerk went to Cincinnati,

Ohio, and purchased the Dr. Franklin, which was run very successfully for many years. Russell Blakeley, having been clerk of this steamer five years, in 1852 became its captain, and afterwards was captain of the Nominee and the Galena, bringing to St. Paul on these boats thousands of our earlier and best citizens.

The organization of the Galena and Minnesota Packet Company established system and regularity of our river transportation; and from that time the river became the chief artery of our trade and the inlet to our immigration, till superseded by railways. In the "forties," St. Paul averaged from forty to ninety steamboat arrivals per annum. Following the Galena company came the Dubuque and St. Paul Packet Company, the St. Louis and St. Paul Line, and many others, to the last, the Diamond Jo Packet Company, which still exists. This review calls up the honored names of Davidson, Reynolds, Rhodes, and many others. The steamboat business became vast in extent. The culmination of this method of transportation was about 1857 and 1858. The former year there were 965 arrivals, and in the latter year, 1,090. The arrival of a Mississippi steamer in that earlier era was a matter of the greatest importance, and curious crowds gathered at the landing to witness the scene. When I first came to Minnesota, in May, 1857, on the old War Eagle, I thought the whole population had turned out to give me a welcome!

The advent of steamboats into the Minnesota river gave a wonderful impetus to the settlement and development of that fertile valley. I have verified the statements by the files of the old Pioneer, whose editor, James M. Goodhue, accompanied both of the earlier expeditions up the river and wrote a detailed account of each. On Friday, the 28th of June, 1850, the steamer Anthony Wayne, which had just arrived at St. Paul with a pleasure party from St. Louis, agreed, for the sum of $225, to take all passengers desiring to go, as far up the river as navigation was possible. About three hundred guests, with a band of music from Quincy, Ill., and the Sixth Regiment band from Fort Snelling, started up the river. They fought mosquitoes, danced, and passed a dozen Indian villages, till they reached the mouth of the Blue Earth river, above Man