Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/986

914 tion of this adventure, however, other boats have been caught in the ice and obliged to remain there all winter. In the beginning of the winter of 1898 a number of vessels were imprisoned at the head of Lake Erie. Thirty-five in all were ice-locked, but with a shifting of the wind and the help of tugs and fire-boats sent out from Detroit they were finally set free. The same fortune has not always been found. An "old-timer" of the Lakes has recorded that in one case long ago a vessel—the Badger State—once frozen up did not escape. The crew was obliged to live on oats and corn all winter. The ice was so thick the boat could not be got out, and yet not solid all the way to the shore so that the men could reach land. As the narrator states, "they had to stay aboard and eat oats until the ice broke up."

With the close of the Lakes comes the closing of their outlet—the canal. Even as the big lake vessels are laid up, so the canal-boats are tied up during the time of ice and snow. Side by side they lie in frozen companionableness—held like all else in the grip of winter. Connected by bridges laid from deck to deck, they form a little commonwealth of their own. Often the short smokestacks or, as the twilight deepens, the glowing windows show that they are still inhabited. Indeed, a collection of them frequently is a very socially active spot, with indications of much gossip.

Commerce has stopped. Business is dead. In the absolute suspension is a certain impressiveness. An unmistakable solemnity is the result of the complete negation. Where much was, nothing is, and the contrast is very striking. The