Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/987

Rh barges piled high with the yellow freight of pine boards from the mills about Duluth, with the forests of the Northwest for "hinterland," have disappeared. Indeed, we are told that in a few years they will not be seen at all, or will only be found in very diminished numbers. But other industries have come instead, and they are growing places of manufacture and trade.

The great "whalebacks," surfeited with their thousands of tons of ore swallowed ravenously, no longer wallow on their way. The massive lumps are not allowed to go spouting down into their holds, later to be sucked up, sometimes six thousand tons in a day. Escanaba, St. Ignace, and L'Anse have ceased for the winter months to send iron over the Lakes. No copper comes from West Superior, Lake Linden, or Manitowoc. In Chicago and Milwaukee the fleet of grain-vessels is held helplessly. They cannot be despatched either with their sides swelling with corn or wheat or decks piled with the white barrels of finished flour. The hundreds of thousands and millions of tons of coal are not now conveyed westward from the Lake Erie ports. The black colliers rest darkly on the white snow, more grim of aspect even than in the summer.

Nothing moves on the Lakes which have been crowded highways of ships. They are "regions of thick-ribbed ice." To be upon them is indeed to be "imprison'd in the viewless winds." Still, they are not absolutely deserted. Human life and activity in a measure still exist upon them. In a sense a limited industry is still actively pursued. While navigation of the waves may not offer gain, a profit may be drawn from beneath them—or rather from beneath the thick frozen coating.

The fisherfolk, who are fully occupied in summer, do not with the approach of winter give over their occupation. Only the method and manner of it change. As has been said, Esquimau-like figures

might indicate an arctic environment. The fishermen are the "human element" of the winter, and with them the dogs might almost be included, they are so much a part of the life and endeavor. The winter fishing, however, is rather a "by-product," as it were. In following it the fishermen only work up so much "waste material," employing useless time. The fisheries of the Great Lakes exist as a summer business—and something of a business, too. Over six millions of dollars are invested in it. Over a hundred and thirty millions of pounds of fish have been caught in a season. Over two million dollars has been the value of the "catch." The fishing in the winter has nothing the same proportion. Still, from a large lake port in the dead of winter from five hundred to a thousand men may go out in a day.

The occupation is arduous enough, and not to be followed without hardship, and