Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/13



BOUT the clear, deep waters of Lake Superior, and bounding the northern sands of Michigan, lies a realm of forest and of heights, rugged, wild, alluring,—rich in copper and iron as are few other regions of the world. Kingdoms, which won wide influence, have owned far meaner materials of power; empire has warred with empire for stakes half as great. Were this domain of the old world, and so situated that nation might match demand with nation for it, innumerable times it must have made armies march; men by the thousand would have lain down their lives for these northern peninsulas.

In fact, France and her Indian allies long ago garrisoned forest stockades in war with England over this territory; but the blockhouses protected only Jesuit missions and fur-trading posts. England defended the region—with few men but bitterly—against the colonists; yet after Pitt surrendered it, half a century was to pass before men began to take the timber for the cargoes of the lakes; and it was the generation of the sons of these lumbermen who sank the copper pits and began to scale away the mighty mountains of red iron which ladened deep the ships for Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Erie and Buffalo, whence cars freighted the