Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/193

 A Summer ou tJie Great Lakes.

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��What promised to be quite a warm discussion was liilled in tlie embryo by the captain's clear cry, "All aboard ! "

Once more we were steaming west- ward toward the land of the Dacotahs. That night we all sat up till after mid- night to see the last of our lake, for in the morning Duluth would be in sight. It was a night never to be forgotten. The idle words and deeds of my com- panions have faded from my mind, but never will the memory of the bright lake rippling under that moonlit sky.

A city picturesquely situated on the side of a hill which overlooks the lake and rises gradually toward the north- west, reaching the height of six hundred feet a mile from the shore, with a river on one side. That is Duluth. The city takes its name from Juan du Luth, a French officer, who visited the region in 1679. ^" 1S60 there were only seventy white inhabitants in the place, and in 1869 the number had not much increased. The selection of the village as the eastern terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad gave it an impetus, and now Duluth is a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, and rapidly grow- ing. The harbor is a good one, and is open about two hundred days in the year. Six regular lines of steamers run to Ciiicago, Cleveland, Canadian ports, and ports on the south shore of Lake Superior. The commerce of Duluth, situated as it is in the vicinity of the mineral districts on both shores of the lake, surrounded by a well-timbered country, and offering the most con- venient outlet for the products of the wheat region further west, is of growing importance. In half a century Duluth will be outranked in wealth and popula- tion by no more than a dozen cities in America.

Our stay at Duluth was protracted

��many days. One finds himself at home in this new Western city, and there are a thousand ways in which to amuse yourself. If you are disposed for a walk, there are any number of delightful woodpaths leading to famous bits of beach where you may sit and dream the livelong day without fear of inter- ruption or notice. If you would try camping-out, there are guides and canoes riglit at your hand, and the choice of scores of beautiful and delightful spots within easy reach of your hotel or along the shore of the lake and its numerous beautiful islands, or as far away into the forest as you care to penetrate. Lastly, if piscatorially inclined, here is a boathouse with every kind of boat from the steam-yacht down to the birch canoe, and there is the lake, full of " lakers," sturgeon, whitefish, and speckled trout, some of the latter weighing from thirty to forty pounds apiece, — a condition of things alike satisfactory and tempting to every owner of a rod and line.

Tlfe guides, of whom there are large numbers to be found at Duluth, as indeed at all of the northern border towns, are a class of men too interest- ing and peculiar to be passed over without more than a cursory notice. These men are mostly French-Canadians and Indians, with now and then a native, and for hardihood, skill, and reliability, cannot be surpassed by any other similar class of men the world over. They are usually men of many parts, can act equally well as guide, boatman, baggage -carrier, purveyor, and cook. They are respectful and chival- rous : no woman, be she old or young, fair or faded, fails to receive the most polite and courteous treatment at their hands, and with these quahties they possess a manly independence that is

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