and a trip from the bridge to the engine-house means not only repeated duckings, but a fair chance of being swept overboard.  The first of these boats, called the “101,” was built in sections, the plates being forged at Cleveland, and the bow and stern built at Wilmington, Del.  The completed structure was launched at Duluth.  In after years she was taken to the ocean, went round Cape Horn, and was finally wrecked on the north Pacific coast.  At the time of the Columbian Exposition, a large passenger-carrying whaleback, the “Christopher Columbus,” was built, which still plies on Lake Michigan, though there is nothing discernible in the way of practical advantage in this design for passenger vessels.  For cargo carrying there would seem to be much in the claims of their inventor, Alexander McDougall, for their superior capacity and stability, yet they have not been generally adopted.  The largest whaleback now on the lakes is named after Mr. McDougall, is four hundred and thirty feet over all, fifty feet beam, and of eight thousand tons capacity.  She differs from the older models in having a straight stem instead of the “pig’s nose.”

[Illustration:  THE “WHALEBACK”]

The iron traffic which has grown to such monster proportions, and created so noble a fleet of ships, began in 1856, when the steamer “Ontonagon” shipped two hundred and ninety-six tons of ore at Duluth.  To-day, one ship of a fleet numbering hundreds will carry nine thousand tons, and make twenty trips a season.  Mr. Waldon Fawcett, who has published in the “Century Magazine” a careful study of this industry, estimates the total ore cargoes for a year at about 20,000,000 tons.  The ships of the ore fleet will range from three hundred and fifty to five hundred feet in length, with a draft of about eighteen feet—­at which figure it must stop until harbors and channels are deepened.  Their cost will average $350,000.  The cargoes are worth upward of $100,000,000 annually, and the cost of transportation has been so reduced that in some instances a ton is carried twenty miles for one cent.  The seamen, both on quarterdeck and forecastle, will bear comparison with their salt-water brethren for all qualities of manhood.  Indeed, the lot of the sailor on the lakes naturally tends more to the development of his better qualities than does that of the salt-water jack, for he is engaged by the month, or season, rather than by the trip; he is never in danger of being turned adrift in a foreign port, nor of being “shanghaied” in a home one.  He has at least three months in winter to fit himself for shore work if he desires to leave the water, and during the season he is reasonably sure of seeing his family every fortnight.  A strong trades-union among the lake seamen keeps wages up and regulates conditions of employment.  At the best, however, seafaring on either lake or ocean is but an ill-paid calling, and the earnings of the men who command and man the great ore-carriers are sorely out of proportion