The city looks out upon the lake like a queen, as in fact she is, crowned by the triple diadem of beauty, wealth, and dignity.  She is the commercial metropolis of the whole Northwest, an emporium second only to New York in the quantity of her imports and exports.  The commodious harbor is thronged with shipping.  Her water communication has a vast area.  Foreign consuls from Austria, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, have their residence in the city.  It is an art-centre, and almost equally with Brooklyn is entitled to be called a city of churches.

A week is a short time to devote to seeing all that this queen city has that is interesting, and that included every day we spent there.  Neither in a sketch like the present shall we have space to give more than we have done—­a general idea of the city.  One day about noon we steamed out of the harbor, on a magnificent lake-steamer, bound for Duluth.  We were to have a run of over seven hundred miles with but a single stopping-place the whole distance.  It would be three days before we should step on land again.

“Farewell, a long farewell, to the city of the Indian sachem,” said Hugh, as the grand emporium and railway-centre grew dim in the distance.  “By the way,” continued he, “are you aware that the correct etymology of the name Chicago is not generally known?”

Vincent and I confessed that we did not even know the supposed etymology of the name.

“No matter about that,” went on the Historian.  “The name is undoubtedly Indian, corrupted from Chercaqua, the name of a long line of chiefs, meaning strong, also applied to a wild onion.  Long before the white men knew the region the site of Chicago was a favorite rendezvous of several Indian tribes.  The first geographical notice of the place occurs in a map dated Quebec, Canada, 1683, as ‘Fort Chicagon.’  Marquette camped on the site during the winter of 1674-5.  A fort was built there by the French and afterward abandoned.  So you see that Chicago has a history that is long anterior to the existence of the present city.  Have a cigar, Montague?”

Clouds of fragrant tobacco-smoke soon obscured the view of the Queen City of the Northwest, busy with life above the graves of the Indian sagamores whose memories she has forgotten.

On the third day we steamed past Mackinaw, and soon made the ship-canal which was constructed for the passage of large ships, a channel a dozen miles long and half a mile wide.  And now, hurrah!  We are on the waters of Lake Superior, the “Gitche Gumee, the shining Big Sea-Water,” of Longfellow’s musical verse.  The lake is a great sea.  Its greatest length is three hundred and sixty miles, its greatest breadth one hundred and forty miles; the whole length of its coast is fifteen hundred miles.  It has an area of thirty-two thousand square miles, and a mean depth of one thousand feet.  These dimensions show it to be by far the largest body of fresh water on the globe.