“By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
  By the shining Big Sea-Water,
  At the doorway of his wigwam,
  In the pleasant Summer morning,
  Hiawatha stood and waited.

  All the air was full of freshness. 
  All the earth was bright and joyous,
  And before him, through the sunshine,
  Westward toward the neighboring forest
  Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
  Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
  Burning, singing in the sunshine.

  Bright above him shone the heavens,
  Level spread the lake before him;
  From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
  Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
  On its margin the great forest
  Stood reflected in the water,
  Every treetop had its shadow
  Motionless beneath the water.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Hugh, gallantly.  “We only need a wigwam with smoke curling from it under these trees, and a ’birch canoe with paddles, rising, sinking on the water, dripping, flashing in the sunshine,’ to complete the picture.  It’s a pity the Indians ever left this shore.”

“So the settlers of Minnesota thought in ’62,” observed Vincent, ironically.

“The Indians would have been all right if the white man had stayed away,” replied the Historian, hotly.

“In that case we should not be here now, and, consequently”—­

What promised to be quite a warm discussion was killed in the embryo by the captain’s clear cry, “All aboard!”

Once more we were steaming westward toward the land of the Dacotahs.  That night we all sat up till after midnight 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 companions 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 northwest, 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.  In 1860 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 growing.  The harbor is a good one, and is open about two hundred days in the year.  Six regular lines of steamers run to Chicago, 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 convenient 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 population by no more than a dozen cities in America.