pass freely between the upper and lower yet comprehensive improvement of the levels of the chain of lakes. Further improvements, on a gigantic scale, have been projected and are now in progress under the authority of the United States government, by which the capacity of the canal and its approaches will be increased to correspond with the rapid growth of the already vast commerce of Lake Superior. The canal is to be deepened and otherwise perfected; another lock, eight hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, with twenty-one feet depth of water on the miter sills, is being constructed, and the approach from below is to be shortened by improving Hay Lake channel, thus effecting a saving of eleven miles in distance over the present detour through Lake George, in British territory, the navigation of which is impracticable at night. With the completion of these works, which will cost the government about seven million dollars, the capacity of the vessels navigating Lake Superior will be greatly increased, and its commerce will be augmented with the development of the country, beyond all present power of computation. According to official government statistics, thirty-three per cent. of the vessels and forty per cent. of the tonnage passing through St. Mary's canal into Lake Superior are engaged in the Duluth trade. It is therefore clear that the improvement of the great waterway must exert a powerful influence upon the growth of this new commercial center so rapidly advancing to the front rank of great western cities. Another factor of prime importance in the future growth of Duluth is the gradual canals connecting the lower lakes and the river systems leading to the eastern seaboard. These canals are being constantly widened and deepened, to admit of the passage of vessels of greatly increased tonnage, and there is no reasonable doubt that this work of enlargement will go on, until ships drawing twenty feet of water and carrying three to four thousand tons' burden will, within a comparatively few years, be able to float with their immense cargoes from Duluth "unvexed to the sea," and thence to the commercial marts of the old world. In this work it must be confessed that our Canadian neighbors, with no o more than a tithe of our population and resources, are at present in the lead. They have a well-defined system of these waterways, including the Welland canal connecting Lakes Erie and Ontario and others, overcoming the obstructions in the St. Lawrence river. With them it is only a question of further enlargement and increase of capacity when their vessels of the first class will be able to reach the open sea. In our own case we can boast only of the St. Mary's Falls canal, now undergoing enlargement, admitting ships drawing twenty feet of water, and the improvement by dredging to the requisite depth of Hay Lake channel and the St. Clair flats. There are thus likely to be two rival systems, the Canadian and our own. Our next step will be the construction of a canal around the Falls of Niagara. A project looking to the inauguration of this colossal undertaking has been outlined by a provision in the River and Harbor bill of the present session, for the survey and estimate the arable land, including the most wonder of the cost of a "waterway around Niagara falls, of capacity and facilities sufficient to float merchant ships, and ships of war of modern build, drawing twenty feet of water, said waterway to commence in a navigable part of Niagara river, in Niagara county, at or near Tonawanda, New York, and to end in the navigable waters of said river, below said falls, or in navigable waters connected therewith." The completion of a distinctively American system of communication would further necessitate the enlargement of the canals from Oswego to Syracuse, and thence to the Hudson river, to a capacity sufficient for ships of twenty feet draught. In the absence of this achievement, so important to the continued commercial supremacy of the city of New York, vessels would find their direct pathway from the head of Lake Superior to the ocean via the St. Lawrence river, and thence to the leading ports on both sides of the Atlantic, without breaking bulk. This would be virtually equivalent to an extension of an arm of the sea to the heart of the North American continent. With the enormous growth in population and wealth sure to be realized in the future of this great northwest, the opening of this system of waterways is no idle dream of the imagination, but, on the contrary, will surely become an imperative necessity and an accomplished fact. The natural resources of this region, almost continental in extent, including every variety of agricultural, mineral and other products, have as yet been no more than touched by the magic wand of industrial enterprise. Not five per cent. of ful grain belt in the world, and extending far into the Valley of the Saskatchawan and the Canadian northwest for more than a thousand miles, is yet under cultivation, although already being penetrated by railways aiming at the head of Lake Superior as the nearest and most accessible point for reaching deep water navigation. Not one per cent. of our varied and inexhaustible mineral deposits has yet been uncovered. Sandstone, slate, granite, iron, copper, lead, silver and gold, in quantities beyond the power of estimate, exist in the regions bordering upon this great inland sea. Billions of feet of valuable timber still remain standing in the forests that skirt its silent shores. Nor should the recognition of another fact of great importance in its bearing upon the future of this city be omitted here. As has been aptly expressed, "Duluth is in the pathway of empire." It is on the transcontinental line that connects, by the shortest route, the navigable waters of the great lakes with those of the Pacific ocean. This results not only from the peculiar conformation. and indentation of the "arms of the sea" at each extremity, but from the diminution in the length of the degrees of latitude. In the able report of Edwin F. Johnston, esq., the first engineer-in-chief of the Northern Pacific railway, it was shown that the distance from Puget sound to the principal Atlantic sea-ports was six hundred miles less than from San Francisco to the same points. It was also shown that, owing to the direction of the marine currents between the coasts of eastern Asia and western North America, east ward bound vessels were borne in a northerly direction to the shores of Oregon and Washington, whence they were obliged to make their way southward to San Francisco, at a loss of several hundred miles in the voyage. It is thus made to appear that the pathway of commerce from China, Japan and the East Indies is determined by natural conditions, and that it lies along the parallels that embrace the belt traversed by this great railway system and its related transportation lines leading to the eastern seaboard. It is a law of commercial intercourse beyond dispute, that traffic will eventually seek the shortest route between the points of production and distribution. The saving of a few days of time, or even a moderate reduction in the rates of freight and insurance, has often destroyed old trade centers and created new ones. Now, it is clear that these facts bear a close relation to the question of the transportation of goods and merchandise from the East Indies to the commercial marts of both sides of the Atlantic. It is already a common event for cargoes of tea and other East India products, destined to New York, Boston and Philadelphia, to reach these cities by way of Puget sound, the Northern Pacific railway and its eastern connections. While this passage is being revised the following statement, clipped from a daily paper of October 9, furnishes a forcible illustration of the point under consideration: "The sailing vessel George S. Homer arrived at Tacoma on Saturday with a cargo of tea, having made the remarkably fast trip of thirty days from Yokohama. The mail which left Yokohama three days later by steam-ship, with the papers relating to the cargo, arrived in St. Paul on Saturday, after the vessel arrived at Tacoma. The tea will be shipped east over the Northern Pacific." It is also a fact of no little significance that for two years past the daily tonnage passing through the St. Mary's Falls canal has exceeded that of the Suez canal, from which it would appear that even the East India trade, that great prize for which the commercial nations have for centuries contended, has begun to move along the shortest line. As our facilities for transportation upon lake, land and sea are perfected along this "shortest route," it is not a violent presumption that Duluth will feel the influence of this powerful movement and be carried forward to a corresponding degree of growth and prosperity. With such possibilities of geographical position, agricultural, timber and mineral products, and with a steadily rising wave of population, composed of hardy, resolute and enterprising men, sweeping over the hills and plains of the northwest, delving in its mines, leveling its forests, cultivating its now waste places and opening a track for the iron horse across the vast areas, what mind can conceive or who can estimate the prodigies of growth that must come to the cities along this wonderful "pathway of empire," and especially to that one which holds the key to the entire situation at the head of the great lake ? Another prominent factor in the problem under discussion is the railway situation. Where deep water navigation ends, there adequate land transportation must |