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Bostwick and Henry built a barge at Point aux Pius, and laid the keel of a sloop of forty tons. They were in search of gold and silver, and expected to make their fortunes. The other partners in England were "his royal highness, the Duke of Gloucester; Mr. Secretary Townshend; Sir Samuel Tuchet, Bart.; Mr. Baxter, counsel of the Empress of Russia; and Mr. Cruikshank. In America, Sir William Johnson, Bart.; Mr. Bostwick; Mr. Baxter, and myself. A charter had been petitioned for and obtained; but, owing to our ill success, it was never taken from the seal-office." Mr. Baxter sold the sloop and other effects of the company, and paid its debts, which certainly was a most commendable feature of their operations. Lake Superior seems then to have been abandoned, and its mineral resources forgotten.

Since 1845, public attention has been again drawn toward the Superior country. Its mineral lands have been surveyed, affording tolerably accurate information of the localities where the ores of copper, and iron, and silver abound. A large number of mining companies have been organized, and some of them have gone into successful operation. It has been stated that there are forty-one companies carrying ou mining operations at Keweenaw Point alone, among which are the following: Northwest, Siskowit, Algonquin, Piscataqua, Ontonagon, Bohemia, Chesapeake, and Cade.

At the Lake Superior Company's mines, shaft No. 2, passing into the western side of the vein, was very rich in copper and silver at the surface, where it immediately bordered upon the leader, and impoverished as it left it in descending. So after working downward for a time through a barren rock, the miners sent off a level toward the river, with the intention of striking the vein under the stream; but, to their great surprise, opened into a deep and wide ravine, or ancient channel of the river, filled with great masses of copper, lumps of copper and silver mixed, small globules of pure silver, all rounded and worn by the action of running water, and mixed with sand, gravel and pebbles. A single mass of silver was obtained from this ravine, which weighed more than six pounds, and was worth $130. That lump of silver is now in the cabinet of the United States Mint, at Philadelphia. Masses of copper were also found in that ravine, weighing 1,000 pounds. These were exported to France.

The Cliff Mine, belonging to the Boston and Pittsburgh Mining Companies, is situated on the southwest branch of Eagle River, three miles from the office of the Lake Superior Company. This mine is one of the most remarkable known, for the enormous masses of native copper it contains.

At the Copper Falls' Mines, about two hundred feet above the level of the lake, the shafts descend perpendicularly into the rock nearly to that depth. There is a vein of solid copper. The sheets of copper are of amazing dimensions.

The largest mass of copper that has yet been removed was at

the bottom of the Cliff Mine, and was estimated to weigh eighty tuns. It was pure copper, having a density equal to that of the hammered copper of commerce, and much tougher than that which is obtained by artificial smelting.

To get out such huge masses of copper, a place is sought in the shaft where a hole may be bored into the rock, and then firing a heavy blast. This starts the copper from the wall of rock, and sometimes removes it entirely. It is then cut up with chisels. This vein varies from two to four feet in width, and increases in width and richness as it descends in the rock. The height of the cliff in which this vein is seen is nearly three hundred feet, and the upper exposure of the veins two hundred and thirteen feet. The top of the cliff is seven hundred feet above Lake Superior.

The great national value of the copper mines of Lake Superior will be seen by comparing their capability for the production of metal with other copper mines in different parts of the earth. The following table exhibits the foreign mines, together with the annual yield of metal:

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The principal landing-place on Keweenaw Point, to get access to the mines, is Eagle Harbor. The village occupies a beautiful site. The houses are built on the rising ground, in a magnificent grove of Norwegian pines. The harbor is a fraction less than a a mile wide; the greatest depth of water, one hundred feet; depth on the bar, ten feet; and there it can be easily deepened to sixteen feet by blasting away the rocks. This ought to be done for the safety of loaded steamboats, which frequently take shelter in the bay.

The Superior country is quite destitute of game; but the waters abound in fish of the choicest kinds. The streams throughout the iron region are alive with speckled trout. The lake fisheries will one day rival those of the ocean, both in extent and value. Isle Royale is a favorite place of resort for fishermen, who take there great numbers of the siskowit-the fattest and finest variety of the lake-trout family; also, lake-trout and white-fish. The siskowit has been known to attain to the weight of twenty-five pounds, and the lake-trout fifty pounds. The siskowit has only to become introduced into the eastern market, to take the place of all other fish, as a delicacy for the table of the epicure. The capability of the fisheries of the Superior country may be estimated by the quantities taken at one place, near Mackinaw, at which 10,000 barrels

are packed annually. The preparations for packing are very simple. After being cleaned, the fish are laid, with the scales on, upon broad benches, and salted; then thrown into a box or crate, with a grating at the bottom to drain. Sometimes a common wagon-wheel is used, suspended by a rod passing through the hub; the water passes off from the fish between the spokes. After draining, the packing commences. Fish are important articles of food at the mines, and will continue to become more valuable as the business of mining increases.

The Superior country is a healthy country; but the climate is too cold and forbidding, and the winters too long, to attract emigrants, who prefer to cultivate the soil. In July, the days are very warm; the nights, however, are cool. The changes in the temperature are very sudden and very great. It is no uncommon thing for the thermometer to fall forty degrees in twenty-four hours. Frosts occur about the 10th of September sufficient to kill all vegetation. The snows attain to the depth of six feet, and remain to the last of May. Winter sets in early in October. During the fall months there are frequent and terrible gales of wind, and storms of rain and snow.

The Superior country will one day be erected into a Territory by itself, or admitted as a State. It will be, for all time, not only a mine of wealth to the Union, but also a nursery of a tough, hardy and energetic race of men. The full development of its vast resources would require a population that will make it the great northern hive of America.

THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

A SHORT generation ago, the people of the United States were astonished at learning that a successful attempt had been made in England to transport passengers and merchandise over land by means of steam; Manchester and Liverpool had been united by iron bonds. A great fact had thus been achieved in the progress of material civilization. The first step had been taken toward revolutionizing the intercourse and the business of the entire earth; and thenceforth the work of linking together the dispersed communities of mankind was to go on until the remotest East and the far-off West should be brought near to every man's door. Early in the strife to reap profit from this new field of successful enterprise, were a few adventurous and far-seeing Americans. Long before the community at large had settled in its own mind what kind of a thing a railroad might be-whether it was something built up over the tops of the houses, or something else sunk beneath the ground-these men had set to work the laborers of Connaught and the laborers of Munster, spade in hand, to filling up the valleys, and leveling the hills, that intervened between New York and Philadelphia. In a few months, the industrious hands of a small army of Irishmen had accomplished the task; the narrow tracks had been leveled; bridges, aqueducts and culverts had been constructed; rails of wood and rails of iron had been laid and securely fastened; and the great iron horse, with his insatiable maw, and with his strength that never tired so long as that maw was filled, was hauling along gigantic loads of admiring men and of bulky freight at a pace that nothing short of the whistling winds could equal. In this way, the great British fact became also an American fact, small indeed in its beginning, but destined indeed to grow in less time than it takes for a child to become a man-to a stature that would surpass all that the world beside would achieve. Most creditable, in truth, it is to American enterprise, that her comparatively small population of twenty-eight millions of souls should, with her small resources of money and capital, have constructed and placed in successful operation more miles of railway than all the rest of the world; yet this has been done, and well done.

Wherever there is found anywhere over our broad land a thriv ing population of freemen, there is also found the newspaper, the school and the church, and with these there necessarily grows up the knowledge of what is being done elsewhere, and the temper of mind to profit by whatever is adapted to their own circumstances and wants. The result of this is, that the country is rapidly filling

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up with railways, crossing and recrossing each other at all points, and uniting almost every county of every Free State with the great centers of trade and commerce both on the Atlantic coast and on all our navigable rivers and lakes.

A project, however, more gigantic than any that has yet been achieved in the world's history, is now agitating the world's mind, and drawing toward itself the favorable regards of the more prudent and cautious, as well as those of the sanguine and adventurous. Already the feasibility of constructing a railroad across the continent, which shall unite the waters of the Pacific with those of the Atlantic, is admitted. On this point public sentiment has formed its judgment and pronounced its decision. It can and it must be done. But upon the further question of the route to be pursued by the new road, the judgment of the country is far from being settled. Each of four great routes has its earnest advocates. Some regard a survey from Chicago to the head of the Strait of De Fuca, whose most northern limit is less than a hundred miles from the British colonial possessions, as the most natural, the cheapest and every way the best route for the proposed road. Others again pronounce such a location wholly impracticable, from the masses of snow which must accumulate in the mountain passes in so northern a latitude, and look for an eligible route from the city of Houston, in Texas, to San Diego on the Pacific, the southern limit of which road would pass for some distance through the Territory of Mexico. Between the extreme limits of these two routes, a distance of almost a thousand miles intervenes. Two other routes have also been advocated by their friends-one from St. Louis to San Francisco, and the other from Memphis to the same city. Although other lines have, from time to time, been mentioned, yet these four may be regarded as the great routes from which public sentiment, when more instructed as to their respective merits, must elect one to become the recipient of such public bounty as may be bestowed upon the opening of a great thoroughfare from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The first point to settle, in determining the most eligible route for the proposed road, is as to which one of the different harbors on the Pacific is best fitted by nature and position to become the terminus of such a road, and a proper depot for the immense trade which must ensue on its completion. But four places on the coast are at all fitted to enter into competition for the great prize. These four points are San Diego, in the extreme southwest corner of the United States; the city of San Francisco; some spot to be chosen on the navigable waters of the Columbia, in Oregon; and another on the borders of the Strait of De Fuca, in the new Territory of Washington, and in the extreme northwestern corner of the American Union.

Whatever calculations are made as to the most desirable location of the contemplated road, they must necessarily have primary reference to the great commercial cities on the Atlantic coast. Already there are lines of steam travel extending from each of

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