The things we do!

"--Report of
National Waterways Commission, p. 507.] They have been privately
developed.
Six times as much freight passes over these lakes as through the Suez
Canal in a year. [Footnote: Curwood, "The Great Lakes," p. 6.]
Three thousand five hundred vessels, and more than twenty-five thousand
men are required to move the hundred million tons of freight which every
year would fill a train encircling the globe. [Footnote: Curwood, "The
Great Lakes," pp. 25, 26, and Report of United States Commission of
Navigation, 1913.]
If one were to stand on the shore of that "charming strait," between Erie
and Huron, the Detroit River (which Hennepin so covetously describes,
wishing to make settlement there, until La Salle reminded him of his
"professed passion for exploring a new country"), one would now see a
vessel passing one way or the other every twelve minutes, on the average,
day and night during the eight months of open navigation.
Nor are they small sailing vessels of a few tons' burden, but great
sailless, steam-propelled hulks, carrying from five to ten thousand tons.


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