]
The ships of the lion brood are, some of them, five or six hundred feet in
length, and carry eleven thousand tons of cargo. I have seen the skeleton
of one of these iron-boned beasts, and I have been told that eight hundred
thousand rivets go into its creation. And upon hearing this I could not
but hear the deafening clamor caused by La Salle's driving the first nail
or bolt, Father Hennepin declining the honor because of the "modesty of
[his] religious profession."
As to the cargoes that these ships bring back, the story is even more
marvellous. First in quantity is iron ore, forty-seven million four
hundred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and seventy-one tons in
1912 [Footnote: "Mineral Industry," 21:455.] from the shores of Superior,
where Joliet had made search for copper mines, where Father Allouez--in
the midst of reports of baptisms and masses--tells of nuggets and rocks of
the precious metal, and where has grown up in a few years the "second
greatest freight-shipping port on earth"--a port that bears the name of
that famous French coureur de bois, Du Lhut.
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