They have made canals on either side of the Sault Ste. Marie--the rapids
of the St. Mary's River, by the side of which St. Lusson took formal
possession of all that northern empire and Father Allouez made his
extraordinary address--canals through which sixty-two million tons passed
in 1910 toward the east and south.
They have made and deepened harbors all the way around the shores till
ships two hundred times the size of the _Griffin_ can ride in them.
Yet this is not all. The symbols of La Salle's vision revived in the lakes
memories of the days when their waters ran through the Mississippi Valley
to the gulf--the very course which La Salle's unborn _Griffin_ was to
take.
When the continent tilted a little to the east and in the tilting poured
the water of the upper lakes over the Niagara edge into the St. Lawrence,
that same tilting stopped the overflow down into the Mississippi and the
Gulf of Mexico at the other end of the lakes. But so slight was the
tilting that the water still sweeps over, in places, when the lakes are
high, and sometimes even carries light boats across.
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