10 Five Big Puddles

Did you ever wonder what an ant must think of us giants who tread on his ant-hills, or what he must think of a puddle of water?

There are five big puddles of water along the northern edge of the United States—at least they look like puddles on the map—as if a gigantic giant had left his wet umbrella standing and the water had trickled out over the land. We call these puddles “The Great Lakes,” for they are the biggest lakes on this side of the World, though a giant with legs a mile long would think them only puddles to wade across. Two of the lakes—the smallest two—I have already told you about. They are Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Two of the others also have Indian names, Lake Michigan, which means “Great Lake,” and Lake Huron. The Greatest Lake of all the Great Lakes is called Superior, which means simply Greater Lake, as we say a boy who is a better football player or who makes better marks is “superior” to some other boy. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that belongs entirely to the United States, as it is entirely inside of the United States. Half of the other four lakes belong to the country north of the United States—the country called Canada—because these other lakes are along the border between the two countries. The United States owns its side of each of these lakes and out to the middle; Canada owns its side and out to the middle.

Lake Superior is not only bigger, it is higher than the other lakes. It empties its water into Lake Huron through a little river called St. Mary's, and in this river are falls. These falls in the St. Mary's River are called St. Mary's Jump, because the water jumps, jumps down. These falls are not nearly as high as Niagara Falls, but they are too high for boats to go over the jump, so men had to build canals with locks around the falls to lower boats down and raise them up from one lake to the other. As there are so many boats that want to go down and up, one canal was not enough to take care of all the boats that wanted to go round the falls, so men have built five canals round St. Mary's Jump. St. Mary's Jump in French is Sault Ste. Marie, and as this is so difficult to say, people simply call the falls Soo, the river Soo, and the canals Soo too.

Some of the boats on the Great Lakes are as big and fine as those on the ocean; and they have to be, for the Great Lakes are like small oceans. When you are out, far out, you cannot see land, and at times there are high waves and storms, just as at sea. The chief difference is that the water in the lakes is fresh, not salt.

“Business before pleasure.”

A great many people take trips on these big lake boats just as they do on the ocean—for pleasure; but the chief reason for the great number of ships that go from one end of the lakes to the other is not pleasure but business. The business is carrying things, which we call freight. It is much cheaper to send things by ship than by train, for one big ship can carry much more than many trains, and ships do not have to have land and tracks to run on, as trains do. When we send freight by train we also call that “shipping,” which seems strange. Every one would ship by ship instead of by train if he could, because it is so much cheaper, but of course you have to be near the water to ship by ship.

Fortunately, eight out of our forty-eight States are on the Great Lakes, although some of the States have only a small “frontage” on a lake. Michigan has the most frontage, by far. It fronts on four of the Great Lakes, all except Lake Ontario.

You remember that the Potomac Indians were great traders, paddling their canoes up and down the river, and swapping things they had for things they wanted. The Indians of the Great Lakes used to do the same thing. Nowadays the white man's huge ships—thousands of times bigger than the Indians' canoes made out of a single log—do the trading. They carry huge loads of freight from one end of the Great Lakes to the other, unloading at different places along the way the things that people want, and loading up with other freight to go back.

Most of the ships start at the far end of Lake Superior at a place called Duluth. Trains loaded with wheat come to Duluth from the wheat-lands west of that city, and other trains loaded with iron ore from mines near-by. Then huge machines on the shores of the lakes, with giant hands of iron, lift whole cars of wheat and ore and dump them into the ships waiting to be filled, as you would lift a toy car of your toy train and empty its load with two fingers. Other ships collect copper ore and also iron from that part of Michigan which is on Lake Superior. They then carry their loads through the Soo Canal and unload at a place called Detroit, between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, or carry their iron ore to Cleveland and Buffalo on Lake Erie. Most of the ships do not go past Niagara Falls. They load up again with things that have been made in New England, or in the east of the United States, or with coal from Pennsylvania, and go back to Duluth.

But when winter comes, all this trading up and down the lakes has to stop, for this part of the country is very cold and ice forms and stops the ships.

A baby is born every second, but in Detroit an automobile is born every minute. Most of the automobiles in the World are made in Detroit. Into one end of a Detroit factory go iron and wood, leather, etc., and out at the other end comes an automobile. Every hour of the day hundreds of automobiles are finished and run out of the factories, to be shipped over the whole World.

I am sitting in a chair that was made from a tree that grew in Michigan, a thousand miles away, before I was born. The upper part of Michigan used to be covered with forests of trees especially suited for making furniture—and more furniture was made there, especially at a place called Grand Rapids, than at any other place in the World. You probably have some Grand Rapids furniture in your own home. Look on the bottom and see if you can find a label “Made in Grand Rapids.” So much furniture was made there that men have cut down and used up most of the trees, and only stumps are left. But the people had learned how to make furniture, and so they kept on making furniture, though now much of the lumber has to be brought to Michigan from other parts of the country.

Side by side, like two children trying to peek out of one small window, are two States looking out on Lake Michigan. They are Illinois and Indiana, written “Ill. and Ind.” for short. The second largest city in the country is in the State of Illinois on the lower end of Lake Michigan. It has an Indian name—Chicago. More trains of cars come into and go out of Chicago than any other city in the World. Most trains going across the United States stop there and start there—freight trains carrying things and passenger trains carrying people.

There are a great many kinds of animals in the World, and yet of all these animals there are only three kinds that people generally eat. These three are the cow, the sheep, the pig. It takes millions of these animals every year to feed all the people in the United States, and millions of these animals are raised in the States near-by and far from Chicago. These animals have to be fed, and the food that is best to make them fat is corn, so whole States grow corn, just to feed cows and sheep and pigs. The State of Iowa grows more corn than any other State, so it is called the Corn State. Some of the corn is shipped to Chicago, but most of it is shipped “on the hoof”—that is, it is fed to the animals and the animals are sent alive to Chicago to be killed. They are kept in big pens called stock-yards until they are killed. From Chicago they are sent in refrigerator cars or ships, everywhere, even to Europe. Chicago is the greatest butcher-shop in the World. The bacon I had for breakfast, the ham sandwich I had for luncheon, and the roast beef I had for dinner came from Chicago.