The Long Ships Passing

By Walter Havighurst

MR. HAVIGHURST has written the story of the Great Lakes. It opens with the picturesque tale of Jean Nicolet who, in 1634, with seven paddlers, entered the Straits of Mackinac in a birch canoe. He thought his destination was China; he carried with him a robe of China damask, embroidered with poppies and birds of paradise, so that he might fittingly face the merchants and princes of Cathay. To his surprise he found the same copper-skinned savages he had left behind in New France. A forerunner of pioneers, he was the first white man to see the potentialities for exploitation of the vast wilderness beyond. Later came George Stuntz who, gazing at the unpeopled hills and empty water, said: “This will be the heart of the continent.” And so it was. Hundreds of sailing vessels whitened the trade lanes in the eighties; German, Irish, and Scandinavian settlers trekked westward to territories beyond. Still later came opulent steamships and the weighted freighters. If and when the long-debated, seemingly inevitable Seaway becomes a fact, the future will bring added importance to these inland waters. This Seaway, we are told, would transform the Great Lakes into a Mediterranean Sea of this hemisphere and enhance manyfold the trade of this region, affecting the lives of fifty million people. J. C.