In the wonderful clear air, and with all the soft colours of the sunset glowing in the still water, the beauty of the place was almost too poignant. We might have been the discoverers of an uninhabited bay in the Islands of the Blessed. I have never known any place so remote, so still and so beautiful. But it was far from being uninhabited. There were rustic picnic tables under the spruce trees, and there was a diving-board standing over the clear water. The inhabitants of Algoma knew the worth of this place, and we felt them to be among the luckiest people on the earth.
The islands we saw far away in the soft beauty of the sunset, and between which the enigmatic light of a lake steamer was moving, are said to be Hiawatha's Islands. In any case, it was here that the pageant of Hiawatha was held some years back, and across the still lake in that pageant, Hiawatha in his canoe went out to be lost in the glories of the sunset.
On the morning of Tuesday, September 4th, the train skirted Georgian Bay, passing many small villages given over to lumber and fishing, and all having, with their tiny jetties, motor launches and sailing boats, something of the perfection of scenes viewed in a clear mirror. By mid-morning the train reached Sault Ste. Marie.
"Soo" is a vivid place. It is a young city on the rise. A handful of years ago it was a French mission, beginning to turn its eyes languidly towards lumber. It is on the neck that joins the waters of Superior and Huron, but the only through traffic was that of the voyageurs, who made the portage round the stiff St. Mary's Rapids, that, with a drop of eighteen feet in their length, forbade any vessel but that of the canoe of the adventurer to pass their troubled waters.
Then America and Canada began to build canals and locks to link the great lakes, in spite of the Rapids, and "Soo" woke. It has been awake and living since that moment. It has been playing lock against lock with the Michigan men across the river, each planning cunningly to establish a system that will carry the long lake vessels not only in locks befitting their size, but in locks that can be handled more swiftly than those of the rival.
At the moment the prize is with Canada. It has a lock nine hundred feet long, and can do the business of lowering a great vessel from Superior to Huron with one action, where America uses four locks. The Americans have a larger lock than the Canadian, but the Canadians are quicker.