An ironic rejoinder occurred to Potter--a rejoinder which he would have made regardless of courtesy had his unlovable mood been upon him--but he withheld it now, contenting himself with a smile which Cantor read correctly and answered with a twinkle of his clear eyes. Potter knew that Cantor had weighed his intention to draw a positive statement and rather enjoyed the knowledge that Potter understood fully his evasion of it.
The conversation turned to less momentous affairs, but it seemed as if Cantor could not express fully his admiration for Detroit and for its location. He spoke of the Lakes, of the millions of tons of ore and millions of bushels of wheat traveling past Detroit's door in the holds of mighty vessels; of vessels which carried northward cargoes of coal to a region where coal was a necessity. He referred to the carriage of passengers by water on steamers of a size and luxury which the stranger perceived with amazement on an inland waterway. He had a word to say about the ship-canals at Sault Sainte Marie and the Welland, and of that minor canal at the mouth of the River St. Clair. Eldredge told him something of the new channel constructed in American waters across Lime Kiln Crossing and Bar Point Shoals below the city, and described how engineers had constructed the mightiest coffer dam in the history of engineering; how they had built dikes miles in length to hold out the waters of the river, pumped dry the areas between, and then sawed their channel out of the dry rock. Cantor was fascinated by it all.
"But," said he, "those are points of danger, are they not? Suppose that war with England should arrive. Would not your Eastern steel-mills, upon which you must depend for the manufacture of ordnance and munitions, be left helpless if one of these gateways from lake to lake should be closed? Imagine the destruction of the locks at the Soo, for instance? Are they well guarded?"
"Probably," said Potter, "there is an aged constable with a tin star within calling distance."
"It is a splendid thing for a country to have the feeling of security that yours holds," said Cantor, with open admiration that Potter felt, but could not identify, to be derisive.
"Why should we guard them?" Eldredge asked. "We aren't fighting anybody. Besides, an army never could get to them."