Upper Michigan

Mining regions are proverbially barren and rocky, and the upper península of Michigan - at least that portion of it which is so productive of iron and copper - forins no exception to this rule". It is old -older than most of our hills, f or it was the firdt land that was attached to the original Laurentian nucleus about which our continent has been formed. It has, in consequencti, always been a f avorite field for geological study, and its novel industrial features make it no less interestiug to the ordinary traveller. The face of the country is rugged and seamed and worn. Were it not for iis mineral wealth it would remain permanently a wilderness. Lumber companies would invade it here and there, and retire after having robbed the forest of the pine which is found ina fewscattered patches. It would be an eddy where the stream of Western migration had left a few Indians and woodsmen to subsist by the methods of primitive life. The land is generally valueless from the farmers point of view, for the soil is a light drift- too light for wheat- and the climate a winter modified by a season of summer weather too short for Indian corn to ripen. Hay, osts, and potatoes yield the farmer a fair return, hut the climate is so rigorous that the securing of shelter and f uel calis for so laree an amount of energy that little is ïeft to devote to cultivation. It is a proof of this that a very inconsiderable fraction of the population attempts to subsist by farming, although the freight f rom Chicago is added to thepriceof all the staple articles of production- hay, for instance, being irom twenty to twenty-üve dollars a toD. and milk ten cents a quart. Curiously enough strawberries and currants reach a perfection uuknown in more hospitable latitudes, a Marquette strawberry resembling in size a Seckel pear, and in flavor a wild strawberry. This is owing, no doubt, to the toet that in northern latitudes- Marquette is about as f av north as Quebec- the few summer days have froua eighteen to twenty hours of sunlight and afterglow, and vegetable growth is virtually uiiinterrupted by darknes3. Light, the botanists teil us, bears the same relalion to aroma that heat dooa to sweetness. Such strnwberries as these must be seen to be appreciated, and must be visited. to be seen, for they aie too large and too delicate to bear travel ihemselves. I have spoken of the enmate as a winter modified hy a short summer. TheJulyand August weather I can voucti for as delightfui. Even when the sun is hottest you feel instinctively that there is no probtiating power 111 it, and the niglits are Invariably cool. In July-the mean daily range was 19 , and the monthly range 5a , the lowtst recorded temperature being 38 . Near the lake the presence of so large a bodv of water which at Marq nette never falls below 52 = , and on the ex treme northern end of the península never below 48 , acts as an equalizer, and restricts the range within comparatively narrow limita. This low temperature of the lake water, which is higher than that of any of the streams entering it, precludes the idea of bathing. As a conseqnence few of the lake sailors can swim, and it would bo of little avail to them as a means of preserving life if they could, for the most robui-t man if he falla into LraKe Superior thills and dies in a few moments. The nurnerous trout streams in the woods are of an icy coldness. The snow, which falls to a depth of six or seven feet, melts and sinks into the sandy ground, to re-appear frotn deepseate'd springs with a temperature of 39, which is exactly equal to the average annual temperature of the place. The thick foresta prevent the sun from warming the ground or tbe water. And finaily the lake is so deep - its bed reachingseveral hundred feet below the level of the sea- that the summer air has little effect on it before it is againcovered with ice. There is no other place on the globe wnere so large a body of cold fresh water lies at an elevation of six hundred feet above the sea. The air in contact with this deep chilly water seems to acquire a peculiar vivifying and refreshing quality, quite impossible to describe, but very easy to appreciate. Here must be the great summer sanitariutn or cooling-ofí place for Chicago and