The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

MARINE REVIEW. WoL NET: Four More Passenger Steamers. Since the recent visit of President James J. Hill of the Great Northern Railway to the yards of .the Globe Iron Works Com- pany in Cleveland, where the two big twin-screw passenger steamers are building for his line, it has been definitely decided to build four more steamers of the type now under construction. The new boats will, in fact, represent an advance over Mr. Hill's big undertaking in putting on the lakes two passenger boats that will cost $600,000 each and develop 7,000 horse power each, as they will be 410 feet long, or 30 feet longer than the boats, now building. Work on the first of them will probably not be started until one of the steamers to come out ext season is given a trial. With a fleet of six passenger boats of this kind, equal to the number of freight steamers now owned by the Northern Steamship Company, arrangements can be made to have a pas- senger boat leave Buffalo almost daily for the head.of Lake Superior. There is evidently some big scheme for the control of transcontinental passenger traffic in the building of these' boats that has not as yet been fully given out. Canadian Canal Tolls. There is no foundation for the claim that the Canadian gov- ernment is refunding the Welland canal toll of 10 cents a ton on grain bound to Montreal by way of Kingston, and the newspaper articles on the subject have evidently been written without a full investigation of the facts. It will be remembered that in settle- ment of the controversy over canal tolls between the dominion and the United States, the Canadian government issued, before the opening of navigation this season, an order establishing a uniform charge of ro cents a ton on all grain bound through the Welland, whether destined for Canadian ports or ports of the United States. Since this order went into effect, many vessels of both Canada and the United States have had the canal charges refunded to them upon delivering at Kingston grain cargoes bound from Chicago to Montreal, but in all cases the monéy has been returned to the vessels on a stipulation in the charter made in Chicago before the grain wastaken aboard. Whether this ex- pense is borne by the shipper of the grain or the forwarding company at Montreal is not material, butit is not difficult to un- derstand how the owners ofthe grain or the forwarders can thissea- son afford to pay the rebate that was in previous years borne by the dominion government. Since the opening of the present season, the railways interested in carrying grain from Buffalo to the sea- board have, by agreement, maintained high rates of freight, and Erie canal rates have been proportionately high. 'This has diverted traffic to the competing St. Lawrence route, and the difference in freight charges east of Buffalo have been so much higher than last season that the St. Lawrence interests could well afford to bear the canal expenses, as they have been doing. It is not at all probable that the Canadian government has any hand in the matter. A Very Big Freight Boat. As had b2en expected, the steel steamer S.$. Curry, the largest freight boat now afloat on the lakes, has proven herself an immense carrier, having delivered at Fairport on Monday last a cargo of 3,852 gross or 4,314 net tons of ore from Escanaba on a draft of 16 feet 3 inches. This boat, built by F. W. Wheeler & Co. of West Bay City for the Hawgood and Avery Transit Company of Cleveland, has engines and boilers amidships, and CLEVELAND, O., anv CHICAGO, ILL.) JUNE 22, 1893. No. 25. on this account there was considerable interest in the question of her adaptability to iron ore chutes and hoists for handling cargo, but in this respect also she is a great success, as only six hours were spent in loading, and the big cargo was removed in thirteen hours, actual working time. In unloading the vessel, nine of her ten working hatches were used, and when in remov- ing ore from the hatch nearest the bow, it became necessary to lower the steamer to secure good service from a McMyler hoist, she was readily sunk four feet by pumping water into her for- ward compartments. It is not probable that another cargo of this size will-be handled as readily by any boat during the present season, as the Curry now goes into the Lake Superior trade. This cargo, although 200 tons larger than any load previously brought down the lakes, is of course not as large as that taken by the steamer Maritana from Escanaba to South Chicago. The Mar- itana was loaded to 17% feet, and took from Escanaba to South Chicago 4,260 gross tons, or 402 tons more than the Curry delivered at Fairport. What the Curry would do on Lake Mich- _igan, where her draft would be practically unlimited, can only be surmised until such time as she may find occasion to enter that trade. . Hill's Railway. At the banquet given in his honor at St. Paul a short time ago, James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railway and Northern Steamship Company, said: 'In the year ending June 30, 1879, when we took possession of the road, it carried 2,183,- ooo bushels of wheat; of the crop of 1891 we carried 57,000,000 bushels, over one-third of the spring wheat raised in the United States and 10 percent. of all the wheat raised in the United States. While our Chicago friends may get hold of some of this wheat when it has hoops 'round it, we carried more wheat than all . - the roads carried into Chicago of that crop, and we carried as many bushels of wheat into Superior and Duluth as all the roads carried into Chicago of that crop. Now that speaks for itself. A new area of country has been put in cultivation--the Red river valley. 'Twenty years ago it was not possible to take a team through the Red river valley. 'Today the Red river valley for productiveness has no equalon this continent. But to return to a few figures to which I want to call your attention. During the fourteen years ending on the 23d of this month our pay roll---the money we paid out to the men who earned it--has amounted to $79,000,000; and the reduction in the company's revenue due to the reduction in transportation rates has amounted to over $67,- 000,000. Now the public has had some of these advantages. The share-holders, the people behind the enterprise, have had between $15,000,000 and $16,000,000 in dividends on their in- vested capital. If they have had more than their share, we must ask those who have done so well from the increase in the value of their land to be patient with us, and with a little generosity on their part we will try to make the account even." The keel for the first of the American line steamships is the 277th keel laid by the Cramps. Steel plates measuring 60 feet in length, 50 inches in width and 11-20th of an inch in thickness are now being made for large ships in England. An order has just been issued by the British admiralty for a battle ship 390 feet long and 75 feet extreme breadth, the largest vessel of her kind in the world.