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MARINE REVIEW Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. Published every Thursday at 418-19 Perry- Payne Bldg., by the Marine Review Pub. Co. Vou. XXIV. CLEVELAND, Q.; DEG. Lo 1901. Borst Subscription $3.00 a year. $450 a year. No. 24 The Hon. Peter White. At Biographical Sketch sof the 'Takes Superior Iron Region. AI Ls PROLOGUE. This is the story of a man's life. But what a life it has been and is. The tale will be told as simply and as succinctly as possible, but if there be digressions in the narrative it will be because the theater in which the life has been spent is so stupendous as to compel them. When a man's life is linked with a country it is impossible to chronicle it without chroni- cling the history of the country. In all new countries there is one man who typifies the region; and while gigantic figures have moved across the face of this marvelous panorama there is none so singularly attractive as he who is the central figure of this rapid sketch. For he is the very embodiment of the spirit of the country in which he lives. Its sheer ruggedness is in his frame as though out of the metal-shot soil he had absorbed the iron of his constitution. If you will take any man who has lived close to nature you will find the most splendid specimen of manhood to be found any- where. Nature is open, frank and earnest, sometimes terribly so, but always genuine. The men who lie closest to her have these self-same attributes. Their simplicity is charming. Take a man whose life has been with the elements and he is invariably with- out guile. The men who opened up the American frontier were these sort of men. Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill ate examples. They stood for law and order and would have it at the price of life. They were the advance guard of civili- zation. They made it possible for decent men and women to live on the edges of a wilderness, It is a pity that the yellow-backed novelist has been their only biographer; but some day the white light will beat upon them and will reveal them as they really are. While this is a frontier story there is neither blood nor thunder in it. It is not lacking, however, in the element of romance. Indeed it would be impossible to find in reai life a more romantic tale. As a work of the imagination there is nothing comparable to the Count of Monte Cristo in the realm of romantic fiction. One is held in thralldom by the unlimi- ted wealth of this creature of fiction. Money is the talisman to which all doors open and to which all achievements are possible. It is easy, there- fore, to comprehend the fascination which this story possesses. There is but one other attribute open to the romancist which occupies a like hold upon the. mind--and that is the possession of unconquerable physical strength. Hugo utilized this in his character of Jean Val Jean. What then is to be said of this story when its base has a wealth which is far greater than that which Dumas could possibly have credited to Edmond Dantes and when the very country breeds men whose powers of endur- ance rival those of Hugo's hero. Has it not the elements in it out of which to weave the fabric of the great American novel so long expected and so long delayed? For the story is distinctly American. Indeed there is nothing more distinctly American, though it might have been a Canadian tale had it not been for the foresight of the great Benjamin Franklin, who deflected his pencil a bit upon a certain memorable occasion and caused the upper pen- insula of Michigan to be included within the American boundary. Franklin did a great many things for his country which dwell more or less freshly in the memory of posterity; but this one thing, long since forgot- ten, if indeed ever adequately comprehended, was in a material sense the greatest of them all. It was the vague report of mineral wealth in that unbroken region which caused his pencil to make the almost imper- ceptible deflection upon the map. For long years, for centuries, it had been known that that region was rich in metallic substances. Copper was the one metal known to exist in great quantities. However, the world may as well not have known, for it never took advantage of the information. The country was too vaguely fixed in its imagination to have a commercial value. As early as 1636 La Garde, in a little book published in Paris, made known the existence of copper in that far country by the unsalted seas. The Jesuits, too, in the PETER WHITE IN 1857. recital of their missionary work, which extended from 1632 to 1672, fre- quently speak of the existence of copper. Claude Allouez, whose contri- butions are the most valuable upon the subject, visited the Lake Superior region in 1666. He makes mention of a large mass of native copper which was plainly visible near the shore of the lake and relates that the Indians who passed that way, cut pieces from it. Indeed he says that the Indians frequently had pieces of copper weighing from 10 to 20 lbs. and that they held the specimens in superstitious awe. A map was drawn of this region by these zealous missionaries in 1672, which, to this day, is electrifying in its accuracy. However, the observations of the Jesuits are important fr6m the historical standpoint only; in the commercial development of the region they play no part whatever. It would be interesting to pursue them further were it not for the fact that the present story has to do with a per- sonality whose blood still runs red in his veins. The first attempt at development was made as the result of an account of the mineral deposits made by Capt. Jonathan Carver, who visited Lake Superior in 1765. His story so captivated Alexander Henry, an Eng- lishman of venturesome spirit, that he organized a company to exploit the resources of the region. Many of the nobility went into the venture and even the King of England became a stockholder. Henry actually began mining operations on the Ontonogan river in 1771 and succeeded in min- ing a great deal of copper. He also secured an' ore which contained a great deal'of silver. The enterprise was remote from the market and not- withstanding the acknowledged value of the deposit it was abandoned. The English investors decided that copper was not sufficiently precious a metal to bear the cost of transportation over such vast distances, and even Henry became of the opinion that the country would have to be peopled before the copper could be profitably mined. This adventurous spirit then undertook that series of exploits which have inseparably linked his name with the history of Mackinac island and which makes his character a striking one both for thé novelist and dramatist. Incredible as it may seem, this region, richer in actual value to man- kind than any other section of this great round globe, lay dormant for nearly a century after Henry's luckless venture. The world, lustful for gold as it is, apparently forgot all that had been written about it. Even Michigan, when it was admitted into the union as a state, protested against the inclusion of the upper peninsula within her borders. She actually had to be bribed to take it. The Lake Superior region, in a com- mercial sense, is only fifty years old. This is an incontestible but stu- pendous fact.. It brings its entire development within the life of our subject and is the very circumstance which gives to his career its magni- ficent setting. No other man has moved so continually upon such a stage. It is simply Titanic. Posterity will forever owe a debt to Dr. Douglas Houghton for the work which he did as the first of Michigan's state geologists. He tray- ersed the south shore of Lake Superior during his investigations five times in a birch bark canoe, and his practiced eye saw at once the great mineral wealth that was awaiting the hand of man. He stated his obser- vations in his report to the government in the most guarded language, for while he recognized as a scientist the wealth of the region, he was conscious also as a practical man of the hazard of its development. He had no mind to lure men to their ruin. The peninsula in those days was a veritable Klondike from the standpoint of inaccessiblity. His report of 1841 was careful, painstaking and conservative, but notwithstanding its tone men flocked to the region by thousands. Dr. Houghton had fore- seen this condition, and his heart was wrung for them, for he knew that only a tithe could possibly hope to 'win success. Indeed claims were abandoned as soon as they were located and in a few years most of the prospectors had left the country. Dr. Houghton's report was largely devoted to copper. Of iron he makes only the merest mention, which is not surprising, as his investigations were confined to the shore of the lake and none of the iron deposits come within seven miles of it. Dr. Hough- | ton was an extraordinary man of fine moral and mental fiber. His geological observations of the region are today universally. accepted, though it took the later generation of geologists several years to come to his conclusions. The rocks are very old. They precede organic life. They are the result of a great cataclysm and however deep one descends into the earth there is no heat. Dr. Houghton was an intrepid man, and to this very intrepidity he owes his untimely end. For if any man's end