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1901.) MARINE REVIEW. 21 ently did not exist. The iron companies were hard put to it to get work- ing capital and keep their men in good humor. It was at this time that the genius of W. J. Gordon came into play. He devised a medium of exchange which later came to be known as iron money. This form of exchange was in the shape of neatly-engraved and printed drafts for small denominations upon the treasurer of the home office of the iron com- panies, issued by the mining agents in payment for labor and material. _ The banks accepted these drafts as readily as they accepted government currency. Surely the United States government had no greater reserve for its. paper than had these mining drafts. The reserve consisted of mountains of precious ore. When the banks had accumulated a hundred or a thousand dollars worth of the drafts they were sorted out according to the companies which issued them and presented to the home office, when a ninety-days draft, interest added, would be given for them. This iron money remained in circulation for a great many years. It helped to relieve a stringency which otherwise would have stalled the iron industry. In 1857 quite a settlement had grown up about the Jackson mine and it was decided to give it a name. A council was held with the Ojibwa Indians and the name Negaunee was chosen, which signifies in their language the first or pioneer. It was quite appropriate, as the first mine was opened there and the first furnace, the Pioneer, established there. The following year the growing town about the Cleveland mine demanded a name. The citizens appealed to Samuel P. Ely who in turn appealed to Peter White. "The ridge of land upon which the Cleveland mine is located," quoth Peter, "'is the highest ground between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. It is the divide where one may see the waters. of the Carp flowing into Lake Superior and the waters of the Escanaba flowing into Lake Michigan. Ojibwa for an altitude of this character is Ishpeming." "Let's call it Ishpeming," exclaimed Ely, 'it is a beautiful word." "Tt also means Heaven in an abstract sense,' added Peter, "That's better than ever," replied Ely. And so the town was christened Ishpeming, The immediate effect of the breaking out of the war in 1861 was an added depression in the iron business, and it forced a number of the little furnaces to the wall. Stephen R. Gay, who had been instrumental in introducing blast-furnace methods in the peninsula and under whose guidance the Pioneer furnace was built, had started the Bancroft furnace in 1860. Peter White had loaned him what little money he had to spare, but Gay was unable to weather the storm, bred by the rebellion, and Peter White had to step in as secretary and treasurer to protect his own inter- - ests. He was busily engaged, too, in organizing a company to go to the front and he was elected its captain. At this stage Marquette protested. It felt that it needed him more than the war required his services and he was persuaded not to go. Peter's duties were growing upon him, and he ' prepared to relinquish the office of postmaster which he had held for nearly a dozen years. He was, however, before surrendering the office, to have an experience which remains with him quite vividly today. Wher- ever there is wood chopping to be done there is a Frenchman to be found. The Canadian-French went to Marquette in great numbers, for all the death itself. All we could do was to eat bark and roots and bitter berries that only seemed to make the hunger worse. Oh, sir, hunger is an awful thing. It eats you up so inside, and you feel so all gone, as if you must go crazy. If you could only see the holes I made around the cabin in digging for something to eat you would think it must have been some wild beast. Oh God, what I suffered there that winter from that terrible hunger, grace help me. I only wonder how I ever lived it through. "Five days before Christmas (for you may be sure we kept account of every day) everything was gone. There was not so much as a single bean, The snow had come down thick and heavy. It was bitter, bitter cold and everything was frozen as hard as a stone. We hadn't any snow shoes. We couldn't dig any roots; we drew our belts tighter and tighter; but it was no use; you can't cheat hunger; you can't fill up that inward craving that gnaws within you like a wolf. "Charlie suffered from it even worse than I did. As he grew weaker and weaker he lost all heart and courage. Then fever set in; it grew higher and higher until at last he went clear out of his head. One day he sprang up and seized his butcher knife and began to sharpen it on a whetstone. 'He was tired of being hungry,' he said, 'he would kill a sheep--something to eat he must have.' And then he glared at me as if he thought nobody could read his purpose but himself. I saw that I was the sheep he intended to kill and eat. All day, and all night long I watched him and kept my eyes on him, not daring to sleep, and expecting him to spring upon me at any moment; but at last I managed to wrest the knife from him and that danger was over. After the fever fits were gone and he came to himself, he was as kind as ever; and I never thought of telling him what a dreadful thing he had tried to do. I tried hard not to have him see me cry as I sat behind him, but sometimes I could not help it, as I thought of our hard lot, and saw him sink away and dry up until there was nothing left of him but skin and bones. At last he died so easily that I couldn't tell just when the breath did leave his body. "This was another big trouble. Now that Charlie was dead what could I do with him? I washed him and laid him out, but I had no coffin for him. How could I bury him when all around it was either rock or ground frozen as hard as a rock? And I could not bear to throw him out into the snow. For three days I remained with him in the hut and it seemed almost like company to me, but I was afraid that if I continued to keep up the fire he would spoil. The only thing -I could do was to leave him in the hut where I could sometimes see him, and go off and build a lodge for myself and take my fire with me. Having Sprained my arm in nursing and lifting Charlie this was very hard work, but I did it-at last. "Oh that fire, you don't know what company it was. It seemed alive just like a person with you, as if it could almost talk, and many a time, but for its bright and cheerful blaze that put some spirits in me, I think I would have just died. One time I made too big a fire and almost burned myself out, but I had plenty of snow handy and so saved what I had built with so much labor and took better. eare for the future. i : "Then came another big trouble--ugh--what a trouble it was--the worst trouble of all. You ask me if I wasn't afraid when thus left alone on that.island. Not of the things you speak of. Sometimes it would be so light in the north, and even away up overhead, like a second sunset, that the, night seemed turned into day; but I was used to the dancing spirits and was not afraid of them. I was not afraid of the Mackee Monedo. or. Bad Spirit for I had been brought up better at the mis- , sion than to believe all the stories that the Indians told about him. I believed that 'there was a Bitist and that He would carry me through if I prayed to,Him. But the thing that most of all I was afraid of, and that I had to pray the hardest against was this: Sometimes I was so hungry, so very hungry, and the hunger raged 'so in my veins that I was tempted, O, how terribly was I tempted to take Charlie furnaces were fed with charcoal. Many of them could neither read nor write, but nevertheless they took sweet pleasure in letters from home. They had numerous legends of Peter White. They knew that he had disappeared in years gone by whenever the mail was uncommonly late and had come back with letters for them. Some of the poor creatures thought that he went as far as Montreal for the mail. They could not understand it otherwise. He was a mysterious being to the French and their families, and was always associated in their minds with dogs, snow shoes, sleds and Indians. In April and May, even when government delivery had been regularly established, the mails were frequently late owing to the deep snows. One night a steamer arrived, the first of the season, bringing the accumulations of a month of mail. Peter had taken it to his office and was distributing it as expeditiously as possible by candle light, as he knew that at 6 o'clock in the morning a large crowd would have congregated for their letters. The postoffice was merely a small room in the rear of the store, just large enough for a table, chair and the mail bags. Peter had dumped the mail upon the table and was standing distributing the letters into their respective boxes when he heard a slight noise in the forward part of the store. Michel Belloin, a tall and powerful Frenchman, was approaching. It needed but one look at Michel to observe that he had been drinking heavily. "You got any lette for Micho, Monsieur Pete," asked he, staggering up to the rail. "Come in the morning," answered Peter, "I am just assorting the mail now." "T guess I will come into your little poss offis and sit on dat little chair and see you put dose lette in that box," answered Michel, and suiting the action to the word he undertook to enter the narrow door. "There isn't room for you," exclaimed Peter, "it is against the law. You cannot come in." "Oh ho! What you spose I care for de law or you neder? I will come in anyhow. You can't stop me." As he lifted one foot to step over a mail bag at the door, Peter gave him a quick push which caused him to fall backward to the floor and very much enraged him. Arising he paced backward and forward across the store floor, grating his teeth and clenching his fists, calling Peter all manner of names and uttering all sorts of imprecation and epithets in French. Finding that Peter was paying no attention to him he stopped at the door of the little postoffice and shouted: "You want to preten you don stand French. Mon Dieu, you don talk good Hinglish. You just a half a breed, half French and half Hinjin. I know what you want. You want me to strike you, then you bring me on the justis offis tomarrow morning and make me pay five dolar. Aha! "You can't fool Frenchman lika dat. You come on to de street if you want me to strike you. If I strike you I won't leave two greas spot on you. If I strike you you'll tink it is a French horse kick you. You see dat spit down dete? The sun he come he dry it up. Dats jast like you. If I strike you you can't fine yourself anymore. You wouldn't _ know where you gone to. I come to your poss offis to *quire for some lette, and I hax you, just so polite I can, if you got any lette for Micho, and and make soup of him. I knew it was wrong; I felt it was wrong; I didn't want to do it, but some day the fever might come on me as it did on him, and when I came to my senses I might tind myself in the very act of eating him up. Thank God, whatever else I suffered I was spared that; but I tell you of all the other things that was the thing of which I was the most afraid, and against which I prayed the most and fought the hardest. j "When the dreadful thought came over me, or I wished to die, and die quick, rather than suffer any longer, and I could do nothing else, then I would pray; and it always seemed to me after praying hard something would turn up, or I would think of something that I had not thought of before and have new strength given me to fight it out still longer. One time in particular 1 remember, not long atver Charlie's death, and when things were at their very worst. For more than a week I had had nothing to eat but bark, and how I prayed that night that the good God would give me something to eat, lest the ever increasing temptation would come over me at last. The next morning when I opened the door I noticed for the first time some rabbit tracks. It almost took away my breath and made my blood run through my veins like fire. In a moment I had torn a lock of hair out of my head and was plaiting strands to make a snare for them. As I set it I prayed that I might catch a fat one and catch him quick. That very day I caught one, and so raging hungry was I that I tore off his skin and ate him up raw. It was nearly a week before I caught another and so it was often for weeks together. The thing seemed so very strange to me that though I had torn half the hair out of my head to make snares never once during the whole winter did I catch two rabbits at one time. "Oh how heavily did the time hang upon me. It seemed as if the old moon would never wear out and the new one never come. At first I tried to sleep all that I could, but after a while I got into such a state of mind and body that I could scarcely get any sleep night or day. When I sat still for an hour or two my limbs were so stiff and dried up that it was almost impossible for me to move them at all; so at last, like a bear in a cage, I found myself walking all the time. It was easier to walk than to do anything else. When I could do nothing else to relieve my hunger I would take a pinch of salt. Early in March I found a canoe that had been cast ashore and which I mended and made fit for use. Part of the sail I cut up and made the strips into a net. Soon the little birds began to come and then I knew that spring was coming in good earnest. God indeed had heard my prayer and I felt that I was saved. Once more I could see my mother, "One morning in May I had good luck fishing and caught no less than four mullets at one time. Just as I was cooking them for breakfast I heard a gun, and I fell back almost fainting. Then I heard another gun and I started to run down to the landing, but my knees gave way and I sank to the ground. Another gun-- and I was off to the boat in time to meet the crew when they came ashore. The very first man that landed was Mendelhall, and he put up his hand to shake hands 'with me, which I did. 'Where is Charlie,' said he. I told him he was asleep. He might go up to the hut and see for himself. Then they all ran off together. When Mendelhall went into the hut he saw that Charlie was dead. The men took off Charlie's clothes and shoes and saw plain enough that I had not killed him, but that he had died of starvation. When I came up Mendelhall began to ery and to try to explain things. He said that 'he had sent off a batteau with provisions and didn't see why they didn't get to us.' But the boys told me it was all,a lie., I was too glad to get back 'to my mother to do anything. ¥ thought his'own 'con- science ought to punish him more than I could do." ee Aa Angelique died at Sault Ste. Marie in 1874. It is related of her that once she made a wager with a Frenchman that she could carry a.barrel of pork to the top of an adjoining hill and back. She won it with ease, and upon her return volunteered to carry the barrel up again with the Frenchman on top of: it, | 1