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1903.] MARINE REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. § © amount of capital on the scheme. His coming to Lake Superior was an effort to retrieve his fortunes, and in this he was heavily backed by his brothers in Rochester and their friends. Coming here he began the first railroad, the one to the so-called iron mountains, and his influence in the community was at once con- spicuous. He was a prime mover in everything which called for public spirit. We were indebted to him for.our first public cele- bration of the Fourth of July and the opening of the completed ship-canal at Sault Ste. Marie. He died before-he had been here very long, but his death brought us as a natural result the com- ing of his brother, Mr. Samuel P. Ely, a man in just as many respects remarkable. "Mr. S. P. Ely was general manager of the Lake Superior Iron Co. from 1858 to 1873 when his interest in the newly dis- . covered iron range in Minnesota became important enough to . -- draw him away from us. He brought capital enough here to de- velop both the railway and the mines. This he secured very largely through influence of his family connection with Mr. Jcseph Story Fay of Boston. It would be difficult to imagine Marquette county through more than thirty years without Mr. Ely. He was highly educated, cultured and refined. He helped to stamp almost every town in this county with the marks they bear today. He must have loved the country and its people, for dying in a foreign land, not very long ago, his body was brought back here at his dying request, to be laid among us for its last rest. Almost every man or woman in any way connected with the Lake Superior Iron Co. gave up the day to attend his funeral. His active and practical man at this company's mines was Capt. Gilbert D. Johnson. "Capt. Johnson was an able, experienced mining man. He came here from Jackson, Mich.: Mr. Joseph S. Fay of Boston, who was interested through Mr. Ely in this company and was its president for many years, was no stranger to the people of this se neer will soon be almost an impossibility, but there is yet part of our territory where you may still find a fair imitation of it, and fancy yourself living under the conditions of fifty years ago. There has been hardly more change in the appearance of things above ground, in the erection of this populous city where the for- est once reigned, than in matters below ground. At first we did not used to do underground mining, nor did we think of ore deposits beneath swamps and low lying valleys. ae "We attacked the rough iron mountains with our picks and sledges. We had no drills or powder. Jack Frost had thrown ~ down thousands of tons of broken rock, much of it ore of the -- finest quality. There was at first no thought of shipping ore. It was all made into charcoal blooms by very laborious processes, often at far greater cost than it could be sold for, sometimes three times as great. It is now almost difficult to understand how we staid here and why. But there were forces behind us pressing us on. Fresh arrivals came in. The American people have never been easily discouraged, and years of patient prepara- tion always precede great discoveries and great commercial suc- cesses. Besides: we were all young men, fond of adventure, fond -- of freedom, of wild life and new openings. Some went away, but it is almost universally true that nearly all came back again. While life here was always expensive, yet from the very. first a man-could garden profitably and with no tool but a grub hoe, and fish and game were easily to be had to relieve the monotony of salt provisions. I still recall my first meal at Marquette fifty-four years ago in the hospitable wigwam of Kaw-baw-gam, with the greatest of pleasure. We were a homogeneous little body in those days. There were of course the aborigines and a very few French, but the first comers were of pure American stock, mostly eastern men. Save for pioneers from Macomb and Jackson counties, -- the lower peninsula has never seemed to take much interest in getting anything out of this country but taxes. I mean the iron ig Co., taken just before the Break-up in the Spring. | county. He was a lovable man, sympathetic and liberal. He always came once a year to see us and often twice. It was the Fay interest which was secured as the basis of the United States Steel Corporation's control, and in which the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Go. also became interested. The Lake Superior Iron Co. has developed its mines along the same lines as its sister com- panies, branching out in the control of allied interests like rail- roads and shipping. This company was one of the earliest in the issue of what was known as iron money, every dollar of which was honestly redeemed. EARLY MINING PRIMEVAL INDEED. "Before this city had a name, and this company any exist- ence, these rocky prominences around us were known as the iron mountains of Lake Superior, and it was to them I came, under the leadership of Robert J. Graveraet, a masterful, energetic and pio- neer spirit, in the spring of 1849. I came into Ishpeming first with a pack on my back weighing 4o Ibs. My party marched from the shore as far as this between early morning and two in the afternoon, over an apology for a road. I hadn't packed before and was tired out pretty early; but after a cup of tea and some refreshing food I was able to resume the pack of which Graveraet had relieved me without relinquishing his own. At that time there were but two houses, both built of logs, where Ishpeming now stands. There are a great many here now who can hardly appreciate the look of things then, for the whole coun- try was covered with almost impenetrable forest. There was a ereat deal more water, and infinitely more swamp, and as for flies, they. were innumerable, and worse than the tortures of the inquisition. There were all sorts of flies, mos- quitoes, sand flies, deer flies, midgets, moose flies, dog flies and their remotest cousins. The clearing and drainage of the country has driven them all from the settled towns, but here they had full squatters' rights. Life as it was then for the pio- [Photo by Crandall & Fletcher, Duluth. country. They found our pine, but the iron and copper they left to Boston and the Western Reserve. There has always been a curious conservatism in the business men of Detroit, which made them allow Cleveland and Buffalo, Chicago and Milwaukee to . develop at their expense, and even now they are just finding us out and wondering where the great iron fortunes came from. "Citizens of Ishpeming are now a polyglot class. The first practical miners were all Cornish, though some of the early cap- tains were Americans. Any miner but a Cornishman was at first unknown. They were practical and very daring men. Work underground will always have its peculiar dangers, but mines are now immensely safer than they were. New appliances for effect- iveness and safety are being added daily. But the days of the dangling rope and rickety ladder were the days of the Cornish- man's glory. For the last twenty years all the countries of Europe where mining has ever been carried on have sent us a contingent, so that fully 55 per cent. of the population of our mining towns is now registered as of foreign birth. But they are being assimilated with astonishing rapidity by means of our political institutions and our public schools. It took Lake Superior iron a long time to achieve its now overwhelming importance in the world market. The steps were many and various. The first necessary step was the ship-canal at the Sault, the next was the railroad, the next was the enlarging of the size of the ore carriers, the next was the Bessemer steel process, the next was scientific mixture of ores, and the last has been consolidation of interests. EARLY DAYS CONTRASTED WITH THE PRESENT. "Dwellers in Ishpeming have been eating this spring fresh California oranges, Alabama strawberries, Baltimore oysters, Con- necticut river shad. We got along without them for many years. What we had was in season, and the seasons all came at once. My auditors now have all read last evening's Chicago papers this morning, put aboard the express at 10:30 last night. We got