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SER/OCGI= 1973 Page 124 answering crack of the frosty cover- ing of the St. Mary's River proclaims that navigation is open from Duluth, and the gates of the great locks at the Soo swing wide to admit the spring ships from Lake Superior. The icy cakes are still lazily floating and lingering in the De- troit River, although the warm breath of early May is on them, while the bulk of the procession is forming and falling into line all along the triangular course of fresh water between Duluth, Chicago, and 'Buffalo, each ship placing itself according to its speed and time of departure. By the middle of 'lay the excite- ment of the opening season is felt in full, and all through the spring, summer, fall, and early winter an observer on Belle Isle could view some passing ship every few minutes of the day. Numerous statistics have been printed from time to time to prove that the traffic passing by this point is the greatest inland comnm- erce in the world and in this cease- less stream of ships may be seen almost every variety of craft used in commerce. , Many of my readers live in the towns and cities of the Great Lakes, and no doubt many of them know some- thing of the vast shipping voyaging back and forth during the navigation Season; but it is safé to assume that some interesting facts are yet to be told, and it would be well for American young folk to get the idea firmly fixed in,their minds that the commercial supremacy of America is largely due to the aid of these great fresh-water seas, over whose courses are carried the nation's corn and flour, its copper and iron Ores, its lumber and salt, and the coal for the great northwestern country. It is estimated that the freight tonnage passing Detroit in 1897 amounted to over thirty-five million tons. But it is not the main purpose of this story to deal with the ships that float or the tonnage that is a ; RTT Love Ss carried over this magnificient reach of waterways, but rather to tell of a small yacht-like white steamer that dances over the swells of the Detroit River to meet and exchange messages with every one of the pass- ing ships...a little midget servant to this enormous commerce. Without this tiny steamer the lake commerce would be as helpless as we of the cities and towns ashore would be without the postman and the post- office. From Kalamazoo to Yokohama, from Australia and Sweden, from all over America, and from the uttermost parts of the earth, come the mess- ages that this little boat delivers to her big-ship friends as they speed up and down past Detroit and Belle Isle. The tremendous advance in shipping facilities on the Great Lakes in recent years has been due to tire- less enterprise, fostered by gen- erous appropriations by the govern- ment in aids to navigation; so when the need of this little messenger