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24 MARINE REVIEW. {December 19, White continued in office as postmaster altogether for twelve years. If Harlow was ever cognizant of this extraordinary situation he never teferred to it. CHAPTER IIT. The pioneers in the iron industry in the peninsula had little money. There was no"influx of eastern capital to help them over the periods of depression. They were compelled to take all the knocks that adversity had to administer, and some of them were pretty severe. The weaker failed; but those who had faith in the ultimate development of the mines gripped a tighter hold and hung on. Men placed in crucibles of fire come out either heroes or villains. The cruel process develops some and destroys others. The struggle certainly bred a race of hardy men and a few of them were even great. Peter White, the boy, had the advantage of association with those men, and could not fail to be improved by it. It has been told that the only method of bringing ore to the lake from the mines was by means of sleighs during the winter time. It became appa- rent that if any considerable business was to be done the means of com- munication would have to be improved. The average load of a sleigh was 3,600 Ibs. or a little less than 11%4 gross tons, and' it was impossible for a team to make more than one trip a day. Indeed the whole winter's haul rarely exceeded 1,000 tons. Moreover, it began to be apparent that the great business of the region was to be done in the mining and shipping of ore, and not in the manufacture of blooms. Among the men attracted to the peninsula was Heman B. Ely, who, as soon as he saw the deposits, recognized the need of a railway. He approached both the Cleveland and Jackson iron mining companies upon the subject, and in November, 1851, drew up an agreement wherein he agreed to build a railway from Mar- quette to the Jackson and Cleveland mines in consideration of receiving the carrying trade of both companies at certain reasonable rates of toll. The companies agreed to pay $1 per ton for the transportation of ore over the road during the first two years and 50 cents thereafter until the amount reached an annual total of 70,000 tons, when a graded rate gradually diminishing to 30 cents when 125,000 tons per annum had been reached, should obtain. This road was to be known as the Green Bay & Lake Superior Railroad Co., a title which sufficiently indicates that Mr. Ely had in mind its extension to that other ore outlet upon Lake Michigan. Mr. Ely, however, had difficulty in enlisting capital in the enterprise. Men with money looked coldly upon the project of building a railroad in a wilderness and the undertaking consequently lagged. Money was, indeed, so stringent that upon one occasion in 1852 Mr. Ely had to sell some of his provisions in order to obtain the means wherewith to get out of the country. This act caused Mr. Tower Jackson, the first mining agent of the Cleveland Iron Mining Co., to deliver a philippic against steam rail- roads in general, and to declare that a plank road was precisely what the region needed. He maintained that a plank road would promote agricul- ture in that it would be of direct benefit to the farmers and would stimulate ore shipments in that it would provide a means of communica- tion to the mines all the year round. A steam railroad, he insisted, would merely fill the pockets of eastern capitalists and ruin the iron country. Meanwhile Peter White performed an historical act. He made a bit of history. He wrote the bill of lading of the first shipment of ore that ever left the upper peninsula. The shipment consisted of seven barrels, and was consigned to B. L. Webb of Detroit, by the Marquette Iron Co. It was shipped to Sault Ste. Marie on the steamer Baltimore.* There is a report of a little ore having gone prior to this to A. L. Crawford, New- castle, Pa., but there is no record. extant of it. The 'Cleveland and Jackson companies waited patiently for over a year for Ely to begin the construction of his railroad, and perceiving no signs of any movement on his part, undertook jointly the construction of a plank road from the lake to the mines. This was a considerable under- taking and was prosecuted with as much vigor as any undertaking could be which was nearly 1,000 miles removed from the supervision of the home office and which had to be built under adverse financial circumstances. Director after director of the Cleveland and Jackson companies visited the iron region to superintend the work and the most energetic of all was Dr. Morgan L. Hewitt, the first president of the Cleveland company. Another undertaking, which like the railroad seemed almost a dream, was the construction of a canal around the rapids of the St. Mary's river, connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron. It was a dream because it had been discussed for years and seemed no nearer realization than in the beginning. There was absolutely no sympathy in Washington with the enterprises of the peninsula. Daniel Webster's declaration, that never would he vote one penny to bring the bleak, barren, rocky and uninhabit- able shores of California one step nearer Boston, was on a par with a similar declaration of Henry Clay, that under no circumstances could the expenditure of public money for the construction of a canal in a remote and worthless region be justified. He was referring to. a measure before congress for the construction of a canal at Sault Ste. Marie. These men were great, but they had no knowledge of what they were talking about. Howeyer,.in 1852 congress granted to the state of Michigan 750,000 acres "° *Fortunately this bill of lading has been preserved and is now framed and hanging in the office of D. Z. Norton of the firm of Ogleb N is ok Wade building, Cleveland, ere ee Me of land for the purpose of aiding in the construction of a canal around the falls of the St. Mary's river. This grant of land was accepted by Michigan and in consideration of it a number of gentlemen undertook the construc- tion of the canal. As a matter of record, it is well to note that these men were John F. Seymour, Erastus Corning, James F. Joy, J. W. Brooks, J. V. L. Pruyn, Joseph P. Fairbanks and John M. Forbes. Mr. Charles T. Harvey was placed in charge of construction and broke ground for the canal on June 4, 1853. Mr. Harvey also selected the lands for the company, choosing 262,288 acres of iron lands in the upper peninsula and 487,717 acres of pine lands in the lower peninsula. The 30,000 acres which he selected in Marquette county were subsequently sold to the Iron Cliffs Co., of which the late Samuel J. Tilden was the leading spirit, for $500,000. Among the copper lands selected by Harvey was the quarter section on which the Calumet & Hecla Co.'s mine was subsequently located and which was sold to that company for $60,000. This mine has since returned to its stockholders the amazing sum of $70,000,000 in dividends and is still declaring them at a bewildering percentage upon the capital invested. _ In May, 1853, the Marquette Iron Co. gave up the ghost and Dr. Morgan L. Hewitt moved his small family to Marquette--two most im- portant events in the life of Peter White--for through the first he became connected with the Cleveland company and through the second he met Ellie Hewitt, Dr. Hewitt's daughter. The Marquette Iron Co. had had a hard time of it. Mr. W. A. Fisher, the capitalist of the company, gradually lost heart when he found that the Cleveland company had really a prior right to the claim and his support for two years had only been lukewarm. It was a constant drain upon his resources, with mighty slim chances of any return, and he welcomed the opportunity extended to him by the Cleveland company to reimburse him for the improvements which he had made. Indeed the Cleveland company exhibited the utmost generosity toward its rival. It purchased the assets of the Marquette company and incidentally purchased Peter White, who was keeping the store for the Marquette company. All the stockholders of the Marquette company were Satisfied, with the exception of Graveraet, who recognized in it the bursting of his industrial bubble. Included in the assets of the Marquette company was the lease for the undivided one-half interest in the Lake Superior location, which Graveraet had secured from Burt. Graveraet insisted that he had never received any consideration for this interest, and that it was no part of the Marquette company's property. He claimed it as a part of his individual estate, which the Marquette company, not being an incorporated body, had no right to transfer, and his contention was sufficient to give the Cleveland company considerable concern. In September, 1853, the Cleveland company shipped to the Sharon Iron Co., Sharon, Pa., about 150 tons of ore for use in its blast furnace. This constituted the first use of Lake Superior ore in any blast furnace. There have been rival claimants for this honor, but this was actually the first and it was a success. The ore was rich beyond expectation. Others who subsequently tried to smelt the ore failed to make iron, owing to its very richness, and this gave rise to a report that the ore was not suscept- ible to blast furnace treatment. It was the very circumstance of this initial success that changed the destiny of the old plank road. It was decided to convert it into a strap railroad at once and the rails were accordingly sent up from Sharon. The work was pursued with the utmost energy. The building of this road and the growing fame of the iron hills had caused quite an influx of people, so that Marquette was beginning to have quite a respectable number of inhabitants. These recruits saw the last boat depart and the winter close in upon them with feelings of uneasi- ness, which gradually gave way to uncontrollable impatience when they saw that they were not going to get any mail during the entire winter. It was the old story over again. In fact the last mail was delivered on Oct. 17. On Jan. 8, 1854, the people could stand it no longer and sent for Peter White to attend a mass meeting which they had called. Intense and fervent speeches were made, but all had the same ending--that Peter White should go for the mail. No one else was thought of. He was regarded as some mysterious genie who with a dog and sled could pene- trate the trackless wilds and bring the precious mail out of its hiding place. So with six Indians and three dog teams of three dogs each, Peter White again went after the mail. Peter and the Indians took away nearly 1,000 letters to be posted. They plunged into the woods at the mouth of Carp river, but found snow-shoeing tedious work, as the snow was very soft. On the seventh day, while making slow work of it in the deep, wet snow which covered the ice of Cedar river, near Green Bay, they espied in the dim distance what appeared to themvat first like five immense loads of hay slowly crawling toward them. A little later the strange spectacle came more definitely into view and was seen to be five double teams with five sleigh loads of United States mail, bound for Lake Superior places, via Escanaba and Marquette, in charge of Daniel M. Whitney of Green Bay. This mail weighed between seven and eight tons. It may be imagined that the meeting of these two caravans was most joyful. Mr. Whitney said that the postoffice at Green Bay was filled to overflowing with mail and that the postmaster at that place had taken the most doubtful responsibility of employing him to make one trip. Whitney had engaged ten men, Indians and French, to help him. Peter White took charge Of the party, and loading up his dog sleds with the contents of one of the sleighs he