the business may be made extremely
profitable at Duluth, since the head of the lake is their natural
feeding-ground, and thousands swarm these waters. We all have eaten of
the lake trout and white-fish, which may be had in the most of our
cities and towns, and know how successfully they compete with the best
of our salt-water article. It is already an important and growing trade,
and highly profitable.

Each morning during our stay in Duluth the tables of the "Clark House"
were served with both of these delicacies; and these fish certainly
surpass, when taken fresh, any fish it was ever our fortune to eat. The
cost of living is much cheapened in consequence of their abundance, and
surely nothing more wholesome can be placed on the table.

If Duluth had but the one interest, that of lumber, its prosperity would
be assured. It lies in the very heart of a vast district abounding in
pine-forests, and which have scarcely been explored, and we believe much
of it remains unsurveyed by the general government up to the present
time. The St. Louis River, which empties into Duluth and Superior Bays,
courses, with its branches, a thousand miles among the dense forests of
pine; and yet this is but a fraction of the immense tract of valuable
timber to the north and west of this young and nourishing city.

There is no lack of water-power to reduce the raw material to a
marketable condition, since the river above named can turn all the
wheels of every mill in the country, could they be planted beside it.
The point of contact by the river with the outlying rim of the basin of
the great lake is at the village of Thompson, some twenty miles distant
from Duluth, on the St. Paul Railroad.[D] Here the waters of the St.
Louis River struggle by and over this rim of rocks, downward and onward,
roaring and surging in their tumultuous ways, to the level below. These
rapids are known as the "Dalles of the St. Louis," and extend some four
and a half miles in an elbow direction. If a canal were cut across this
elbow, this splendid water-power could be utilized beyond that of any
other in the country.

What a field for enterprise is presented to lumbermen! A vast forest, a
river furnishing transportation and unlimited power for manufacturing,
and, finally, an open sea, with almost countless markets!

Besides this, there lies among the cliffs and high lands adjoining the
rapids of this river inexhaustible quarries of slate, surpassing, we are
inf