p. 412

Lake Superior
433

We now pass from one of the largest rivers in the world to the consideration of Lake Superior which is undoubtedly the largest body of fresh water, belonging to our globe: its length is four hundred and ninety miles, its width one hundred and ninety miles, and its circumference, following the coast is seventeen hundred and fifty miles. But these are its extreme dimensions- itis estimated to have an average length of four hundred miles and breadth of eighty miles and an area of thirty two thousand square miles, being more than five times the size of Lake Ontario. Its surface is eighteen feet higher than that of Lake Huron and Michigan; and a canal [four thousand three hundred feet long] less than one mile in length with two locks of nine feet lift each, at the Sault de St. Mayer is all that is required to open this great lake to all the steamboats, and other vessels now navigating the lower lakes.

Efforts have been made during the past year to form settlements on this lake for the purpose chiefly of working

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