1,200 Deer skins dressed,
500 Buffalo robes.*

32,000 Marten skins,

1,800 Mink skins,

6,000 Lynx skins,

To carry on the business of collecting, transporting and disposing of these forest products required a force of from twelve to fourteen hundred men. The trade, like all commercial beginnings in new lands, followed the winding courses of the rivers and the shores of the lakes, and transportation was necessarily slow and expensive.

The annual conference of the partners and their agents, held at the

Grand Portage, was an event of no trifling importance, and was attended with due ceremony. "Here, in an immense wooden building, was the great council hall, as also the banqueting chamber, decorated with Indian arms and accoutrements, and the trophies of the fur trade. The councils were held in great state, for every member felt as if sitting in parliament, and every retainer and dependent looked up to the assemblage with awe, as to the house of lords.

These grave and weighty councils were alternated by huge feasts and revels, like some of the old feasts described in Highland castles. The tables in the great banqueting room groaned under the weight of game of all kinds; of venison from the woods, and fish from the lakes, with hunters' delicacies, such as buffaloes' tongues, and beavers' tails, and various luxuries from Montreal, all served up by experienced cooks brought for the purpose."†

*Alex. Mackenzie, p. 25. +Irving's 'Astoria,' pp. 14 and 15.

In 1803, the Hudson Bay Company built a fort at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, Thunder Bay, (L. S.)

The bitter struggle between the rival companies continued for a few years, but in 1821 they were united, and since that time the businesswhich has greatly diminished in value and importance-has been carried on in the name of the Hudson Bay Company.

III. FIRST COPPER MINES.

Traces of ancient mines are found in many places on the Trap Range -which extends from Porcupine Mountains to Keweenaw Point-and on Isle Royale. It is generally supposed that the Mound Builders, who left so many evidences of their skill and industry in the Mississippi Valley, were the ancient copper miners of Lake Superior. Their excavations were necessarily shallow, as they were obliged to bail the water out of their mines by hand. For the purpose of breaking the vein-rock, they built fires on the surface, and after the rock had become sufficiently hot, caused it to break by the sudden application of water. They then completed "the removal of pieces of native copper by mauling off the adhering particles of rock with stone hammers." †

Out of the pieces of "mass" copper thus obtained they made knives, chisels, hatchets, axes, spear-heads, arrow-heads, etc. Many of these implements have been found in the great mounds, or imbedded in the soil of the ancient maize fields cultivated by this mysterious people.

Masses of copper left by the primitive miners, and others, discovered, perhaps, by glacial action, were found by the first white men who visited this region. Some of the earliest narratives of travel on "Lac Tracy,' as Superior was called by several of the French missionaries, contain quaint descriptions of these copper bowlders.

In 1670 Claude Dablon wrote a long letter about the "mines of copper," etc., from which we quote the following:

Advancing to the head of the lake, and returning one day's journey by the south coast, there is seen on the edge of the water a rock of copper which weighs some seven or eight hundred pounds.

The good priest tries our faith in his scientific knowledge, however, by some of his conclusions:

We do not believe that the mines are found on these islands [Apostle], but that the copper was probably brought from Minong [Isle Royale] or from other islands by floating ice, or over the bottom of the lake by the impetuous winds, which are very violent, particularly when they come from the northwest.

+"The Ancient Copper Miners of Lake Superior," by Jacob Houghton-published in A. P. Swineford's Mineral Resources of Lake Superior,' p. 79.

Captain Jonathan Carver, who visited Lake Superior about the year 1766, published an account of his "Three Years' Travels through the Interior Parts of North America," and painted the mineral resources of the country in such roseate hues that it is claimed a mining company was organized in London on the strength of his representations. However this may be, it is a matter of record that a mining company was organized in London in 1770, for the purpose of working the supposed mines on the shores of Lake Superior.

For an account of this first modern attempt to work the mines of the northwest, we are indebted to the "Travels" of Mr. Alexander Henry, the English merchant and trader, who acted as agent of the company. "Early in May, 1771," says Mr. Henry, "we departed from Point aux Pins," and "coasted westward; but found nothing till we reached Ontonagon, where, besides the detached masses of copper formerly mentioned, we saw much of the same metal bedded in stone. Proposing to ourselves to make trial on the hill till we were better able to work upon the solid rock, we built a house and sent to the Sault de Ste. Marie for provisions. Having arranged everything for the accommodation of

the miners during the winter, we returned to the Sault.

"Early in the spring of 1772 we sent a boat load of provisions; but it came back on the twentieth day of June, bringing with it, to our surprise, the whole establishment of miners. They reported that in the course of the winter they had penetrated forty feet into the hill; but that on the arrival of the thaw, the clay on which, on account of its stiffness, they had relied, and neglected to secure it by supporters, had fallen in.”

They thought that in order to reach the metal it would be necessary to sink an air shaft, and that this would require the hands of more men than could be supported in the country at that time. So the undertaking was abandoned, and the rich metals of Lake Superior were left in their rocky beds until American enterprise and capital began to develop the mines in 1845 and subsequent years.

Calumet, L. S., Mich.

WILLIAM J. Cox.

GENERAL MOSES CLEAVELAND.

In attempting to solve the problem of life, General Moses Cleaveland had a purpose and lived for a purpose. In his career, though controlled by circumstances, he manifested an unusual degree of wisdom and foresight. Among other achievements he founded a city-the beautiful city that inherits his name and cherishes his memory with a pride that approaches reverence.

His ancestry is of historical interest, and has been traced to a remote period. The name "Cleaveland" is shown to be of Saxon origin, and was the name of a distinguished family in Yorkshire, England, before the Norman conquest. This family originally occupied an extensive landed estate that was singularly marked by open fissures in its rocky soil, known to the Saxons as "clefts" or "cleves." This peculiarity of the estate induced the rural population of the vicinity to speak of its occupants as the "Clefflands," a name which the family accepted. This name like many others, as time elapsed, came to be spelled in a variety of ways-Cleffland, Clifland, Cleiveland, Cleaveland, Cleveland. An antiquarian of repute states that William Cleveland, of York, England, who died at Hinckley, in Leicestershire, in 1630, was the remote ancestor of the

American Clevelands.

It is also shown that a lineal descendant of his, whose name was Moses, and who was a housewright or builder by trade, emigrated from England and landed at Boston in the year 1635, where he remained for several years. He then, in connection with Edward Winn and others, founded the town of Woburn, Mass., where both he and Winn permanently settled.

This Moses Cleveland was a man of intelligence and enterprise. He aspired to full citizenship, and became, in 1643, what was then called a "freeman." The qualifications of a freeman required that he should be of "godly walk and conversation, at least twenty-one years of age, take an oath of allegiance to the government of Massachusetts Bay Colony, be worth £200, and consent to hold office if elected, or pay a fine of forty shillings, and vote at all elections or pay the same fine." These restrictions and conditions were so onerous that many who were eligible preferred not to become freemen, being more free as they were. But this Moses, who had now become a freeman, feeling that he had ancestral blood in his veins of a superior quality, thought that it ought to be transmitted, and after a brief courtship married, in 1648, Anne Winn, the daughter of his friend, Edward Winn of Woburn. In taking this step "Moses" did not make a “mistake." The result was that he became the accredited progenitor of all the Clevelands born in the United States—a race not only numerous, but noted for great moral worth and many noble traits of character.

General Moses Cleaveland, the subject of this sketch, was born January 29, 1754, in the town of Canterbury, Windham County, and State of Connecticut. He was the second son of Colonel Aaron Cleaveland, who married Thankful Paine, Both his father and mother were persons of culture. They saw promising traits of character in their son Moses when he was but a child, and resolved to give him a liberal education. At the proper age they sent him to Yale College, where he graduated in 1777. He then adopted the legal profession, and commenced the practice of law in his native town with marked success. The abilities of the young lawyer soon attracted public attention, and induced Congress to recognize his merits by appointing him, in 1779, captain of a company of sappers and miners in the army of the United States. He accepted the commission, and remained in the service for several years, when he resigned and resumed the practice of law. He was also a prominent Mason and held the position of Grand Marshall of the Grand Lodge of Connecticut.

He