jutting out from the rocky coast, a sand spit nearly seven miles long, minnesota point is as a strong arm stretched forth to defend the harbour of duluth against the storms which breed in the frozen north and come roaring down lake superior. wisconsin point, less than half its length, almost meets it from the other shore. between the two is the narrow inlet through which in old times came the canadian voyageurs—on their way across saint louis bay and up the windings of the saint louis river to pond du lac, twenty miles[66] farther westward. that was in the fur-trading days of little sailing-vessels and birch-bark canoes. now, close to its shoulder, the point is cut by a canal through which the great black steamships come and go.
five-and-twenty years ago—before the canal was thought of, and when the duluth of the present, with its backing of twenty thousand miles of railway, was a dream just beginning to be realized—minnesota point was believed to have a great future. close to its shoulder a town site was staked out, and little wooden houses were built at a great rate. corner lots on that sand spit were at a premium. the "boom" was on. the smash of '73 knocked the bottom out of everything for a while. when good times came again the town site moved on westward a half-mile or so and settled itself on the mainland. the little houses on the point were out of the running and were taken up by swedes—who were content, as americans were not, to live a few steps away from the strenuous centre of that inchoate metropolis. that time the "boom" was a genuine one. the new city had come to stay. in course of time, to meet its growing trade requirements, the canal was cut which made the point an island—and[67] after that the point was dead for good and all.
nowadays it is only in summer that a little life, other than that of its few inhabitants, shows itself on minnesota point—when camping-parties and picnic-parties go down by three miles of shaky tramway to oatka beach. during all the rest of the year that sandy barren, with its forlorn decaying houses and its dreary growth of pines stunted by the harsh lake winds, is forgotten and desolate. now and then is heard the cry of a gull flying across it slowly; and always against its outer side—with a thunderous crash in times of storm, in times of calm with a sad soft lap-lapping—surge or ripple the deathly cold waters of lake superior: waters so cold that whoever drowns in them sinks quickly—not to rise again (as the drowned do usually), but for all time, in chill companionship with the countless dead gathered there through the ages, to be lost and hidden in those icy depths.
the ghastly coldness of the water in which it is merged seems to have numbed the point and reconciled it to its bleak destiny. it has accepted its fate: recognizing with a grim indifference that its once glowing future has van[68]ished irrevocably into what now is the hopelessness of its nearly forgotten past.
