In a former chapter I was just starting for the copper regions. Come with me, we will board the train bound for Marquette.

For some miles our way ran through thick cedar forests; then we reached a hard-wood region where we found a small village and a number of charcoal kilns; a few miles farther on, another of like character. Then, with the exception of a way station or siding, we saw no more habitations of men until we reached the Vulcan iron furnace of Newberry, fifty-five miles from Point St. Ignace. The place had about 800 population, mostly employed by the company.

Twenty-five miles farther on we reached Seney, where we stayed for dinner. This is the headquarters for sixteen lumber camps, with hundreds of men working in the woods or on the rivers, year in and year out. They never hear the gospel except as some pioneer home missionary pays an occasional visit. There are some 40,000 men so employed in Northern Michigan.

After another seventy-five miles we glided into picturesque Marquette, overlooking its lovely Bay, a thriving city of some 7,000 population, the centre of the iron mining region. Here we had to wait until the next noon before we could go on.

Our road now led through the very heart of the iron country. Everything glittered with iron dust, and thousands of cars on many tracks showed the proportions this business had attained. We have been mounting ever since leaving Marquette, and can by looking out of the rear window see that great "unsalted sea," Lake Superior.

We soon reached Ishpeming, with its 8,000 inhabitants. A little farther on we passed Negaunee, claiming over 5,000 people, where Methodism thrives by reason of the Cornish miners. After passing Michigamme we saw but few houses.

Above Marquette the scenery changes; there are rocks, whole mountains of rocks as large as a town, with a few dead pines on their scraggy sides; we pass bright brown brooks in which sport the grayling and the speckled trout. Sometimes a herd of deer stand gazing with astonishment at the rushing monster coming towards them; then with a stamp and a snort they plunge headlong into the deep forest. Away we go past L'Anse, along Kewenaw Bay, and at last glide between two mighty hills the sides of which glow and sparkle with great furnace fires and innumerable lamps shining from cottage windows, while between lies Portage Lake, like a thread of gold in the rays of the setting sun; or, as it palpitates with the motion of some giant steamboat, its coppery waters gleam with all the colors of the rainbow.Just across this narrow lake a royal welcome awaited us from the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Hancock. This fine church is set upon a hill that cannot be hid. The audience fills the room, and pays the closest attention to the speaker. They had the best Sunday-school I ever saw. Everything moved like clockwork; every one worked with vim. In addition to the papers that each child received, seventy-five copies of the Sunday School Times were distributed to the teachers and adult scholars. The collection each Sunday averaged over three cents a member for the whole school, to say nothing of Christmas gifts to needy congregations, and memorial windows telling of the good works in far-off fields among the mission churches. It was my privilege to conduct a few gospel meetings which were blessed to the conversion of some score or more of souls who were added to the church.

Thirteen miles farther north, and we were in the very heart of the Lake Superior region. It had been up-hill all the way. We went on the Mineral Range narrow gauge railway; but at broad-gauge price, five cents a mile, and no half-fare permits; so we were thankful to learn the little thing was only thirteen miles long.

Here we are in Calumet. At the first glance you think you are in a large city; tall chimney stacks loom up, railways crossing and recrossing, elevated railways for carrying ore to the rock-houses, where they crush rock enough to load ten trains of nearly forty cars per day, for the stamping-works of the Calumet and Hecla Company. You cannot help noticing the massive buildings on every hand, in one of which stands the finest engine in the country—4,700 horse-power—that is to do the whole work of the mines. Everything about these great shops works easily and smoothly.

At the mine's mouth we look down and see the flashing of the lights in the miners' hats as they come up, twelve feet at a stride, from 3,000 feet below; hear the singing as it rolls up from the hardy Cornish men like a song of jubilee. Come to the public school and listen to the patter of the little feet as nearly 1,600 children pour out of their great schoolhouse, and you will be glad to know there are good churches here for training the little ones. Calumet, Red Jacket, and its suburbs cannot have much less than 10000 inhabitants.

But here comes the minister of the Congregational church, with a hearty Scotch welcome on his lips as he hurries us into the snug parsonage, and makes us forget we ever slept in a basswood house partitioned with sheets. Here, too, we stayed and held a series of meetings. This is one of the few frontier churches that sprung, Minerva-like, full armed for the work. Never receiving, but giving much aid to others, it has increased. Here, too, I found another best Sunday-school. In this school on Sunday are scattered good papers as thick as the snowflakes on the hills; and the 300 scholars have packed away in their hearts over 52,000 verses of the Bible, that will bring forth fruit in old age. It is rich, too, in good works—one little girl gave all her Christmas money to help build the parsonage. Over a hundred of the young people came out in the meetings, and signed a simple confession of faith; fifty of them went to the Methodist church, the rest remained with us.

From this place we go to Lake Linden, on Torch Lake, where are the stamping-works of the Calumet and Hecla mines. This company have some 2,000 men in their employ, and expend some $500,000 per year on new machinery and improvements. Everything in this place is cyclopean; ten great ball stamps, each weighing 640 lbs., with other smaller ones, shake the earth for blocks away as their ponderous weight crushes the rocks as fast as men can shovel them in. Each man works half an hour, and is then relieved for half an hour. Over 300 carloads of ore are required daily to keep these monsters at work, day and night the year round, except Sundays. A stoppage here of an hour means $1,000 lost. One stands amazed to see the foundations of some new buildings—bricks enough for a block of houses, 2,000 barrels of Portland cement and trap-rock are mixed, the whole capped off with Cape Ann granite. Two wheels, 40 feet in diameter, are to swing round here, taking up thousands of gallons of water every minute.