and going from bad to worse until he finally commits murder. The police next appear upon the scene, to be resisted by the criminal, who has grown sullen and ferocious, but is at last overpowered and carried off to receive his just punishment on the gallows. But even in the face of death he proves crafty, and pretending not to understand how to get his own head into the noose, he manages to juggle with the rope so effectually as to hang the executioner. Fortune favors Mr. Punch, first, last and all the time!

Most Americans know that this quaint old play came to them from their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. That is why they are apt to regard Punch and Judy as a purely English institution. But the fact is that England borrowed the idea from Italy, where Punchinello was a popular favorite long before he wandered westward and appeared in the foggy isle.

Some writers claim to trace his origin to Pontius Pilate, and say that the modern show was originally a religious spectacle. Be that as it may, the Russians have in the rural districts a traveling show somewhat resembling our Puuch and Judy, but which for simplicity and primitiveness forms a striking contrast to its counterpart in Western Europe. It dates back to the ninth century, when it, with Christianity (curiously enough), was introduced into Great and Little Russia from Byzantium.

The picture printed here gives the reader a clear idea of what this puppet show was and is. As will be seen, the performance is conducted by two persons, just on the same principle as our own. One works the dolls and the other plays the zither. The former is called the "Kukolnik," the latter the "Guseltchik." They do not burden themselves with even as much baggage as their European or American brethren; there is no folding frame to be shouldered on the tramp from village to village; but instead the showman wears a convenient hoop skirt. Quite a curious substitute, one would fancy, for the frame theatre, yet a glance at the picture will show how well it works. The Kukolnik raises the skirt above his head, and braces it with two sticks until it assumes the appearance of having been lifted by a high wind. Once there, it is stationary, shielding him from view, and creating the "behind the scenes" from whence he controls the puppets. Meanwhile the Guseltchik seats himself and begins the overture, gayly twanging his zither to the audience's infinite delight. I was on the point of saying that now the curtain rises, but remembered in time that there is no curtain, and will therefore simply announce that the actors make their bow. It will interest the

reader to hear something about these puppet actors.

One "stock" character is that of the valiant Knight, helmeted, plumed and clad in shining armor (he appears in the picture), who is ever performing prodigies of valor, and accomplishing the most daring feats in rescuing beautiful maidens, whom he bears away on his gallant steed to liberty and love. The Buffoon is also an indispensable character; he is really a deep-enough sort of fellow, and usually has a purpose of his own to serve in fact, there is a deal of method in his buffoonery. We have also the Fool, who must not be confounded with the Buffoon, and is a genuine, Simon Pure, ont-and-out simpleton. He is always on hand, producing much laughter by his grotesque stupidities. The darling of the audience must not be omitted in this accountthe lovely Maiden who inspires the brave Knight to noble deeds; the Buffoon to attempt poetry in her praise; and the Fool to be more foolish than ever in endeavoring to express his devotion. And last, yet by no means least, comes the bad man of the play-the Heavy Villain, with dark, handsome countenance, adorned with such wonderful mustachios as are seldom seen off the stage, and who plots and schemes against the peace of the fair heroine, seeming to gain his desires step by step, while the audience grows feverish with suppressed excitement. But in the very nick of time the gallant Knight arrives to foil the Villain and rescue the Lady amid enthusiastic applause. Some of the more ambitious dramas necessarily introduce a greater variety of actors, including the parents of the beautiful heroine; sometimes her brother, cousin, or perhaps a kindly aunt or uncle. In other instances quite a host of minor characters are called into service, such as the "strelitzi," or military guards; the villagers; the priest, or "pope," as he is called in Russia; the landlord of the "traktir," or country inn, etc.

These wandering puppet showmen are the descendants of a class once almost a power in the land of the Czars. Like the Scottish minstrels and the Irish harpers of old, they were not only invited upon all important festive occasions, but were treated as honored guests. If the season were summer the show would be given under the trees upon a grassy lawn; and if winter time, the company gathered in the ancestral hall. Although frequently the plays were of the class mentioned, the Kukolnik had other strings to his bow. Russia is very rich in the curious old traditions, fairy tales and legendary poetry called "folklore." Now, our friends the showmen were, as a class, distinguished for their acquaintance with all this folklore; the Kukolnik recited the

almost exactly one-fourth of the total freight carried by all the railroads of the country put together throughout the whole year; yet such is

the fact.

Employing the terms of the railroad and picturesque comparisons, the 30,299,006 tons of freight carried on the Great Lakes during the season of 1890, loaded into cars of average size and capacity, would cover 13,466 miles of track, or, in other words, four tracks extending from New York to San Francisco, with overplus sufficient to cover two additional tracks from New York to Chicago, the lines of fully laden cars being continuous!

Let us glance at the tide of commerce which, from the days of the first American vessel launched on Lake Erie in 1797, flowed westward, carrying the provisions and other supplies to the early settlers, but which about 1840 set in with a backward movement like that of the Bay of Fundy's waves-its only parallel in nature, or indeed in the traffic of the world. A small brig brought to Buffalo in 1836 the first earnest of the magnificent return of the bread cast on the waters, 3.000 bushels of wheat from Michigan, and against this we have to show in the season of 1891 upward of 200,000,000 bushels of grain, including nearly 8,000,000 barrels of flour. Moreover, enormous as these figures seem, it is to be remembered that breadstuffs do not to-day constitute by any means the largest item of the Lake traffic, but really occupy a fourth-rate position, the first place being claimed by the iron ore of the Lake Superior district, from which comes more than half the total production of iron ore in the United States. Indeed, but for the great natural highways and the cheap transportation they afford, it is safe to say that this district, which produces the best and the most valuable ore in the whole country, could not have been developed at all, the bulk and weight of the product rendering it exceedingly unlikely that railroads could afford to carry it at a sufficiently low rate to its destination in the furnaces of Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Lumber, second in order, reaches upward of 6,000,000 tons yearly, while the westward movement of coal, anthracite and bituminous, amounts to nearly the same number of tons.

Buffalo, it may be observed, is the largest receiving port for breadstuffs in the country, as well as the largest shipping point for anthracite coal, the receipts of grain and flour at this single port during eight months in 1891 having been nearly equal to the domestic exports of like products from all other ports in the United States in the same period, notwithstanding the fact that the

export movement of that year was the largest known in the history of the country.

By the following table it will be seen that, compared with the largest foreign and home ports, Chicago and Buffalo, inland cities both, hold no contemptible position; Chicago treads close upon the heels of New York, and, after London and Liverpool, finds no rival in the world except Hamburg, who distances her but by less than 200,000 tons, while Antwerp and Marseilles alike yield the palm to Buffalo.

Entrances and clearances of the ports for the season of 1890 were:

With increased production, facilities for handling have increased also, and whereas in the early days the unloading of grain at Lake ports was performed by hoisting barrels from the hold of the ship, and after weighing, transferring them into canal boats alongside, three or four days being required by the crew for the unloading of a cargo of 5,000 bushels, there are now single elevators capable of removing 25,000 bushels an hour. Several of these vast storehouses have two hollow legs each, the distances between which are adjustable so as to correspond with the distances between the hatches on the vessel to be unloaded, and the work is further expedited by steam shovels introduced into the hold, two of them working in connection with each leg and sweeping the grain toward the continuous line of tine buckets carried on an endless chain. When this gigantic tube is lowered into the hatch of a vessel it frequently buries its nose five to ten feet deep in the cargo.

The coal and ore docks load with corresponding speed, from a series of pockets with shoots or aprons below them on which the ore and anthracite coal is carried to a point over the open hatches of the ship (bituminous coal having to be lowered into the hold in buckets to avoid breaking). So

rapid is the process that a vessel with a cargo of grain arriving in Buffalo at 9:20 A.M. has unloaded 77,000 bushels, and, taking on 3,200 tons of coal, has been ready to leave port at 7 P.M. of the same day. At Duluth it is by no means uncommon to see several of the largest Lake steamers receiving cargoes at once from the same elevator. Chicago, it is to be noted, has the largest elevator capacity in the United States, accommodating 28,675,000 bushels in her 26 elevators, while New York, with her 27 elevators, shelters 27,275,000 bushels.

Having thus gained some idea of the tremendous proportions of the commerce of the Lakes, of which it was truly said, "it requires no prophet to foretell a wonderful growth, but only a prophet can foretell its degree," let us look at the ships in which it is carried, at the impediments that stand in the way of even more rapid growth, at the cost of transportation by water compared with that by rail, and at the relative amounts expended so far by our own country and by Great Britain in facilitating the movement of the magnificent crops and mineral resources of our Northwest and of Canada.

To-day there are afloat on the Great Lakes nearly twice the number of American vessels that are engaged in the foreign trade of the United States on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts combined-3,600 craft of all kinds, with a carrying capacity of 1,154,870 tons, against 1,579 ships which carry a little less than one million of tons. The Lake fleet proper, exclusive of small tugs, steam canal boats and sailing vessels, in 1891, was registered at 2,125 vessels, with carrying capacity of 870,981 tons and valued at nearly $60,000,000. Of these 272 were steamers, carrying from 1,000 to 2,500 tons, and when we reflect that there are only 157 vessels of this class on the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts, 28 on the Pacific and 22 on the Western rivers, these figures are significant. Indeed, it is a striking fact that the average size of vessels on the Great Lakes is more than double that of those on the Atlantic and Pacific seaboard, the proportion being for sailing vessels 128 tons on the seaboard against 258 tons on the Lakes, and for steam vessels 299 tons on the seaboard against 428 tons on the Lakes. In 1890, when the steam tonnage of vessels built on the Great Lakes was 40 per cent. greater than that of craft built on the entire seaboard, the average rose to 760 tons against 288.

From 1849 to 1862 the growth of the Lake fleet was phenomenal-increasing more than 136 per cent. in the amount of tonnage and more than 50 per cent. in the value of vessels; but of late years it has taken even more rapid strides, the in

crease in size and in the use of steam power being marked from year to year, while the character of the shipping has been radically modified. "It is probable that the history of marine architecture does not furnish another instance of so rapid and complete a revolution in the material and structure of floating equipment as has taken place on the Great Lakes since 1886," says the Superintendent of the Census; for against 6 vessels built of steel which the Lake fleet could boast in the first-mentioned year, valued at $694,000, there were no less than 89 afloat in 1891, with aggregate carrying capacity of 127,624 tons and valued at $14,502,500, of which 70 were propelled by steam. One of these carried during the season of 1890 the whole length of Lake Michigan 29 cargoes of iron ore averaging 3,581 tons each. Of the 45 new ships under construction in 1891, 32 were of steel. The change from wood to steel, from sailing to steam vessels and from small to high-class tonnage tends also to lengthen the season of navigation, now about 230 days.

A somewhat remarkable new type of vessel has been patented within this decade, and is designed especially to meet the needs of traffic on the Lakes. These are the McDougall "whalebacks," built of steel throughout, and are of a peculiar shape, which insures the advantages of being proof against foundering in any weather except in case of grounding or collision, of offering less resistance to the water, of carrying less dead weight above the water line, of having a smaller exposed superstructure to cause rolling or drifting, and of being built at material reduction in cost. One of them made in safety the trip from Duluth to Liverpool with a cargo of wheat (unloading, however, to pass the rapids in the St. Lawrence River), and on its return to Philadelphia took on a cargo of machinery which it carried around the Horn and landed finally at Puget Sound.

Shipbuilding on the Lakes has expanded enormously. In the five years from 1886 to 1891 the new vessels built were over one-half of those launched in the entire country. Next to Philadelphia it was not New York, or Newark, or Boston, but Cleveland, Ohio, which turned out the largest tonnage of iron vessels in 1890, and West Bay City has built great steamers for the ocean trade, towed them in sections through the Welland and St. Lawrence Canals, and set them up and launched them on salt water, the total extra expense of the processes of cutting and putting together in one case being about $10,000. The largest Lake shipyard, at Cleveland, turned out a first-class steel freighter every month during 1890, the aggregate value of which was $2,500,000. In