Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1892 — The Coldness of Lake Superior. [ARTICLE]

The Coldness of Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is a caprioious monster, demanding skilled seamanship and the use of powerful and stanch boats, the majority of which are comparable with the vessels in our Atlantic coasting trade. The lake is a veritable womb of storms. They develop quickly there, and even more speedily the water takes on a furious character. It is always oold, and the atmosphere above and far around it is kept cool all summer. I have been told, but cannot verify the statement, that the temperature of the water in the open lake never rises above 46 degrees Fahrenheit. As a rule, the men who sail upon it cannot swim. The lake offers no inducement to learn the art, and, alasl those who are expert swimmers oould not keep alive for any great length of time in the icy water. When I was making inquiries upon this point, I found, as one almost always does, some who disputed what the majority agreed upon. I even found an old gentleman, a professional man of beyond- seventy years of age, who said that for several years he had visited the lake each summer-time, and that he bad made it a praotioe to bathe in its waters nearly every day. It was chilly, he admitted, and he did not stay in very long. But many sailors, among them some ship and steamship oaptains, confirmed my belief that few Lake Superior seamen have learned to swim, and that the ooldness of the water quickly numbs those who fall into it. I askeft one captain bow long he supposed a man might Dattle for life, or cling to a spar in the lake. He answered, very sensibly, it seemed to me, that some men could endure the oold longer than others, and that the more flesh and fat a man possessed, the longer he oould keep alive. “But,” he added, “the only man I ever saw fall overboard went down like a shot before we could get to him. I always supposed he took a cramp.” The bodies of the drowned are said not to rise to the surface. They are refrigerated, and the decomposition whioli causes the ascent of human bodies in other waters does not take plaoe. If one interesting contribution to my notes is true, and these bo depths to which fishes do not descend, it is possible that many a hapless sailor-man and voyager lies as he died, a century book perhaps, and will ever thus remain, lifelike and natural, under the darkening veil of those emerald depths.—[Harper’s Magazine.