SUPERIOR

1850

SU RAT

seeds yield a drying-oil nearly equal to that of linseed.

Supe'rior, Wis., county-seat of Douglas County, is at the head of Lake Superior, on St. Louis, Superior and Allouez Bays. It is a terminus of the Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha; and Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic (Canadian Pacific) railways. The Wisconsin Central is entering the city and preparing terminal facilities. The city has 13 miles of water-front, with extensive ore, coal, grain, lumber and merchandise docks, and its lake-commerce amounts to 11,047,250 tons, more than the marine business of Boston or New Orleans. Superiqr has a perfectly land-locked harbor, and is the natural outlet for all the country west of Lake Superior as far as the Pacific. The city boasts the largest dry-dock on the Great Lakes and a great shipbuilding plant, where originated the type of boat known as the whaleback. It is the distributing point of the northwest for coal and oil. There are 60 churches, a state normal school, ten large public schools with over 6,000 pupils, two high schools, two business colleges, three parochial schools, three hospitals, a $50,000 Carnegie library, two daily and six weekly newspapers, five banks, thirty-five miles of paved streets, complete sewerage system, electric light and gas plants, an excellent filtering-system of water-works and twenty-six miles of electric street-railway. The manufactures chiefly are flour, lumber, iron, furniture, barrels, bags, coke and twine. The climate is crisp, dry and beautiful, cool in summer and relatively mild in winter. The original settlement was made at the eastern end of the city in 1853, but from 1858 to 1882 the place was practically dead. In 1882 an attempt to build a city was made four miles east on St. Louis Bay, which proved so successful that the two settlements united in 1891 and incorporated as Superior. The growth has been very rapid, the last census snowing a gain of 30 per cent. Superior is the second city in Wisconsin, having a ponulation of 40,384.

Superior, Lake, the largest body of fresh water on the globe, is the highest and most western of the great lakes. It is bordered by Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the United States and Ontario in Canada. Its greatest length is 412 miles, its greatest breadth 167; and it covers 31,200 square miles, making it a little larger than South Carolina. The surface is 601A feet above sea-level, and its mean depth is about 475 feet, its greatest depth being 1,008 feet, — 40Ŏ feet below the sea. Its surface is 2o4 feet higher than that of Lakes Huron and Michigan, due to the fall at the rapids of St. Mary's River, the only outlet, where the average discharge is 86,000 cubic feet per second. Lake Superior is very near

the watershed between Hudson Bay and the Mississippi, and so receives no large rivers, the largest being the St. Louis and the Nipigon. These rivers, with hundreds of small streams, drain 82,000 square miles into the lake. The largest island is Isle Royale, 44 miles long. Keweenaw Point reaches far into the lake. At Grand Isle Bay, about 100 miles west of Sault Ste. Marie, are the pictured rocks, sandstone cliffs from 50 to 200 feet high in many places, of fantastic shape and marked by bands and blotches of red and yellow. The boundary between the United States and Canada is drawn through the center of the lake from its outlet to the mouth of Pigeon River, but includes Isle Royale in the United States. Consult Crossman's Chart of tho Great Lakes. See Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and St. Clair Lakes; Detroit, Niagara, St. Clair, St. Lawrence and St. Mary Rivers; and Sault Ste. Marib and Welland Canals.

Surabaya (sōo'rā-èä'yá), a seaport on the northern coast of Java and on the Strait of Madura. Here the Dutch have a marine arsenal, a cannon-foundry and a mint. There also are machine, sugar and furniture factories. Population 146,944, of whom 8,906 are Europeans and 13,035 Chinese.

Surakarta (sōõ'ră-kăr'tă), a city in the center of Java, but joined by rail with Samarang on the north and Surabaya on the east. It is the home of the native sultan of Surakarta, who is a dependent of the Dutch government. Population 12,000. See Java.

Surat (sõõ-rät'), a city of India, on Tapti River, 160 miles north of Bombay. It stretches for more than a mile along the river in the form of a bow, and is surrounded by suburbs in the midst of gardens. There are four fine Mohammedan mosques, two Parsi fire-temples, three Hindu temples, a clock-tower 80 feet high and the old citadel. Surat was founded in the 16th century, and was three times burned by the Portuguese. After the building of a strong fort in 1546, Surat became one of the greatest trading-cities in India, the English and Dutch as well as the Portuguese establishing themselves there. By the beginning of the 17th century Surat traded with western Europe, India, Arabia, Persia, Ceylon and the East Indies. Here, too, the Mohammedan pilgrims embarked for Mecca. In the 19th century it was pillaged several times by the Mahrattas, lost most of its trade to Bombay, its new rival, and in 1800 came into the hands of the British. It later regained some of its trade and became the largest city in India, but was ruined by a fire, followed by a great flood, in 1837. Surat exported large quantities of cotton during the American Civil War. Pooulation 110.306.