Loe raamatut: «The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884», lehekülg 6

A SUMMER ON THE GREAT LAKES

By Fred. Myron Colby

Where shall we go this year? is the annual recurring question as the summer heats draw near. We must go somewhere, for it will be no less unwholesome than unfashionable to remain in town. The body needs rest; the brain, no less wearied, unites in the demand for change, for recreation. A relief from the wear and tear of professional life is a necessity. The seaside? Cape May and York Beach are among our first remembrances. We believe in change. The mountains? Their inexhaustible variety will never pall, but then we have "done" the White Mountains, explored the Catskills, and encamped among the Adirondacks in years gone by. Saratoga? We have never been there, but we have an abhorrence for a great fashionable crowd. To say the truth, we are heartily sick of "summer resorts," with their gambling, smoking, and drinking. The great watering-places hold no charms for us. "The world, the flesh, and the devil" there hold undisputed sway: we desire a gentler rule.

"What do you say to a trip on the Great Lakes?" suggests my friend, Ralph Vincent, with indefatigable patience.

"I—I don't know," I answered, thoughtfully.

"Don't know!" cried "the Historian"—(we called Hugh Warren by that title from his ability to always give information on any mooted point). He was a walking encyclopaedia of historical lore. "Don't know! Yes, you do. It is just what we want. It will be a delightful voyage, with scenes of beauty at every sunset and every sunrise. The Sault de Ste. Marie with its fairy isles, the waters of Lake Huron so darkly, deeply, beautifully green, and the storied waves of Superior with their memories of the martyr missionaries, of old French broils and the musical flow of Hiawatha. The very thought is enough to make one enthusiastic. How came you to think of it, Vincent?"

"I never think: I scorn the imputation," repled Vincent, with a look of assumed disdain. "It was a inspiration."

"And you have inspired us to a glorious undertaking. The Crusades were nothing to it. Say, Montague," to me, "you are agreed?"

"Yes, I am agreed," I assented. "We will spend our summer on the Great Lakes. It will be novel, it will be refreshing, it will be classical."

So it was concluded. A week from that time found us at Oswego. Our proposed route was an elaborate one. It was to start at Oswego, take a beeline across Lake Ontario to Toronto, hence up the lake and through the Welland Canal into Lake Erie, along the shores of that historical inland sea, touching at Erie, Cleveland, Sandusky, and Toledo, up Detroit River, through the Lake and River of St. Clair, then gliding over the waters of Lake Huron, dash down along the shores of Lake Michigan to Chicago, and back past Milwaukee, through the Straits of Mackinaw and the ship-canal into the placid waves of Superior, making Duluth the terminus of our journey. Our return would be leisurely, stopping here and there, at out-of-the-way places, camping-out whenever the fancy seized us and the opportunity offered, to hunt, to fish, to rest, being for the time knight-errants of pleasure, or, as the Historian dubbed us, peripatetic philosophers, in search, not of the touchstone to make gold, but the touchstone to make health. Our trip was to occupy two months.

It was well toward the latter part of June in 1881, on one of the brightest of summer mornings, that our steamer, belonging to the regular daily line to Toronto, steamed slowly out from the harbor of Oswego. So we were at last on the "beautiful water," for that is the meaning of Ontario in the Indian tongue. Here, two hundred years before us, the war-canoes of De Champlain and his Huron allies had spurned the foaming tide. Here, a hundred years later the batteaux of that great soldier, Montcalm, had swept round the bluff to win the fortress on its height, then in English hands. Historic memories haunted it. The very waves sparkling in the morning sunshine whispered of romantic tales.

Seated at the stern of the boat we looked back upon the fading city. Hugh Warren was smoking, and his slow-moving blue eyes were fixed dreamily upon the shore. He did not seem to be gazing at anything, and yet we knew he saw more than any of us.

"A centime for your thoughts, Hugh!" cried Vincent, rising and stretching his limbs.

"I was thinking," said the Historian, "of that Frenchman, Montcalm, who one summer day came down on the English at Oswego unawares with his gunboats and Indians and gendarmes. Of the twenty-five thousand people in yonder city I don't suppose there are a dozen who know what his plans were. They were grand ones. In no country on the face of the globe has nature traced outlines of internal navigation on so grand a scale as upon our American continent. Entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence we are carried by that river through the Great Lakes to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of more than two thousand miles. On the south we find the Mississippi pouring its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, within a few degrees of the tropics after a course of three thousand miles. 'The Great Water,' as its name signifies, and its numerous branches drain the surface of about one million one hundred thousand square miles, or an area twenty times greater than England and Wales. The tributaries of the Mississippi equal the largest rivers of Europe. The course of the Missouri is probably not less than twenty-five hundred miles. The Ohio winds above a thousand miles through fertile countries. The tributaries of these tributaries are great rivers. The Wabash, a feeder of the Ohio, has a course of above five hundred miles, four hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on the Illinois River, it will be possible to proceed by lines of inland navigation from Quebec to New Orleans. There is space within the regions enjoying these advantages of water communication, and already peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race, for four hundred millions of the human race, or more than double the population of Europe at the present time. Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi, and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant room for a population of a hundred million.

"In Montcalm's day all this territory belonged to France. It was that soldier's dream, and he was no less a statesman than a soldier, to make here a great nation. Toward that end a great chain of forts was to be built along the line from Ontario to New Orleans. Sandusky, Mackinaw, Detroit, Oswego, Du Quesne, were but a few links in the contemplated chain that was to bind the continent forever to French interests. It was for this he battled through all those bloody, brilliant campaigns of the old French war. But the English were too strong for him. Montcalm perished, and the power of France was at an end in the New World. But it almost overwhelms me at the thought of what a mighty empire was lost when the English huzza rose above the French clarion on the Plains of Abraham."

"Better for the continent and the world that England won," said Vincent.

"Perhaps so," allowed Hugh. "Though we cannot tell what might have been. But that does not concern this Ulysses and his crew. Onward, voyagers and voyageresses."

"Your simile is an unfortunate one. Ulysses was wrecked off Circe's island and at other places. Rather let us be the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece."

"Mercenary wretch!" exclaimed Hugh. "My taste is different. I am going in search of a dinner."

Hugh Warren's ability for discovering anything of that sort was proverbially good, so we, having the same disposition, followed him below to the dining-saloon.

We arrived at Toronto, one hundred and sixty miles from Oswego, a little before dusk. This city, the capital of the province of Ontario, is situated on an arm of the lake. Its bay is a beautiful inlet about four miles long and two miles wide, forming a capacious and well-protected harbor. The site of the town is low, but rises gently from the water's edge. The streets are regular and wide, crossing each other generally at right angles. There is an esplanade fronting the bay which extends for a distance of two miles. The population of the city has increased from twelve hundred in 1817 to nearly sixty thousand at present. In the morning we took a hurried survey of its chief buildings, visited Queen's Park in the centre of the city, and got round in season to take the afternoon steamer for Buffalo.

The district situated between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, as it has been longest settled, so also is it the best-cultivated part of Western Canada. The vicinity to the two Great Lakes renders the climate more agreeable, by diminishing the severity of the winters and tempering the summers' heats. Fruits of various kind arrive at great perfection, cargoes of which are exported to Montreal, Quebec, and other places situated in the less genial parts of the eastern province. Mrs. Jameson speaks of this district as "superlatively beautiful." The only place approaching a town in size and the number of inhabitants, from the Falls along the shores of Lake Erie for a great distance, beyond even Grand River, is Chippewa, situated on the river Welland, or Chippewa, which empties itself into Niagara Strait, just where the rapids commence and navigation terminates. One or more steamers run between Chippewa and Buffalo. Chippewa is still but a small village, but, as it lies directly on the great route from the Western States of the Union to the Falls of Niagara and the Eastern States, it will probably rise into importance. Its greatest celebrity at present arises from the fact of there having been a great battle fought near by between the British and Americans in the war of 1812.

The line of navigation by the St. Lawrence did not extend beyond Lake Ontario until the Welland Canal was constructed. This important work is thirty-two miles long, and admits ships of one hundred and twenty-five guns, which is about the average tonnage of the trading-vessels on the lakes. The Niagara Strait is nearly parallel to the Welland Canal, and more than one third of it is not navigable. The canal, by opening this communication between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, has conferred an immense benefit on all the districts west of Ontario. The great Erie Canal has been still more beneficial, by connecting the lakes with New York and the Atlantic by the Hudson River, which the canal joins after a course of three hundred and sixty miles. The effect of these two canals was quickly perceptible in the increased activity of commerce on Lake Erie, and the Erie Canal has rendered this lake the great line of transit from New York to the Western States.

Lake Erie is the most shallow of all the lakes, its average depth being only sixty or seventy feet. Owing to this shallowness the lake is readily disturbed by the wind; and for this reason, and for its paucity of good harbors, it has the reputation of being the most dangerous to navigate of any of the Great Lakes. Neither are its shores as picturesquely beautiful as those of Ontario, Huron, and Superior. Still it is a lovely and romantic body of water, and its historic memories are interesting and important. In this last respect all the Great Lakes are remarkable. Some of the most picturesque and interesting chapters of our colonial and military history have for their scenes the shores and the waters of these vast inland seas. A host of great names—Champlain, Frontenac, La Salle, Marquette, Perry, Tecumseh, and Harrison—has wreathed the lakes with glory. The scene of the stirring events in which Pontiac was the conspicuous figure is now marked on the map by such names as Detroit, Sandusky, Green Bay, and Mackinaw. The thunder of the battles of Lundy's Lane and the Thames was heard not far off, and the very waters of Lake Erie were once canopied with the sulphur smoke from the cannon of Perry's conquering fleet.

We spent two days in Buffalo, and they were days well spent. This city is the second in size of the five Great Lake ports, being outranked only by Chicago. Founded in 1801, it now boasts of a population of one hundred and sixty thousand souls. The site is a plain, which, from a point about two miles distant from the lake, slopes gently to the water's edge. The city has a water front of two and a half miles on the lake and of about the same extent on Niagara River. It has one of the finest harbors on the lake. The public buildings are costly and imposing edifices, and many of the private residences are elegant. The pride of the city is its public park of five hundred and thirty acres, laid out by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1870. It has the reputation of being the healthiest city of the United States.

Buffalo was the home of Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States. Here the great man spent the larger part of his life. He went there a poor youth of twenty, with four dollars in his pocket. He died there more than fifty years afterward worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and after having filled the highest offices his country could bestow upon him. He owned a beautiful and elegant residence in the city, situated on one of the avenues, with a frontage toward the lake, of which a fine view is obtained. It is a modern mansion, three stories in height, with large stately rooms. It looks very little different externally from some of its neighbors, but the fact that it was for thirty years the home of one of our Presidents gives it importance and invests it with historic charm.

On board a steamer bound for Detroit we again plowed the waves. The day was a delightful one; the morning had been cloudy and some rain had fallen, but by ten o'clock the sky was clear, and the sunbeams went dancing over the laughing waters. Hugh was on his high-horse, and full of historic reminiscences.

"Do you know that this year is the two hundredth anniversary of a remarkable event for this lake?" he began. "Well, it is. It was in 1681, in the summer of the year, that the keel of the first vessel launched in Western waters was laid at a point six miles this side of the Niagara Falls. She was built by Count Frontenac who named her the Griffen. I should like to have sailed in it."

"Its speed could hardly equal that of the Detroit," observed Vincent, complacently.

"You hard, cold utilitarian!" exclaimed the Historian; "who cares anything about that? It is the romance of the thing that would charm me."

"And the romance consists in its being distant. We always talk of the good old times as though they were really any better than our own age! It is a beautiful delusion. Don't you know how in walking the shady places are always behind us?"

The Historian's only answer to this banter was to shrug his shoulders scornfully and to light a fresh cigar.

Lake Erie is about two hundred and forty miles in length and has a mean breadth of forty miles. Its surface is three hundred and thirty feet above Lake Ontario, and five hundred and sixty-five above the level of the sea. It receives the waters of the upper lakes by means of the Detroit River, and discharges them again by the Niagara into Lake Ontario. Lake Erie has a shallow depth, but Ontario, which is five hundred and two feet deep, is two hundred and thirty feet below the tide level of the ocean, or as low as most parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the bottoms of Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, although their surface is much higher, are all, from their vast depths, on a level with the bottom of Ontario. Now, as the discharge through Detroit River, after allowing all the probable portion carried off by evaporation, does not appear by any means equal to the quantity of water which the other three lakes receive, it has been conjectured that a subterranean river may run from Lake Ontario. This conjecture is not improbable, and accounts for the singular fact that salmon and herring are caught in all the lakes communicating with the St. Lawrence, but no others. As the Falls of Niagara must always have existed, it would puzzle the naturalists to say how those fish got into the upper lakes unless there is a subterranean river; moreover, any periodical obstruction of the river would furnish a not improbable solution of the mysterious flux and influx of the lakes.

Some after noon we steamed past a small city on the southern coast which had a large natural harbor.

"Erie and Presque Isle Bay," announced the Historian. "A famous place. From it sailed Oliver Hazard Perry with his fleet of nine sail to most unmercifully drub the British lion on that tenth day of September, 1813. The battle took place some distance from here over against Sandusky. I will tell you all about it when we get there. My grandfather was one of the actors."

He said no more, and for a long time the conversation was sustained by Vincent and myself. The steamer put in at Cleveland just at dusk. The stop was brief, however, and we left the beautiful and thriving city looking like a queen on the Ohio shore under the bridal veil of night. The evening was brilliant with moonlight. The lake was like a mirror or an enchanted sea. Hour after hour passed, and we still sat on deck gazing on the scene. Far to the south we saw the many lights of a city shining. It was Sandusky.

"How delightful it is!" murmured Vincent.

"Beautiful," I replied. "If it were only the Ionian Sea, now, or the clear Ægean"—

"Those classic waters cannot match this lake," interrupted Hugh. "The battle of Erie will outlive Salamis or Actium. The laurels of Themistokles and Augustus fade even now before those of Perry. He was a hero worth talking about, something more human altogether than any of Plutarch's men. I feel it to be so now at least. It was right here somewhere that the battle raged."

"He was quite a young man, I believe," said I, glad to show that I knew something of the hero. I had seen his house at Newport many times, one of the old colonial kind, and his picture, that of a tall, slim man, with dash and bravery in his face, was not unfamiliar to me.

"Yes; only twenty-seven, and just married," continued the Historian, settling down to work. "Before the battle he read over his wife's letters for the last time, and then tore them up, so that the enemy should not see those records of the heart, if victorious. 'This is the most important day of my life,' he said to his officers, as the first shot from the British came crashing among the sails of the Lawrence; 'but we know how to beat those fellows,' he added, with a laugh. He had nine vessels, with fifty-four guns and four hundred and ninety officers and men. The British had six ships mounting sixty-three guns, with five hundred and two officers and men.

"In the beginning of the battle the British had the advantage. Their guns were of longer range, and Perry was exposed to their fire half an hour before he got in position where he could do execution. When he had succeeded in this the British concentrated their fire on his flag-ship. Enveloped in flame and smoke, Perry strove desperately to maintain his ground till the rest of his ships could get into action. For more than two hours he sustained the unequal conflict without flinching. It was his first battle, and, moreover, he was enfeebled by a fever from which he had just risen; but he never lost his ease and confidence. When most of his men had fallen, when his ship lay an unmanageable wreck on the water, 'every brace and bowline shot away,' and all his guns were rendered ineffective, he still remained calm and unmoved.

"Eighteen men out of one hundred stood alive on his deck; many of those were wounded. Lieutenant. Yarnell, with a red handkerchief tied round his head and another round his neck to stanch the blood flowing from two wounds, stood bravely by his commander. But all seemed lost when, through the smoke, Perry saw the Niagara approaching uncrippled.

"'If a victory is to be won I will win it,' he said to the lieutenant. He tore down his flag with its glorious motto,—'Don't give up the ship,'—and leaping into a boat with half a dozen others, told the sailors to give way with a will. The Niagara was half a mile distant to the windward, and the enemy, as soon as they observed his movement, directed their fire upon his boat. Oars were splintered in the rowers' hands by musket-balls, and the men themselves covered with spray from the roundshot and grape that smote the water on every side. But they passed safely through the iron storm, and at last reached the deck of the Niagara, where they were welcomed with thundering cheers. Lieutenant Elliot of the Niagara, leaving his own ship, took command of the Somers, and brought up the smaller vessels of the fleet, which had as yet been little in the action. Perry ran up his signal for close action, and from vessel to vessel the answering signals went up in the sunlight and the cheers rang over the water. All together now bore down upon the enemy and, passing through his line, opened a raking crossfire. So close and terrible was that fire that the crew of the Lady Prevost ran below, leaving the wounded and stunned commander alone on the deck. Shrieks and groans rose from every side. In fifteen minutes from the time the signal was made Captain Barclay, the British commander, flung out the white flag. The firing then ceased; the smoke slowly cleared away, revealing the two fleets commingled, shattered, and torn, and the decks strewn with dead. The loss on each side was the same, one hundred and thirty-five killed and wounded. The combat had lasted about three hours. When Perry saw that victory was secure he wrote with a pencil on the back of an old letter, resting it on his navy cap, the despatch to General Harrison: 'We have met the enemy, and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.'

"It was a great victory," concluded the eloquent narrator. "The young conqueror did not sleep a wink that night. Until the morning light he was on the quarter-deck of the Lawrence, doing what he could to relieve his suffering comrades, while the stifled groans of the wounded men echoed from ship to ship. The next day the dead, both the British and the American, were buried in a wild and solitary spot on the shore. And there they sleep the sleep of the brave, with the sullen waves to sing their perpetual requiem."

We sat in silence a long time after; no one was disposed to speak. It came to us with power there on the moonlit lake, a realization of the hard-fought battle, the gallant bearing of the young commander, his daring passage in an open boat through the enemy's fire to the Niagara, the motto on his flag, the manner in which he carried his vessel alone through the enemy's line, and then closed in half pistol-shot, his laconic account of the victory to his superior officer, the ships stripped of their spars and canvas, the groans of the wounded, and the mournful spectacle of the burial on the lake shore.

Our next stopping-place was at Detroit, the metropolis of Michigan, on the river of the same name, the colony of the old Frenchman De la Mothe Cadillac, the colonial Pontchartrain, the scene of Pontiac's defeat and of Hull's treachery, cowardice, or incapacity, grandly seated on the green Michigan shore, overlooking the best harbor on the Great Lakes, and with a population of more than one hundred thousand. Two stormy days kept us within doors most of the time. The third day we were again "on board," steaming up Detroit River into Lake St. Clair. On and on we kept, till the green waters of Huron sparkled beneath the keel of our steamer. All the way over the lake we kept the shores of Michigan in sight, beaches of white sand alternating with others of limestone shingle, and the forests behind, a tangled growth of cedar, fir, and spruce in impenetrable swamps, or a scanty, scrubby growth upon a sandy soil. Two hours were spent at Thunder Bay, where the steamer stopped for a supply of wood, and we went steaming on toward Mackinaw, a hundred miles away. At sunset of that day the shores of the green rocky island dawned upon us. The steamer swept up to an excellent dock, as the sinking sun was pouring a stream of molten gold across the flood, out of the amber gates of the west.

"At last Mackinaw, great in history and story," announced the Historian leaning on the taffrail and gazing at the clear pebbly bottom and through forty feet of water.

"My history consists of a series of statues and tableaux—statues of the great men, tableaux of the great events," said Vincent. "Were there any such at Mackinaw?"

"Yes," answered Hugh, "two statues and one tableau—the former Marquette and Mae-che-ne-mock-qua, the latter the massacre at Fort Michilimakinack."

"The event happened during Pontiac's war, I believe," I hastened to observe. "The Indians took the place by stratagem, did they not?"

"They did. It was on the fourth of July, 1763. The fort contained a hundred soldiers under the command of Major Etherington. In the neighborhood were four hundred Indians apparently friendly. On the day specified the savages played a great game of ball or baggatiway on the parade before the fort. Many of the soldiers went out to witness it and the gate was left open. During the game the ball was many times pitched over the pickets of the fort. Instantly it was followed by the whole body of players, in the unrestrained pursuit of a rude athletic exercise. The garrison feared nothing; but suddenly the Indians drawing their concealed weapons began the massacre. No resistance was offered, so sudden and unexpected was the surprise. Seventy of the soldiers were murdered, the remainder were sold for slaves. Only one Englishman escaped. He was a trader named Henry. He was in his own house writing a letter to his Montreal friends by the canoe which was just on the eve of departure, when the massacre began. Only a low board fence separated his grounds from those of M. Longlade, a Frenchman, who had great influence with the savages. He obtained entrance into the house, where he was concealed by one of the women, and though the savages made vigorous search for him, he remained undiscovered. You can imagine the horrible sight the fort presented when the sun went down, the soldiers in their red uniforms lying there scalped and mangled, a ghastly heap under the summer sky. And to just think it was only a short time ago, a little more than a hundred years."

We could hardly realize it as we gazed up the rocky eminence at the United States fort, one hundred and fifty feet high, overlooking the little village. And yet Mackinaw's history is very little different from that of most Western settlements and military Stations. Dark, sanguinary, and bloody tragedies were constantly enacted upon the frontiers for generations. As every one acquainted with our history must know, the war on the border has been an almost interminable one. As the tide of emigration has rolled westward it has ever met that fiery counter-surge, and only overcome it by incessant battling and effort. And even now, as the distant shores of the Pacific are wellnigh reached, that resisting wave still gives forth its lurid flashes of conflict.

Mackinaw Island is only about three miles long and two in breadth, with a circuit of nine miles in all. It rises out of the lake to an average height of three hundred feet, and is heavily wooded with cedar, beech, maple, and yew. Three of its sides are bold and rocky, the fourth slopes down gradually toward the north to meet the blue waters of the lake. The island is intersected in all directions with carriage-roads and paths, and in the bay are always to be seen the row and sail boats belonging to pleasure-seekers. From four to seven steamers call at the wharf daily, while fleets of sailing-vessels may at any time be descried from old Fort Holmes, creeping noiselessly on to the commercial marts of those great inland seas.

Tradition lends its enchantment to the isle. According to the Indian legend it rose suddenly from the calm bosom of the lake at the sunset hour. In their fancy it took the form of a huge turtle, and so they bestowed upon it the name of Moc-che-ne-nock-e-nung. In the Ojibway mythology it became the home of the Great Fairies, and to this day it is said to be a sacred spot to all Indians who preserve the memory of the primal times. The fairies lived in a subterranean abode under the island, and an old sagamore, Chees-a-kee, is related to have been conducted a la Æneus, in Virgil, to the halls of the spirits and to have seen them all assembled in the spacious wigwam. Had some bard taken up the tale of this fortunate individual, the literature of the red man might have boasted an epic ranking perhaps with the Æneid or the Iliad.

From the walls of old Fort Holmes, two hundred feet above the lake, a fine view is obtained of the island and its surroundings. Westward is Point St. Ignace, a sharply defined cape running out from the mainland into the strait. There rest the bones of good Father Marquette, who, in 1671, erected a chapel on the island and began to Christianize the wild natives of this region. On the northwest we see the "Sitting Rabbits," two curious-looking rockhills which bear a singular resemblance to our common American hare. Eastward stretches away the boundless inland sea, a beautiful greenish-blue, to the horizon. The mountains of St. Martin, and the hills from which flow Carp and Pine Rivers meet the northern vision. To the south is Boisblanc Island, lying like an emerald paradise on the bosom of Lake Huron, and close beside it, as if seeking protection, is lovely Round Island. Among all these islands, and laving the shores of the adjacent mainland, are the rippling waves of the lake, now lying as if asleep in the flooding light, anon white-capped and angry, driven by the strong winds. Beneath us are the undulations of billowy green foliage, calm and cool, intersected with carriage-roads, and showing yonder the white stones of the soldiers' and citizens' graves. Here, down by the water, and close under the fort, the white, quaint houses lie wrapped in light and quiet. Breezes cool and delightful, breezes that have traversed the broad expanse of the lakes, blow over your face softly, as in Indian myth blows the wind from the Land of Souls. The scene and the hour lulls you into a sense of delicious quietude. You are aroused by the shrill whistle of a steamer, and you descend dockward to note the fresh arrivals.