SUPERIOR
1850
SURAT
seeds yield a drying-oil nearly equal to that of linseed.
Superior, 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; the Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic, Minneapolis, St. Paul & S. Ste. Marie (Canadian Pacific), and Canadian Northern Railways. The city has a harbor line of about 30 miles, with extensive ore, coal, grain, lumber and merchandise docks, and its lake-commerce exceeds that of any city in the world with the exception of New York and Antwerp. Superior has a perfectly land-locked harbor, and is the natural outlet for all the country west of Lake Superior as far as the Pacific. Here is the largest dry dock on the Lakes, a steel plant costing $25,000,000 and the great shipbuilding plant that originated the whaleback. It is the distributing point of the northwest for coal and oil. There are 60 churches, a state normal school, 12 large public schools with over 6,000 pupils, two high schools, two business colleges, three parochial schools, two hospitals, a $50,000 Carnegie library, two daily and six weekly newspapers, seven banks, sixty miles of paved streets, complete sewerage system, electric light and gas plants, an excellent system of water-works, eight parks, and twenty-three miles of electric street-railway; manufactures chiefly flour, lumber, iron, furniture, barrels, briquettes, plaster, linseed oil. 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 showing a gain of 30 per cent. Superior is the second city in Wisconsin, having a population of 40,384.
Superior and Duluth (q. v.)t like Omaha and Council Bluffs, are "twin cities," although located in different states. They are connected by bridges.
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 60IT^- feet above sea-level, and its mean depth is about 475 feet, its greatest depth being 1,008 feet,— 406 feet below the sea. Its surface is 20^ 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 Grossman's Chart of thd Great Lakes. See ERIE, HURON, MICHIGAN, ONTARIO and ST. CLAIR LAKES; DETROIT, NIAGARA, ST. CLAIR, ST. LAWRENCE and ST. MARY RIVERS; and SAULT STE. MARIE and WELLAND CANALS.
Surabaya (sdd'ra-bafyd), 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 (soofra-karrta}> 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 oi the Dutch government. Population 12,000. See JAVA.
Surat (soo-ratf}, 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 i6th 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 lyth century Surat traded with western Europe, India, Arabia, Persia, Ceylon and the East Indies. Here, too, the Mohammedan pilgrims embarked for Mecca. In the i9th 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. Population 110,306.
