The Great Lakes form a vast inland freshwater basin that covers an area almost as large as the state of Wyoming--Lake Superior alone is larger than Maine. All five lakes--Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, Superior--are interconnected by rivers, straits, and canals providing a continuous 2,200-mile deep-water navigation artery from the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of northeast Minnesota.

At the dawn of steam navigation, the lakes became major trade mutes for carrying grain, produce, iron ore, coal, and lumber from the interior of North America to manufacturing cities along the lake fronts and, via the St. Lawrence River, to the rest of the world, Resorts developed on the Georgian Bay islands and in northern Michigan, and lane paddle steamers plied from Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee, carrying urban folks to the Canadian and American summer retreats for a span of one hundred years.

When the pleasure steamers, many built before World War I, wore out, they weren't replaced as most vacationers had 'taken to their cars. By the nlM-1960s, Great Lakes cruising had largely disappeared.

About a decade ago. a few shallow-draft coastal cruisers began to venture out onto the lakes, ships belonging to American Canadian Caribbean Line and Clipper Cruise Line, plus small vessels chartered by Travel Dynamics. Then in the late 1990s, the venerable German firm Hapag-Lloyd built the Columbus, a 420-passenger shill designed to fit the exacting requirements of the Welland Canal locks, the tightest squeeze on the Great Lakes route. For short periods late in the summer and early fall, she has offered cruises that includes stops on from three to five lakes, depending on file itinerary.

Thus far, most of her passengers have been German-speaking. while a small but growing number come from Callada and the United States. Last September, to satisfy a tong-time wish, I joined the Columbus for a five-lake cruise embarking in Toronto and ending l0 nights later in Chicago. At 14,903 gross register tons, the ship may be a small fry in the larger world of cruising, but in these waters she is the giant among passenger vessels.