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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44072 ***
+
+[Illustration: WHITE BEAR LAKE.]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  SEAT OF EMPIRE.
+
+  BY
+
+  CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN,
+  "CARLETON."
+
+  "I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this
+  great continent will be found somewhere within a circle or radius
+  not very far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of
+  navigation on the Mississippi River."
+
+  W. H. SEWARD, _Speech at St. Paul, 1860_.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  BOSTON:
+  FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
+  1870.
+
+
+
+
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
+  CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN,
+  in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of
+  Massachusetts.
+
+  UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
+  CAMBRIDGE.
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+
+                          JOHN GREGORY SMITH,
+
+              _GOVERNOR OF VERMONT DURING THE REBELLION_,
+
+           WHOM I FIRST SAW TENDERLY CARING FOR THE SICK AND
+            WOUNDED IN THE HOSPITALS OF FREDERICKSBURG, AND
+                 THROUGH WHOSE ENERGY AND PERSEVERANCE
+                   ONE OF THE GREATEST ENTERPRISES OF
+                      THE PRESENT CENTURY HAS BEEN
+                       SUCCESSFULLY INAUGURATED,
+
+                             ~This Volume~
+
+                      IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS.
+
+                                                             PAGE
+  Cutting loose from Care.--Map of the Northwest.--Leaving
+  Chicago.--Fourth of July.--At La Crosse.--Dance on a
+  Steamboat.--Up the Mississippi.--The Boundaries of
+  Minnesota.--Winona.--St. Paul.--Minneapolis.--The Father
+  of Waters in Harness                                          1
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.
+
+  St. Cloud.--Our Party.--First Night in Camp.--A Midnight
+  Thunder-Storm.--Sunday in Camp.--Up the Sauk Valley.--
+  White Bear Lake.--Catching a Turtle.--Lightning Lake.--
+  Second Sabbath in Camp.--The River Systems of the Northwest
+  --Elevations across the Continent.--The Future               25
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE RED RIVER COUNTRY.
+
+  Down the Valley of the Red River.--Breckenridge.--Fort
+  Abercrombie.--Climate.--Winters at Winnipeg.--Burlington.
+  --The Emigrant.--Father Genin.--Mackenzie.--Harman.--Sir
+  John Richardson.--Captain Palliser.--Father De Smet.--
+  Winters on the Saskatchawan.--Snow-Fall                      51
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST.
+
+  Winnipeggers.--Ride over the Prairie.--Dakota City.--
+  Georgetown.--Hudson Bay Company Teams.--Parting with
+  our Friends.--The 43d Parallel.--Dakota.--Wyoming.--
+  Montana.--Idaho.--Oregon.--Washington.--British Columbia.
+  --Distances.--Fisheries of the Pacific.--Mr. Seward's
+  Speech                                                       77
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE FRONTIER.
+
+  Bottineau.--The Leaf Hills.--A Ride over the Plain.--The
+  Park Region.--Settlers.--How they kept the Fourth of
+  July.--Chippewa Indians.--Rush Lake.--A Serenade on the
+  Prairie.--German Pioneers.--Otter-Tail Lake                 109
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.
+
+  Noon Lunch.--Toasting Pork.--A Montana Dutchman.--Emigrant
+  Trains.--Camping at Night--Wheat of Minnesota.--The State
+  in 1849.--A Word to Young Men.--Boys once more.--Our Last
+  Camp-Fire                                                   123
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN THE FOREST.
+
+  Down-Easters.--The Eden of Lumbermen.--Country East of
+  the Mississippi.--The Climate of the Forest Region.--White
+  Bear Lake.--Travellers from Duluth.--A Maine Farmer in
+  Minnesota.--Chengwatona.--Pitching of the Mud-Wagon.--
+  Grindstone.--Kettle River.--Superior                        137
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+DULUTH.
+
+  Duluth.--Minnesota Point.--The Projected Breakwater.--
+  Comparison with the Suez Canal.--The Town.--Period of
+  Navigation.--The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad.
+  --Transportation.--Elevators.--St. Louis River.--Minnesota
+  Slate Quarry.--An Indian Chief and his Followers.--
+  Railroad Lands.--Manufacturing Industry.--Terms of the
+  Railroad Company                                            164
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE MINING REGION.
+
+  The Apostle Islands.--Bayfield.--The Harbor.--Breakfast
+  with Captain Vaughn.--Ashland.--Big Trout.--Ontonagon.--
+  Approach to Marquette.--The Harbor.--The Town.--Discovery
+  of Iron Ore.--Mining Companies.--Varieties of Ore.--The
+  Miners.--The Coming Years                                   169
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A FAMILIAR TALK.
+
+  A Talk about the Northwest.--Mr. Blotter.--He wants a
+  Farm.--Government Lands.--Homestead Law of Minnesota.--
+  Exemption Laws.--The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad.--
+  Liberal Terms of Payment.--Stock-Raising.--Robbing
+  Mother Earth.--Native Grasses.--Fruit.--Small Grains.--
+  Productions of the State, 1869.--Schools.--When to
+  Emigrate.--Prospective Development.--The Tide of
+  Emigration                                                  186
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
+
+  How Communities grow.--Humboldt.--What I saw in 1846.--
+  The Pacific Coast.--River-Systems.--Lewis and Clark.--
+  Jeff Davis.--Charter of the Company.--The Projectors.--
+  The Line.--From Lake Superior to the Mississippi.--To
+  the Rocky Mountains.--Deer Lodge Pass.--The Western
+  Slope.--Mr. Roberts's Report.--Snow Blockades.--
+  Elevations.--Power of Locomotives.--Bureau of
+  Emigration.--Portable Houses.--Help to Emigrants.--
+  The Future                                                  207
+
+
+
+
+THE SEAT OF EMPIRE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS.
+
+
+Last summer I cut loose from all care, and enjoyed a few weeks of
+freedom and recreation with a party of gentlemen on the frontier
+between Lake Superior and the Missouri River. I was charmed by the
+beauty of the country, amazed at its resources, and favorably impressed
+by its probable future. Its attractions were set forth in a series of
+letters contributed to the Boston Journal.
+
+People from every Eastern State, as well as from New York and the
+British Provinces, have called upon me since my return, for the purpose
+of "having a talk about the Northwest," while others have applied
+by letter for additional or specific information, and others still
+have requested a republication of the letters. In response to these
+calls this small volume has been prepared, setting forth the physical
+features of the vast reach of country lying between the Lakes and the
+Pacific, not only in the United States, but in British America as well.
+
+The most trustworthy accounts of persons who have lived there, as well
+as of engineers who have been sent out by the United States, British,
+and Canadian governments, have been collated, that those seeking a home
+in Minnesota or Dakota may know what sort of a country lies beyond, and
+what will be its probable future.
+
+The map accompanying the volume has been prepared for the most part by
+the Bureau of the United States Topographical Engineers. It gives me
+pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to Major-General Humphreys, in
+charge of the Bureau, and to Colonel Woodruffe, in charge of the map
+department, for permission to use the same.
+
+Through their courtesy I am enabled to place before the public the
+most complete map ever published of the country between the 36th
+and 55th parallel, extending across the continent, and showing not
+only the entire railway system of the Eastern and Middle States, but
+also the Union Pacific Railroad and the Northern Pacific, now under
+construction. The figures followed by the letter T have reference to
+the elevation of the locality above tide-water, thus enabling the
+reader to obtain at a glance a comprehensive idea of the topographical
+as well as the geographical features of the country.
+
+"All aboard for the Northwest!"
+
+So shouted the stalwart porter of the Sherman House, Chicago, on the
+morning of the 5th of July, 1869.
+
+Giving heed to the call, we descended the steps of the hotel and
+entered an omnibus waiting at the door, that quickly whirled us to the
+depot of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.
+
+There were about a dozen gentlemen in the party, all bound for the
+Northwest, to explore a portion of the vast reach of country lying
+between Lake Superior and the great northern bend of the Missouri River.
+
+It was a pleasant, sunny, joyful morning. The anniversary of the
+nation's independence having fallen on the Sabbath, the celebration
+was observed on Monday, and the streets resounded with the explosion
+of fire-crackers. Americans, Germans, Norwegians, Irish, people of
+all nationalities, were celebrating the birthday of their adopted
+country. Not only in Chicago, but throughout the cosmopolitan State of
+Wisconsin, as we sped over its fertile prairies and through its towns
+and villages during the day, there was a repetition of the scene.
+
+Settlers from New England and the Middle States were having
+Sabbath-School, temperance, or civic celebrations; Irish societies were
+marching in procession, bearing green banners emblazoned with the
+shamrock, thistle, and harp of Erin; Germans were drinking lager beer,
+singing songs, and smoking their meerschaums. All work was laid aside,
+and all hands--farmers with their wives and daughters, young men with
+their sweethearts, children in crowds--were observing in their various
+ways the return of the holiday.
+
+Our route was by way of La Crosse, which we reached late in the
+evening. We were to go up the Mississippi on a steamer that lay moored
+to the bank. Its cabin was aglow with lights. Entering it, we found a
+party of ladies and gentlemen formed for a quadrille. They were the
+officers of the boat and their friends from the town. A negro with a
+bass-viol, and two Germans with violins, were tuning their instruments
+and rosining their bows.
+
+We were met upon the threshold by a rosy-cheeked damsel, who gleefully
+exclaimed,--
+
+"O, yeau have arrived at the right moment! We are having a right good
+time, and we only want one more gentleman to make it go real good.
+Yeau'll dance neaw, won't ye? I want a partner. O, ye will neaw. I know
+ye will, and ye'll call off the changes tew, won't ye? Neaw dew."
+
+Not having a "light fantastic toe" on either foot, we were forced to
+say no to this lively La Crosse maiden; besides, we were tired and
+covered with dust, and in sad plight for the ball-room. A member of
+Congress was next appealed to, then a grave and dignified Doctor of
+Divinity.
+
+A more ungallant party than ours never stood on a Western steamboat.
+Governor, judge, parson, members of Congress, all shook their heads and
+resisted the enthusiastic lady. In vain she urged them, and the poor
+girl, with downcast countenance, turned from the obdurate Yankees, and
+sailed in gloriously with a youth who fortunately entered the cabin at
+the moment.
+
+It was a rare sight to see, for they danced with a will. They made the
+steamer shake from stem to stern. The glass lamps tinkled in their
+brass settings, and the doors of staterooms rattled on their hinges,
+especially when the largest gentleman of the party came to a shuffle.
+
+He is the Daniel Lambert of the Mississippi,--immense and gigantic, and
+having great development round the equator.
+
+Quadrille, cotillon, and waltz, and genuine western break-downs
+followed one after the other. There was plenty to eat and drink in
+the pantry. The first thing we heard in the evening was the tuning of
+the instruments; the last thing, as we dropped off to sleep, was the
+scraping of the violins and the shuffling of feet.
+
+We are awake in the morning in season to take a look at the place
+before the boat casts off from its mooring for a trip to Winona.
+
+A company of Norwegian emigrants that came with us on the train from
+Chicago are cooking their breakfast in and around the station. They
+sailed from Christiania for Quebec, and have been six weeks on the way.
+All ages are represented. It is a party made up of families. There are
+many light-haired maidens among them with deep blue eyes and blonde
+complexions; and robust young men with honest faces, who have bidden
+farewell forever to their old homes upon the fiords of Norway, and who
+henceforth are to be citizens of the United States.
+
+They will find immediate employment on the railroads of Minnesota, in
+the construction of new lines. They are not hired by the day, but small
+sections are let out to individuals, who receive a specified sum for
+every square yard of earth thrown up.
+
+There is no discussion of the eight-hour question among them. They work
+sixteen hours of their own accord, instead of haggling over eight.
+They have no time to engage in rows, nor do they find occasion. They
+have had a bare existence in their old home; life there was ever a
+struggle, the mere keeping together of soul and body, but here Hope
+leads them on. They are poor now, but a few years hence they will
+be well off in the world. They will have farms, nice houses, money
+in banks, government bonds, and railway stocks. They will obtain
+land at government price, will raise wheat, wool, or stock, and will
+soon find their land quadrupled in value. They will make excellent
+citizens. Their hearts are on the right side,--not physiologically, but
+morally, politically, and religiously speaking. They are ardent lovers
+of liberty; they cannot be trammelled by any shackles, political or
+ecclesiastical. They are frugal, industrious, and honest. Already there
+are several daily papers published in the Scandinavian language.
+
+The steamer is ploughing the Mississippi against the current northward.
+Wisconsin is on our right, Minnesota on our left; and while we are
+moving on toward the region of country which we are to visit, we may
+while away the time by thinking over the general characteristics of the
+State of Minnesota, in which our explorations are to commence.
+
+The southern boundary strikes the river twenty-two miles below La
+Crosse. If I were to go down there and turn my steps due west, I might
+walk two hundred and sixty-four miles along the Iowa line before
+reaching the southwestern corner of the State. The western side is the
+longest, and if I were to start from the southwestern corner and travel
+due north, I should have a journey of three hundred and sixty miles to
+accomplish before reaching the northern boundary,--the line between
+the United States and British America.
+
+Starting from Pembina, at the northwest corner of the State, on the
+Red River of the North, and travelling due east eighty miles, I should
+reach the Lake of the Woods; sailing across it sixty miles, then
+entering the river leading to Rainy Lake, I might pass through the
+wonderful water-way of lakes and rivers reaching to Lake Superior,--a
+distance of about four hundred miles.
+
+The eastern boundary formed by the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Lake
+Superior is more irregular. Its general outline, as we look at it
+upon the map, is that of a crescent, cutting into Minnesota, the
+horns turned eastward. The area within the boundaries thus described
+is estimated at 84,000 square miles, or 54,760,000 acres. It is a
+territory larger than Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
+Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined.
+
+Here, upon the Mississippi, I gaze upon bluffs of gray limestone
+wrought into fantastic shape by the winds and storms of centuries and
+by the slow wearing of the river; but were I to climb them, and gain
+the general level of the country, I should behold rolling prairies
+dotted with lakes and ponds of pure water, and groves of oak and
+hickory. All of Minnesota east of the Mississippi is a timbered region.
+Here and there are openings; but, speaking in general terms, the
+entire country east of the river is a forest, which through the coming
+years will resound with the axe of the lumberman.
+
+When we go up the Mississippi eighty miles above St. Paul to St.
+Cloud, we shall find the Sauk River coming in from the west; and there
+the Mississippi is no longer the boundary of the timbered lands, but
+the forest reaches across the stream westward to Otter-Tail River, a
+distance of more than one hundred miles. The Sauk River is its southern
+boundary.
+
+All the region north of the Sauk, at the head-waters of the Mississippi
+and north of Lake Superior, is well supplied with timber. A belt of
+woods forty miles wide, starting from the Crow-Wing River, extends
+south nearly to the Iowa boundary. It is broken here and there by
+prairie openings and fertile meadows. The tract is known throughout the
+Northwest as the region of the "Big Woods."
+
+There are fringes of timber along the streams, so that the settler,
+wherever he may wish to make a home, will generally find material for
+building purposes within easy reach. In this respect Minnesota is one
+of the most favored States of the Union.
+
+The formations of the bluffs now and then remind us of old castles
+upon the Rhine. They are, upon an average, three hundred and fifty
+feet above the summer level of the river. We are far from the Gulf of
+Mexico, yet the river at St. Paul is only six hundred and seventy-six
+feet above tide-water.
+
+Northward of Minneapolis the bluffs disappear, and the surface of the
+river is but a few feet below the general level of the country, which
+is about one thousand feet above the sea.
+
+It is one of the remarkable topographical features of the continent,
+that from St. Paul to the Peace River, which empties into the
+Athabasca, the elevation is about the same, though the distance is more
+than one thousand miles. Throughout this great extent of territory,
+especially in Minnesota, are innumerable lakes and ponds of pure fresh
+water, some of them having no visible outlet or inlet, with pebbly
+shores and beaches of white sand, bordered by groves and parks of oak,
+ash, and maple, lending an indescribable charm to the beauty of the
+landscape.
+
+While we are making these observations the steamer is nearing Winona, a
+pleasant town, delightfully situated on a low prairie, elevated but a
+few feet above the river. The bluffs at this point recede, giving ample
+room for a town site with a ravine behind it.
+
+Nature has done a great deal for the place,--scooping out the ravine
+as if the sole purpose had been to make the construction of a railroad
+an easy matter. The Winona and St. Peter's Railway strikes out from
+the town over the prairie, winds through the ravine, and by easy grades
+gains the rolling country beyond. The road is nearly completed to the
+Minnesota River, one hundred and forty miles. It will eventually be
+extended to the western boundary of the State, and onward into Dakota.
+It is now owned by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company, and
+runs through the centre of the second tier of counties in the State.
+The Southern Minnesota Railroad starts from La Crosse, and runs west
+through the first tier of counties. It is already constructed half-way
+across the State, and will be pushed on, as civilization advances, to
+the Missouri. That is the objective point of all the lines of railway
+leading west from the Mississippi, and they will soon be there.
+
+This city of Winona fifteen years ago had about one hundred
+inhabitants. It was a place where steamers stopped to take wood and
+discharge a few packages of freight, but to-day it has a population
+of nine thousand. Looking out upon it from the promenade deck of the
+steamer, we see new buildings going up, and can hear the hammers and
+saws of the carpenters. It already contains thirteen churches and a
+Normal School with three hundred scholars, who are preparing to teach
+the children of the State, though the probabilities are that most of
+them will soon teach their own offspring instead of their neighbors';
+for in the West young men are plenty, maidens scarce. Out here--
+
+    "There is no goose so gray but soon or late
+    Will find some honest gander for her mate."
+
+Not so in the East, for the young men there are pushing west, and women
+are in the majority. It is a certainty that some of them will know more
+of single blessedness than of married life. If they would only come out
+here, the certainty would be the other way.
+
+Not stopping at Winona, but hastening on board the train, we fly over
+the prairie, up the ravine, and out through one of the most fertile
+sections of the great grain-field of the Northwest.
+
+The superintendent of the road, Mr. Stewart, accompanies our party,
+and we receive pleasure and profit by having a gentleman with us who
+is so thoroughly informed as he to point out the objects of interest
+along the way. By a winding road, now running under a high bluff where
+the limestone ledges overhang the track, now gliding over a high
+trestle-bridge from the northern to the southern side of the deep
+ravine, we gain at length the general table-land, and behold, reaching
+as far as the eye can see, fields of wheat. Fences are visible here and
+there, showing the division of farms; but there is scarcely a break in
+the sea of grain, in flower now, rippling and waving in the passing
+breeze. Farm-houses dot the landscape, and white cottages are embowered
+in surrounding groves, and here and there we detect a small patch of
+corn or an acre of potatoes,--small islands these in the great ocean of
+wheat reaching westward, northward, and southward.
+
+We are astonished when the train nears St. Charles, a town of two
+thousand inhabitants, looking marvellously like a New England village,
+to see a school-house just completed at a cost of $15,000! and still
+wider open we our eyes at Rochester, with a population of six thousand,
+where we behold a school-building that has cost $60,000! Upon inquiry
+we ascertain that the bulk of the population of these towns is from New
+England.
+
+A ride of about ninety miles brings us to Owatona, a town of about
+three thousand inhabitants.
+
+We are in Steele County. The little rivulets here meandering through
+the prairie and flowing southward reach the Mississippi only after
+crossing the State of Iowa, while those running northward join the
+Mississippi through the Minnesota River.
+
+Here, as at Rochester, we behold charming landscapes, immense fields of
+grain, groves of trees, snug cottages and farm-houses, and a thrifty
+town. Owatona has a school-house that cost the citizens $20,000; yet
+nine years ago the population of the entire county was only 2,862! The
+census of 1870 will probably make it 15,000. So civilization advances,
+not only here, but all through the Northwest, especially where there
+are railroad facilities.
+
+From Owatona we turn north and pass through Rice County, containing
+eighteen townships. It is one of the best-timbered counties west of the
+Mississippi; there are large tracts of oak, maple, butternut, walnut,
+poplar, elm, and boxwood. We glide through belts of timber where
+choppers are felling the trees for railroad ties, past fields where the
+industrious husbandman has turned the natural grasses of the prairie
+into blooming clover.
+
+At Faribault a company of Norwegians, recently arrived from their homes
+beyond the sea, and not having reached their journey's end, are cooking
+their supper near the station. To-morrow they will be pushing on
+westward to the grounds already purchased by the agent who has brought
+them out.
+
+In 1850 this entire county had only one hundred inhabitants; the
+census of next year will probably show a population of twenty-five
+thousand,--one half Americans, one sixth Germans, one ninth Irish,
+besides Norwegians, Swedes, and Canadians. Faribault has about four
+thousand inhabitants, who have laid excellent foundations for future
+growth. They have an Episcopal College, a High School for ladies, a
+Theological Seminary, a Deaf and Dumb Asylum, two Congregational
+churches, also one Baptist, one Methodist, and one Episcopal. They have
+excellent water-power on the Cannon River. Five flouring-mills have
+already been erected.
+
+Fourteen miles beyond this place we find Northfield with three thousand
+inhabitants, three fourths of them New-Englanders. Five churches and a
+college, two flouring-mills capable of turning out one hundred thousand
+barrels per annum, excellent schools, a go-ahead population, are the
+characteristics of this thoroughly wide-awake town.
+
+A mile or two beyond Northfield we enter Dakota County,--one of the
+most fertile in the State. It was one of the first settled, and in
+1860 contained 9,058 inhabitants. Its present population is estimated
+at 20,000,--one third of them Irish, one third Americans, one quarter
+Germans, and the remainder of all nationalities. The largest town
+is Hastings, on the Mississippi, containing about four thousand
+inhabitants. The Hastings and Dakota Railroad, extending west, crosses
+the Milwaukie and St. Paul at Farmington, a pleasant little town
+located on a green and fertile prairie. Thirty miles of this Hastings
+and Dakota road are in operation, and it is pushing on westward, like
+all the others, to reach the territory of Dakota and the Missouri River.
+
+On over the prairies we fly, reaching the oldest town in the State,
+Mendota, which was a trading-post of the American Fur Company as long
+ago as 1828. It was livelier then than now, for in those years Indians
+by the thousand made it their rendezvous, coming in their bark canoes
+down the Minnesota from the borders of Dakota, down the St. Croix,
+which joins the Mississippi opposite Hastings, down the Mississippi
+from all the region above the Falls of St. Anthony; but now it is a
+seedy place. The houses have a forlorn look, and the three hundred
+Irish and Germans that make up the bulk of the population are not of
+the class that lay the foundations of empires, or make the wilderness
+bud and blossom with roses; they take life easy, and let to-day wait on
+to-morrow.
+
+Fort Snelling, admirably located, looms grandly above the high steep
+bluff of the northern bank of the Minnesota River. It was one of the
+strongest posts on the frontier, but it is as useless now as a last
+year's swallow's-nest. The frontier is three hundred miles farther on.
+
+Upon the early maps of Minnesota I find a magnificent city occupying
+the surrounding ground. It was surveyed and plotted, but St. Paul and
+Minneapolis got ahead, and the city of Snelling has no place in history.
+
+We approach St. Paul from the south. Stepping from the cars we find
+ourselves on the lowlands of the Mississippi, with a high bluff south
+of us, and another on the north bank, both rising perpendicularly from
+the river. We ride over a long wooden bridge, one end of which rests
+on the low land by the railroad station, and the other on the high
+northern bluff, so that the structure is inclined at an angle of about
+twenty degrees, like the driveway to a New England barn where the floor
+is nearly up to the high beams. We are in a city which in 1849, twenty
+years ago, had a population of eight hundred and forty, but which now
+has an estimated population of twenty-five thousand. Here that powerful
+tribe of Northern Indians, the Dakotas, had their capital,--a cave
+in the sandstone bluffs, which was the council-chamber of the tribe.
+Upon the bluff now stands the capital of the State, and the sanguine
+citizens believe that the city is to be the commercial metropolis of
+the Northwest. A few months ago I was on the other side of the globe,
+where civilization is at a stand-still; where communities exist, but
+scarcely change; where decay is quite as probable as growth; where
+advancement is the exception, and not the rule. To ride through the
+streets of St. Paul; to behold its spacious warehouses, its elegant
+edifices, stores piled with the goods of all lands, the products of all
+climes,--furs from Hudson Bay, oranges from Messina, teas from China,
+coffee from Brazil, silks from Paris, and all the products of industry
+from our own land; to behold the streets alive with people, crowded
+with farmers' wagons laden with wheat and flour; to read the signs,
+"Young Men's Christian Association," "St. Paul Library Association"; to
+see elegant school-edifices and churches, beautiful private residences
+surrounded by lawns and adorned with works of art,--to see this in
+contrast with what we have so lately witnessed, and to think that
+this is the development of American civilization, going on now as
+never before, and destined to continue till all this wide region is
+to be thus dotted over with centres of influence and power, sends an
+indescribable thrill through our veins. It is not merely that we are
+Americans, but because in this land Christian civilization is attaining
+the highest development of all time. The people of St. Paul may justly
+take pride in what they have already accomplished, and they also have
+reason to look forward with confidence to the future.
+
+The county is quite small, containing only four and a half townships.
+The soil is poor, a sandy loam, of not much account for farming
+purposes, but being at the head of steamboat navigation a good start
+was obtained; and now that railroads are superseding steamboats, St.
+Paul reaches out her iron arms in every direction,--up the Mississippi
+to St. Cloud, westward through Minneapolis to the Red River of the
+North, southwest to touch the Missouri at Sioux City, due south over
+the line by which we reached the city, down the river towards Chicago,
+and northeast to Lake Superior. As a spider extends its threads, so
+St. Paul, or perhaps, more properly speaking, St. Paul and Minneapolis
+together, are throwing out their lines of communication, making
+themselves the centre of the great Northwest systems of railways.
+The interests of St. Paul are mercantile, those of Minneapolis
+manufacturing. They are nearly five hundred miles distant from
+Chicago,--far enough to be an independent commercial, manufacturing,
+and distributing centre. That such is to be their destiny cannot be
+doubted.
+
+The outfit of our party had been prepared at Minneapolis; and a large
+number of gentlemen from that city made their appearance at St. Paul,
+to convey us to the town in their own private carriages.
+
+It is a charming ride that we have along the eastern bank of the
+Mississippi, which pours its mighty flood,--mighty even here, though
+so far away from the sea,--rolling and thundering far below us in the
+chasm which it has worn in the solid rock.
+
+On our right hand are fields of waving grain, and white cottages half
+hidden in groves of oak and maple. We see New England thrift and
+enterprise, for the six States east of the Hudson have been sending
+their wide-awake sons and daughters to this section for the last
+twenty years. The gentleman with whom we are riding came here from
+the woods of Maine, a lumberman from the Penobscot, and has been the
+architect of his own fortune. He knows all about the Upper Mississippi,
+its tributaries, and the chain of lakes lying northwest of Lake
+Superior. He is Mayor of Minneapolis, a substantial citizen, his hand
+ready for every good work,--for the building of schools and churches,
+for charity and benevolence; but on the Upper Mississippi he wears a
+red shirt, eats pork and beans, and sleeps on pine boughs. He directs
+the labor of hundreds of wood-choppers and raftsmen.
+
+How different this from what we see in other lands! I find my pen
+runs on contrasts. How can one help it after seeing that gorgeous
+and lumbering old carriage in which the Lord Mayor of London rides
+from Guildhall to Westminster? The Lord Mayor himself appears in a
+scarlet cloak not half so becoming as a red shirt. He wears a massive
+gold chain, and a hat which would be most in place on the stage of a
+theatre, and which would make him a guy in any American town. Not so
+do the Lord Mayors of the Northwest appear in public. They understand
+practical life. It is one of the characteristics of our democratic
+government that it makes people practical in all things.
+
+In 1865 the town of Minneapolis contained only 4,607 inhabitants, but
+the population by the census of the present year is 13,080.
+
+The fall in the river at this point is sixty-four feet, furnishing
+120,000 horse-power,--more than sufficient to drive every mill-wheel
+and factory in New England, and, according to Wheelock's Report,
+greater than the whole motive-power--steam and water--employed in
+textile manufactures in England in 1850. Thirteen flouring-mills,
+fourteen saw-mills, two woollen-mills, and two paper-mills, are already
+erected. Six million dollars have been invested in manufacturing at
+this point. The only difficulty to be encountered is the preservation
+of the falls in their present position. Beneath the slate rock over
+which the torrent pours is a strata of soft sandstone, which rapidly
+wears away. Measures have been taken, however, to preserve the cataract
+in its present condition, by constructing an apron to carry the water
+some distance beyond the verge of the fall and thus prevent the
+breaking away of the rock.
+
+No one can behold the natural advantages at Minneapolis without coming
+to the conclusion that it is to be one of the great manufacturing
+cities of the world if the fall can be kept in its present position.
+Cotton can be loaded upon steamers at Memphis, and discharged at St.
+Paul. The climate here is exceedingly favorable for the manufacturing
+of cotton goods. The lumber-mills by and by will give place to other
+manufactures, and Minneapolis will rank with Lowell or Fall River.
+
+Our ride brings us to St. Anthony on the east bank of the river, where
+we behold the Mississippi roaring and tumbling over the slate-stone
+ledges, and hear the buzzing and humming of the machinery in the
+saw-mills.
+
+St. Anthony was one of the earliest-settled towns in the State. Its
+projectors were Southern men. Streets were laid out, stores erected,
+a great hotel built, and extravagant prices asked for land, but
+the owners of Minneapolis offered lots at cheaper rates, and found
+purchasers. The war came on, and the proprietors of St. Anthony being
+largely from the South, the place ceased to grow, while its rival on
+the western shore moved steadily onward in a prosperous career. But
+St. Anthony is again advancing, for many gentlemen doing business
+in Minneapolis reside there. The interests of the two places are
+identical, and will advance together.
+
+How can one describe what is indescribable? I can only speak of this
+city as situated on a beautiful plain, with the Mississippi thundering
+over a cataract with a power sufficient to build up half a dozen
+Lowells; with a country behind it where every acre of land as far as
+the eye can see, and a hundred or a thousand times farther, is capable
+of cultivation and of supporting a population as dense as that of
+Belgium or China. Wide streets, costly school-houses, church spires,
+a community in which the New England element largely predominates,--a
+city where every other door does not open to a lager-beer saloon, as
+in some Western towns; where the sound of the saw and the hammer, and
+the click of the mason's trowel and sledge, are heard from morning
+till night; where the streets are filled with wagons from the country,
+bringing in grain and carrying back lumber, with the farmer, his wife
+and buxom daughter, and tow-headed, bright-faced little boys perched on
+top--such are the characteristics of Minneapolis.
+
+There was a time when Pegasus was put in harness, and the ancients,
+according to fable, tried to put Hercules to work. If those days of
+classic story have gone by, better ones have come, for the people of
+Minneapolis have got the Father of Waters in harness. He is cutting
+out one hundred million feet of lumber per annum here. I can hear him
+spinning his saws. He is turning a score of mill-stones, and setting
+a million or two of spindles in motion, and pretty soon some of the
+citizens intend to set him to weaving bags and cloth by the hundred
+thousand yards! Only a tithe of his strength is yet laid out. These
+men, reared in the East, and developed in the West, will make the
+old Father work for them henceforth. He will not be allowed to idle
+away his time by leaping and laughing year in and year out over yonder
+cataract. He must work for the good of the human race. They will use
+him for the building of a great mart of industry,--for the erection of
+houses and homes, the abodes of comfort and happiness and of joyful and
+peaceful life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.
+
+
+St. Cloud was the rendezvous of the party, where a grand ovation
+awaited us,--a band of music at the station, a dinner at the hotel, a
+ride to Sauk Rapids, two miles above the town.
+
+St. Cloud is eighty miles above St. Paul, situated on the west bank of
+the river, and is reached by the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The
+goods of the Hudson Bay Company pass through the town. Three hundred
+tons per annum are shipped from Liverpool to Montreal, from Montreal
+to Milwaukie, from Milwaukie by rail to this point, and from hence
+are transported by oxen to the Red River, taken down that stream on a
+small steamer to Lake Winnipeg, then sent in boats and canoes up the
+Assinniboin, the Saskatchawan, and to all the numerous trading-posts
+between Winnipeg and the Arctic Ocean.
+
+We are getting towards the frontier. We come upon frontiersmen in
+leggings, slouch hat, and fur coat,--carrying their rifles. Indians
+are riding their ponies. Wigwams are seen in the groves. Carts are
+here from Pembina and Fort Garry after supplies. And yet, in the
+suburbs of the town we see a large Normal School building just
+completed. A magnificent bridge costing $40,000 spans the Mississippi.
+At Sauk Rapids the river rolls over a granite ledge, and a chartered
+water-power company is erecting a dam, constructing a canal, and laying
+the foundations for the second great manufacturing city upon the
+Mississippi.
+
+This section has been a favorite locality for German emigrants. Nearly
+one half of the inhabitants of Stearns County, of which St. Cloud is
+the county-seat, are Germans. Here we bid good by to the locomotive and
+take the saddle instead, with light carriages for occasional change.
+
+We leave hotels behind, and are to enjoy the pleasures of camp-life.
+
+Our party as made up consists of the following persons:--
+
+  GOV. J. GREGORY SMITH, St. Albans, Vt.
+  W. C. SMITH, M. C.           "      "
+  W. H. LORD, D. D., Montpelier, Vt.
+  F. E. WOODBRIDGE, Vergennes, Vt.
+  S. W. THAYER, M. D., Burlington, Vt.
+  Hon. R. D. RICE, Augusta, Me.
+  P. COBURN,         "       "
+  E. F. JOHNSON, Middletown, Conn.
+  C. C. COFFIN, Boston.
+  P. W. HOLMES, New York City.
+  A. B. BAYLESS, Jr., New York City.
+  W. R. MARSHALL, St. Paul, Gov. of Minnesota.
+  E. M. WILSON, M. C., Minneapolis.
+  G. A. BRACKETT,         "
+
+The list is headed by Ex-Governor Smith, President of the Northern
+Pacific Railroad and of the Vermont Central. It fell to his lot to be
+Chief Magistrate of the Green Mountain State during the rebellion, and
+among all the loyal governors there was no one that excelled him in
+energy and executive force. He was here, there, and everywhere,--one
+day in Vermont, the next in Washington, the third in the rear of the
+army looking after the wounded. I remember seeing him at Fredericksburg
+during those terrible weeks that followed the struggles at the
+Wilderness and Spottsylvania,--directing his assistants, laboring with
+his own hands,--hunting up the sick and wounded, giving up his own
+cot, sleeping on the bare floor, or not sleeping at all,--cheering
+the despondent, writing sympathetic letters to fathers and mothers
+whose sons were in the hospital, or who had given their lives to their
+country. He has taken hold of this great enterprise--the construction
+of a railroad across the continent from the Lakes to the Pacific
+Ocean--with like zeal and energy, and has organized this expedition to
+explore the country between Lake Superior and the Missouri River.
+
+Judge Rice is from Maine. He is President of the Portland and Kennebec
+Railroad, and a director of the Northern Pacific. Before engaging in
+the management of railroads he held, for sixteen years, the honorable
+and responsible position of Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of
+Maine. Well versed in law, and holding the scales of justice evenly,
+his decisions have been regarded as wise and just.
+
+Mr. Johnson is the Chief Engineer of the road, one of the ablest in his
+profession in the country. As long ago as 1853, before the government
+surveys were made, he published a pamphlet upon this future highway
+to the Pacific, in which he discussed with great ability the physical
+geography of the country, not only from Lake Superior to Puget Sound,
+but the entire region between the Mississippi and the Pacific. The
+explorations that have since been made correspond almost exactly with
+his statements.
+
+The President of the company has showed forethought for the health,
+comfort, and pleasure of the party, by taking along two of the most
+genial men in New England,--Dr. Thayer, of Burlington, to cure us of
+all the ills that flesh is heir to, whose broad smiling face is itself
+a most excellent medicine, whose stories are quite as good as his pills
+and powders for keeping our digestion all right; and Rev. Dr. Lord,
+from Montpelier, for many years pastor of one of the largest churches
+in the State.
+
+With a doctor to keep our bodies right, with a minister to point out
+the narrow way that leads to a brighter world, and both of them as
+warm-hearted and genial as sunshine, we surely ought to be in good
+health.
+
+Mr. Holmes, of New York, is an old campaigner. He had experienced the
+rough and tumble of life on the Upper Missouri, with his rifle for a
+companion, the earth his bed, the broad expanse of sky his tent.
+
+Governor Marshall, Chief Magistrate of Minnesota, Mr. Wilson, member
+of Congress from the same State, and Mr. Brackett, of Minneapolis,
+were in Sibley's expedition against the Indians, and are accustomed to
+all the pleasures and hardships of a campaign. They are to explore the
+region lying between the Red River of the North and the Great Bend of
+the Missouri. Mr. Bayless, of New York, accompanies the party to enjoy
+the freedom and excitement of frontier life. Nor are we without other
+company. Some of the clergymen of Minnesota, like their brethren in
+other parts of the country, turn their backs on civilization during the
+summer months, and spend a few weeks with Nature for a teacher. It is
+related that the Rev. Dr. Bethune made it a point to visit Moosehead
+Lake in Maine every season, to meditate in solitude and eat onions! He
+not only loved them, but had great faith in their strengthening powers.
+His ministry was a perpetual Lent so far as onions were concerned, and
+it was only when he broke away from society and was lost to the world
+in the forest that he could partake freely of his favorite vegetable.
+
+Travelling the same road, and keeping us company, are Rev. Mr. and
+Mrs. Fuller, of Rochester, and Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and Mr. and
+Miss Wheaton, of Northfield, Minn. They have a prairie wagon with a
+covered top, drawn by two horses, in which is packed a tent, with pots,
+kettles, pans, dishes, flour, pork, beans, canned fruit, hams, butter,
+bed and bedding. They have saddle-horses for excursions, and carry
+rifles, shot-guns, and fishing-tackle. Pulpit, people and parsonage,
+hoop-skirts, stove-pipe hats, work and care, are left behind. The women
+can handle the fishing-rod or rifle. It may seem to ladies unaccustomed
+to country life as a great letting down of dignity on the part of these
+women of the West to enter upon such an expedition, but they are in
+search of health. They are not aiming to be Amazons. A few weeks upon
+the prairies, and they will return well browned, but healthful and
+rugged, and as attractive and charming as the fair Maud who raked hay
+and dreamed of what might have been.
+
+Our first night is spent at "Camp Thunder," and why it is so named will
+presently be apparent. It is nearly night when we leave St. Cloud for a
+four-mile ride to our quarters.
+
+We can see in the rays of the setting sun, as we ride over the
+prairie, our village of white tents pitched by the roadside, and
+our wagons parked near by. It is an exhilarating scene, bringing
+to remembrance the many tented fields during the war, and those
+soul-stirring days when the armies of the Republic marched under their
+great leader to victory.
+
+The sun goes down through a blood-colored haze, throwing its departing
+beams upon a bank of leaden clouds that lie along the horizon. Old
+salts say that such sunsets in the tropics are followed by storms.
+
+Through the evening, while sitting in the doors of our tents and
+talking of camp-life and its pleasant experiences, we can see faint
+flashes of lightning along the horizon. The leaden clouds grow darker,
+and rise slowly up the sky. Through the deepening haze we catch faint
+glimpses of celestial architecture,--castles, towers, massive walls, and
+
+    "Looming bastions fringed with fire."
+
+Far away rolls the heavy thunder,--so far that it seems the diapason
+of a distant organ. We lose sight of the gorgeous palaces, temples,
+and cathedrals of the upper air, or we see them only when the bright
+flashes of lightning illume the sky.
+
+It is past midnight,--we have been asleep, and are wakened by the
+sudden bursting of the storm. The canvas roof and walls of our house
+flap suddenly in the wind. The cords are drawn taut against the
+tent-pins. The roof rises, settles, surges up and down, to and fro,
+the walls belly in and then out against the swaying frame. The rain
+comes in great drops, in small drops, in drifting spray, rattling upon
+the canvas like a hundred thousand muskets,--just as they rattled and
+rolled on that awful day at the Wilderness when the two greatest armies
+ever gathered on this continent met in deadly conflict.
+
+All the while the tent is as bright with lightning as with the sun at
+noonday. By the side of my cot is a book which I have been reading;
+taking it in my hand, I read the finest print, noted the hour, minute,
+and position of the second-hand upon my watch.
+
+Looking out through the opening of the fly, I behold the distant
+woodland, the fences, the bearded grain laid prostrate by the blast,
+the rain-drops falling aslant through the air, the farm-house a
+half-mile distant,--all revealed by the red glare of the lightning. All
+the landscape is revealed. For an instant I am in darkness, then all
+appears again beneath the lurid light.
+
+The storm grows wilder. The gale becomes a tempest, and increases to a
+tornado. The thunder crashes around, above, so near that the crackling
+follows in an instant the blinding flash. It rattles, rolls, roars, and
+explodes like bursting bombs.
+
+The tent is reeling. Knowing what will be the result, I hurry on my
+clothing, and have just time to seize an india-rubber coat before the
+pins are pulled from the ground. I spring to the pole, determined to
+hold on to the last.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE STORM.]
+
+Though the lightning is so fearful, and the moment well calculated
+to arouse solemn thoughts, we cannot restrain our laughter when two
+occupants of an adjoining tent rush into mine in the condition of men
+who have had a sousing in a pond. The wind pulled their tent up by the
+roots, and slapped the wet canvas down upon them in a twinkling. They
+crawled out like muskrats from their holes,--their night-shirts fit
+for mops, their clothing ready for washing, their boots full of water,
+their hats limp and damp and ready for moulding into corrugated tiles.
+
+It is a ludicrous scene. I am the central figure inside the
+tent,--holding to the pole with all my might, bareheaded, barefooted,
+my body at an angle of forty-five degrees, my feet sinking into the
+black mire,--the dripping canvas swinging and swaying, now lifted by
+the wind and now flapping in my face, and drenching anew two members of
+Congress, who sit upon my broken-down bed, shivering while wringing out
+their shirts!
+
+When the fury of the storm is over, I rush out to drive down the
+pins, and find that my tent is the only one in the encampment that is
+not wholly prostrated. The members of the party are standing like
+_shirted_ ghosts in the storm. The rotund form of our M. D. is wrapped
+in the oil-cloth table-cover. For the moment he is a hydropath, and
+complacently surveys the wreck of tents. The rain falls on his bare
+head, the water streams from his gray locks, and runs like a river down
+his broad back; but he does not bow before the blast, he breasts it
+bravely. I do not hear him, but I can see by his features that he is
+silently singing the Sunday-school song,--
+
+    "I'll stand the storm,
+    It won't be long."
+
+Tents, beds, bedding, clothing, all are soppy and moppy, and the ground
+a quagmire. We go ankle deep into the mud. We might navigate the
+prairies in a boat.
+
+Our purveyor, Mr. Brackett, an old campaigner, knows just what to do
+to make us comfortable. He has a dry tent in one of the wagons, which,
+when the rain has ceased, is quickly set up. His cook soon has his
+coffee-pot bubbling, and with hot coffee and a roaring fire we are none
+the worse for the drenching.
+
+The storm has spent its fury, and is passing away, but the heavens
+are all aglow. Broad flashes sweep across the sky, flame up to the
+zenith, or quiver along the horizon. Bolt after bolt falls earthward,
+or flies from the north, south, east, and west,--from all points
+of the compass,--branching into beautiful forms, spreading out into
+threads and fibres of light, each tipped with golden balls or beads of
+brightest hue, seen a moment, then gone forever.
+
+Flash and flame, bolt and bar, bead, ball, and line, follow each other
+in quick succession, or all appear at once in indescribable beauty and
+fearful grandeur. We can only gaze in wonder and admiration, though
+all but blinded by the vivid flashes, and though each bolt may be a
+messenger of death,--though in the twinkling of an eye the spirit may
+be stricken from its present tabernacle and sent upon its returnless
+flight. The display, so magnificent and grand, has its only counterpart
+in the picture which imagination paints of Sinai or the final judgment.
+
+In an adjoining county the storm was attended by a whirlwind. Houses
+were demolished and several persons killed. It was terrifying to
+be in it, to hear the deafening thunder; but it was a sight worth
+seeing,--that glorious lighting up of the arch of heaven.
+
+It required half a day of bright sunshine to put things in trim after
+the tornado, and then on Saturday afternoon the party pushed on to Cold
+Spring and encamped on the bank of Sauk River for the Sabbath.
+
+[Illustration: CAMP JAY COOKE.]
+
+The camp was named "Jay Cooke," in honor of the energetic banker who
+is the financial agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Sweet,
+calm, and peaceful the hours. Religious services were held, conducted
+by Rev. Dr. Lord, who had a flour-barrel and a candle-box before him
+for a pulpit; a congregation of teamsters, with people from the little
+village near by, and the gentlemen composing our party, some of us
+seated on boxes, but most of us sitting upon the ground. Nor were we
+without a choir. Everybody sung Old Hundred; and though some of us
+could only sound one note, and that straight along from beginning to
+end, like the drone of a bagpipe, it went gloriously. Old Hundred never
+was sung with better spirit, though there was room for improvement
+of the understanding, especially in the base. The teamsters, after
+service, hunted turtle-eggs on the bank of the river, and one of them
+brought in a hatful, which were cooked for supper.
+
+Our course from Cold Spring was up the Sauk Valley to Sauk Centre, a
+lively town with an excellent water-power. The town is about six years
+old, but its population already numbers fifteen hundred. The country
+around it is one of the most beautiful and fertile imaginable. The
+Sauk River is the southern boundary of the timbered lands west of
+the Mississippi. As we look southward, over the magnificent expanse,
+we see farm-houses and grain-fields, but on the north bank are dense
+forests. The prairie lands are already taken up by settlers, while
+there are many thousand acres of the wooded portion of Stearns County
+yet in the possession of the government. The emigrant can raise a crop
+of wheat the second year after beginning a farm upon the prairies,
+while if he goes into the woods there is the slow process of clearing
+and digging out of stumps, and a great deal of hard labor before he has
+any returns. Those prairie lands that lie in the immediate vicinity
+of timber are most valuable. The valley of the Sauk, besides being
+exceedingly fertile, has timber near at hand, and has had a rapid
+development. It is an inviting section for the capitalist, trader,
+mechanic, or farmer, and its growth promises to be as rapid in the
+future as it has been since 1865.
+
+A two days' ride over a magnificent prairie brings us to White Bear
+Lake. If we had travelled due west from St. Cloud, along the township
+lines, sixty miles, we should have found ourselves at its southern
+shore instead of its northern. Our camp for the night was pitched on
+the hills overlooking this sheet of water. The Vale of Tempe could not
+have been fairer, and Arcadia had no lovelier scene, than that which we
+gazed upon from the green slope around our tents, blooming with wild
+roses, lilies, petunias, and phlox.
+
+The lake stretches southward a distance of twelve miles, indented
+here and there by a wooded promontory, with sandy beaches sweeping
+in magnificent curves, with a patch of woodland on the eastern
+shore, and a green fringe of stately oaks and elms around its entire
+circumference. As far as the vision extends we behold limitless fields,
+whose verdure changes in varying hues with every passing cloud,
+and wanting only a background of highlands to make it as lovely as
+Windermere, the most enchanting of all the lakes of Old England.
+
+At our feet was the little town of Glenwood. We looked down upon
+a hotel with the stars and stripes waving above it; upon a neat
+school-house with children playing around its doors; upon a cluster of
+twenty or thirty white houses surrounded by gardens and flower-beds.
+Three years ago this was a solitude.
+
+There is a sail-boat upon the lake, which some gentlemen of our party
+chartered for a fishing-excursion. Thinking perhaps we should get more
+fish by dividing our force, I took a skiff, and obtained a stalwart
+Norwegian to row it. Almost as soon as my hook touched the water I
+felt a tug at the other end of the line, and in came a pickerel,--a
+three-pounder! The Norwegian rowed slowly along the head of the lake,
+and one big fellow after another was pulled into the boat. There was
+scarcely a breath of wind, and the sails were idly flapping against the
+masts of the larger boat, where my friends were whiling away the time
+as best they could, tantalized by seeing that I was having all the
+fun. They could only crack their rifles at a loon, or at the flocks of
+ducks swimming along the shore.
+
+But there was rare sport at hand. I discovered an enormous turtle lying
+upon the surface of the water as if asleep. "Approach gently," I said
+to the Norwegian. He dipped his oars softly, and sent the skiff stern
+foremost towards the turtle, who was puffing and blowing like a wheezy
+old gentleman sound asleep.
+
+One more push of the oar and he will be mine. Too late! We have lost
+him. Down he goes. I can see him four feet beneath us, clawing off. No,
+he is coming up. He rises to the surface. I grasp his tail with both
+hands, and jerk with all my might. The boat dips, but a backward spring
+saves it from going over, and his majesty of White Bear Lake, the
+oldest inhabitant of its silver waters, weighing forty-six pounds,--so
+venerable that he wears a garden-bed of grass and weeds upon his
+back--is floundering in the half-filled skiff.
+
+The boatman springs to his feet, stands on the seat with uplifted oar,
+undecided whether to jump overboard or to fight the monster who is
+making at his legs with open jaws.
+
+By an adroit movement of an oar I whirl him upon his back, and hold him
+down while the Norwegian paddles slowly to the beach.
+
+The captive rides in a meal-bag the remainder of the day, hissing now
+and then, and striving to regain his liberty.
+
+Ah! isn't that a delicious supper which we sit down to out upon the
+prairies on the shores of Lightning Lake,--beyond the borders of
+civilization! It is not mock turtle, but the genuine article, such as
+aldermen eat. True, we have tin cups and plates, and other primitive
+table furniture, but hunger sharpens the appetite, and food is as
+toothsome as if served on gold-bordered china. Besides turtle-soup we
+have fresh fish and boiled duck. Who is there that would not like to
+find such fare inside the borders of civilization?
+
+Beyond Pope we entered Grant County, containing 268,000 acres of land,
+nearly all open to settlement, and through which the main line of the
+St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will be constructed the present year. The
+population of the entire county probably does not exceed five hundred,
+who are mostly Swedes and Norwegians. It is on the ridge, or, rather,
+the gentle undulating prairie, between the waters of the Red River of
+the North and the Chippewa River, an affluent of the Minnesota. We
+passed between two small lakes; the waters of one find their way to the
+Gulf of Mexico, the other to the Arctic Sea.
+
+Our second Sabbath camp was upon the bank of the Red River of the
+North,--a beautiful stream, winding its peaceful way through a country
+as fertile as the Delta of the Nile.
+
+For two days we had journeyed over rolling prairie, seeing no
+inhabitant; but on Saturday afternoon we reached the great thoroughfare
+leading from the Mississippi to the Red River,--travelled by the
+Fort Abercrombie stage, and by the Pembina and Fort Garry carts, by
+government trains and the ox-teams that transport the supplies of the
+Hudson Bay Company.
+
+Sitting there upon the bank of the Red River amid the tall, rank
+grasses, and watching the flowing stream, my thoughts went with its
+tide towards the Northern Sea. It has its rise a hundred miles or more
+north of us, near Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi, flows
+southward to this point turns westward here, is joined below by a
+stream issuing from Lake Traverse, its most southern source, and then
+flows due north to Lake Winnipeg, a distance altogether of about five
+hundred miles.
+
+It is the great southern artery of a water-system that lies almost
+wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.
+
+The Assinniboine joins it just before reaching Lake Winnipeg, and up
+that stream we may steam due west two hundred and thirty miles to
+Fort Ellis. From Winnipeg we may pass eastward to the intricate Rainy
+Lake system towards Superior, or westward into Lakes Manitoba and
+Winnipegosis, which together contain as much water as Lake Erie.
+
+Sailing along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg two hundred miles, we
+reach the mouth of the Saskatchawan, large enough to be classed as one
+of the great rivers of the continent.
+
+Professor Hind, of Toronto, who conducted a government exploring-party
+through the country northwest of Lake Superior, says: "The
+Saskatchawan, which gathers the waters from a country greater in
+extent than the vast region drained by the St. Lawrence and all its
+tributaries, from Lake Superior to the Gulf, is navigable for more than
+a thousand miles of its course, with the single exception of a few
+rapids near its confluence with Lake Winnipeg."
+
+Professor Hind travelled from Fort Garry northwest over the prairies
+towards the Rocky Mountains, and gives the following description of his
+first view of the stream. He says:--
+
+"The first view, six hundred miles from the lake, filled me with
+astonishment and admiration,--nearly half a mile broad, flowing with a
+swift current, and still I was three hundred and fifty miles from the
+mountains."
+
+The small steamer now plying on the Red River might, during the season
+of high water, make its way from Fort Abercrombie down this river,
+then through Lake Winnipeg, and up the Saskatchawan westward to the
+base of the Rocky Mountains,--a distance altogether of sixteen hundred
+miles.
+
+We are in the latitude of the continental water-system. If we travel
+along the parallel eastward, one hundred miles will bring us to
+the Mississippi at Crow Wing, another hundred will take us to Lake
+Superior, where we may embark on a propeller of five hundred tons and
+make our way down through the lakes and the St. Lawrence to Liverpool,
+or any other foreign port; or travelling west three hundred miles will
+bring us to the Missouri, where we may take one of the steamers plying
+on that stream and go up to Fort Benton under the shadow of the Rocky
+Mountains.
+
+Two hundred and fifty miles farther by land, through the mining region
+of Montana, will bring us to the navigable waters of the Columbia, down
+which we may glide to the Pacific.
+
+Nowhere in the Eastern hemisphere is there such a succession of lakes
+and navigable rivers, and no other country exhibits such an area of
+arable land so intersected by fresh-water streams.
+
+It would be an easy matter by canals to connect the Red River, the
+Saskatchawan, and Lake Winnipeg with the Mississippi. We can take a
+canoe from this point and paddle up to Otter-Tail Lake, and there, by
+carrying it a mile or so over a sand-ridge, launch it on Leaf River, an
+affluent of the Crow-Wing, and so reach the Father of Waters. We may
+do even better than that. Instead of paddling up stream we may float
+down with the current a few miles to the outlet of Lake Traverse, row
+across the lake, and from that into Big Stone Lake, which is the source
+of the Minnesota River, and by this route reach the Mississippi below
+Minneapolis. Boats carrying two tons have frequently passed from one
+river to the other during the season of high water. It would not be
+difficult to construct a canal by which steamers might pass from the
+Mississippi to the base of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia.
+Railroads are superseding canals, and it is not likely that any such
+improvement of the water-way will be attempted during the present
+generation.
+
+But a glance at the river and lake systems enables us to obtain a view
+of the physical features of the country. We see that the northwestern
+portion of the continent is an extended plain. The Red River here by
+our encampment is about nine hundred and sixty feet above the sea. If
+we were to float down to Lake Winnipeg, we should find that sheet of
+water three hundred feet lower.
+
+Our camp is pitched to-day about ten miles west of the 96th meridian.
+If we were to travel south from this point 350 miles, we should reach
+Omaha, which is 946 feet above the sea, so that if we were sitting
+on the bank of the Missouri at that point, we should be just about
+as high above tide-water as we are while lolling here in the tall
+rank grass. By going from Omaha to San Francisco over the Pacific
+Railroad, we see the elevations of the country; then by striking
+westward from this point to the head-waters of the Missouri, and then
+down the Columbia, we shall see at once the physical features of the
+two sections. The engineers of the Pacific Railroad, after gaining the
+top of the bluff behind Omaha, have a long and apparently level sweep
+before them. Yet there is a gradually ascending grade. Four hundred
+and eighty-five miles west of Omaha we come to the 104th meridian,
+at an elevation of 4,861 feet. If we go west from this point to that
+meridian, we shall strike it at the mouth of the Yellowstone, 1,970
+feet above tide-water. Near the 105th meridian is the highest point
+on the Union Pacific, at Sherman, which is 8,235 feet above the sea.
+Three hundred miles beyond Sherman, at Green River, is the lowest point
+between Omaha and the descent into Salt Lake Valley, 6,112 feet above
+the ocean level. At that point we are about twenty-six miles west of
+the 110th meridian. Now going northward to the valley of the Missouri
+once more, we find that Fort Benton is about the same number of miles
+west of the same meridian, but the fort is only 2,747 feet above the
+sea.
+
+Just beyond Fort Benton we come to the Rocky Mountains,--the only
+range to be crossed between Lake Superior and the Columbia. We enter
+the Deer Lodge Pass near the 112th meridian, where our barometer will
+show us that we are about five thousand feet above the sea. We find
+that the miners at work on the western slope have cut a canal through
+the pass, and have turned the waters of the Missouri into the Columbia.
+The pass is so level that the traveller can hardly tell when he has
+reached the dividing line.
+
+Going south now along the meridian, we shall find that between Green
+River and Salt Lake lies the Wasatch Range, which the Union Pacific
+crosses at an elevation of 7,463 feet at Aspen Station, 940 miles
+west of Omaha. From that point the line descends to Salt Lake, which
+is 4,220 feet above the sea. Westward of this, on the 115th meridian,
+1,240 miles from Omaha, we reach the top of Humboldt Mountains, 6,169
+feet above tide-water, while the elevation is only 1,500 feet on the
+same meridian in the valley of the Columbia.
+
+At Humboldt Lake, 1,493 miles west of Omaha, the rails are at the
+lowest level of the mountain region, 4,047 feet above the sea. This is
+a little west of the 119th meridian, about the same longitude as Walla
+Walla on the great plain of the Columbia, which is less than 400 feet
+above the sea.
+
+Westward of Humboldt Lake the Central Line rises to the summit of
+the Sierra Nevadas, crossing them 7,042 feet above the sea, then
+descending at the rate of 116 feet to the mile into the valley of the
+Sacramento.
+
+Now going back to the plains, to the town of Sidney, which is 410 miles
+west of Omaha, we find the altitude there the same as at Humboldt Lake.
+This level does not show itself again till we are well down on the
+western slope of the Sierra Nevada Range. The entire country between
+Omaha and Sacramento, with the exception of about 510 miles, is above
+the level of 4,000 feet, while on the line westward from the point
+where I am indulging in this topographical revery there are not thirty
+miles reaching that altitude.
+
+With this glance at the configuration of the continent I might make an
+isometric map in the sand with my fingers, heaping it up to represent
+the Black Hills at Sherman, a lower ridge to indicate the Wasatch
+Range, a depression to show the Salt Lake Valley, and then another high
+ridge to represent the Sierra Nevadas. I might trace the channel of the
+Missouri and the Columbia, and show that most of this territory is a
+great plain sloping northward,--that it is lower at Winnipeg than it is
+here, as low here as it is at Omaha.
+
+[Illustration: CONFIGURATION OF THE COUNTRY.
+
+The upper line represents the elevations between Omaha and Sacramento,
+and the lower line between the Red River and Portland, Oregon.]
+
+Taking this glance at the physical features of the northern and central
+portions of the continent, I can see that nature has adapted all
+this vast area drained by the Missouri and Yellowstone and their
+tributaries, by the Mississippi, by the Red River, the Assinniboine,
+the Saskatchawan, and the Columbia, to be the abode, in the future, of
+uncounted millions of the human race.
+
+It is a solitude now, but the vanguard of the approaching multitude is
+near at hand. The farmer who lives up the stream and tends the ferry
+where we crossed yesterday has one neighbor within twelve miles; but
+a twelvemonth hence these acres will have many farm-houses. To-day we
+have listened to a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Lord, who preached beneath a
+canvas roof. We were called together by the blowing of a tin trumpet,
+but a year hence the sweet and solemn tones of church-bells will in all
+probability echo over these verdant meadows.
+
+The locomotive--that great civilizer of this century--will be here
+before the flowers bloom in the spring of 1871. It will bring towns,
+villages, churches, school-houses, printing-presses, and millions of
+free people. I sit as in a dream. I can hear, in imagination, the
+voices of the advancing multitude,--of light-hearted maidens and sober
+matrons, of bright-eyed boys and strong-armed men. The wild roses are
+blooming here to-day, the sod is as yet unturned, and the lilies of the
+field hold up their cups to catch the falling dew; but another year
+will bring the beginning of the change. Civilization, which has crossed
+the Mississippi, will soon flow down this stream, and sweep on to the
+valley of the Upper Missouri.
+
+Think of it, young men of the East, you who are measuring off tape for
+young ladies through the long and wearisome hours, barely earning your
+living! Throw down the yardstick and come out here if you would be
+men. Let the fresh breeze fan your brow, take hold of the plough, bend
+down for a few years to hard work with determination to win nobility,
+and success will attend your efforts. Is this too enthusiastic? Will
+those who read it say, "He has lost his head and gone daft out there
+on the prairies"? Not quite. I am an observer here, as I have been in
+other lands. I have ridden many times over the great States of the
+Northwest; have seen the riches of Santa Clara and Napa west of the
+Sierra Nevadas; have looked out over the meadows of the Yangtse and the
+Nile, and can say, with honest conviction, that I have seen nowhere so
+inviting a field as that of Minnesota, none with greater undeveloped
+wealth, or with such prospect of quick development.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE RED RIVER COUNTRY.
+
+
+Monday morning saw us on our way northward,--down the valley of the Red
+River.
+
+It was exhilarating to gallop over the level prairies, inhaling the
+fresh air, our horses brushing the dew from the grass, and to see
+flocks of plump prairie chickens rise in the air and whirr away,--to
+mark where they settled, and then to start them again and bring them
+down, one by one, with a double-barrelled shot-gun. Did we not think of
+the stews and roasts we would have at night?
+
+For a dozen years or more every school-boy has seen upon his map the
+town of Breckenbridge, located on the Red River of the North. It is off
+from the travelled road. The town, as one of our teamsters informed us,
+"has gone up." It originally consisted of two houses and a saw-mill,
+but the Sioux Indians swooped down upon it in 1862, and burned the
+whole place. A few logs, the charred remains of timbers, and tall
+fire-weeds alone mark the spot.
+
+Riding on, we reached Fort Abercrombie at noon. It is situated in
+Dakota, on the west bank of the Red River, which we crossed by
+a rope ferry. It is a resting-place for the thousands of teams
+passing between St. Cloud and Fort Garry, and other places in the
+far Northwest. The place is of no particular account except as a
+distributing point for government supplies for forts farther on, and
+the advancement of civilization will soon enable the War Department to
+break up the establishment.
+
+The river is fringed with timber. We ride beneath stately oaks growing
+upon the bottom-lands, and notice upon the trees the high-water marks
+of former years. The stream is very winding, and when the spring rains
+come on the rise is as great, though not usually so rapid, as in the
+Merrimac and Connecticut, and other rivers of the East.
+
+The valley of the Red River is not such as we are accustomed to see in
+the East, bounded by hills or mountains, but a level plain.
+
+When the sky is clear and the air serene, we can catch far away in
+the east the faint outline of the Leaf Hills, composing the low ridge
+between the Red River and the Mississippi, but westward there is
+nothing to bound the sight. The dead level reaches on and on to the
+rolling prairies of the Upper Missouri.
+
+The eye rests only upon the magnificent carpet, bright with wild roses
+and petunias, lilies and harebells, which Nature has unrolled upon the
+floor of this gorgeous palace.
+
+I had been slow to believe all that had been told in regard to the
+genial climate of the Northwest, but through the courtesy of the
+commandant of the Fort, General Hunt, was permitted to see the
+meteorological records kept at the post.
+
+The summer of 1868 was excessively warm in the Western, Middle, and
+Atlantic States. Here, on one day in July, the mercury rose to ninety
+degrees, Fahrenheit, but the mean temperature for the month was
+seventy-nine. In August the highest temperature was eighty-eight, the
+lowest fifty, the mean sixty-nine. In September the highest temperature
+was seventy-four, the mean forty-seven. A slight frost occurred on
+the night of the 16th, and a hard one on the last day of the month.
+In October a few flakes of snow fell on the 27th. In November there
+were a few inches of snow. Toward the close of December, on one day,
+the mercury reached twenty-seven below zero. On the 30th of January
+it dropped to thirty below. During this month there were four days
+on which snow fell, and in February there were ten snowy days. The
+greatest depth of snow during the winter was about eighteen inches,
+furnishing uninterrupted sleighing from December to March.
+
+On the 23d of March wild geese and ducks appeared, winging their way to
+Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. The spring opened early in April.
+
+There are no farms as yet in the valley,--the few settlers cultivating
+only small patches of land.
+
+I have thought of this section of country as being almost up to the
+arctic circle, and can only disabuse my mind by comparing it with
+other localities in the same latitude. St. Paul is in the latitude of
+Bordeaux, in the grape-growing district of Southern France. Here at
+Fort Abercrombie we are at least one hundred and fifty miles farther
+south than the world's gayest capital, Paris.
+
+It is not likely that Northern Minnesota will ever become a
+wine-producing country, though wild grapes are found along the streams,
+and the people of St. Paul and Minneapolis will show us thrifty vines
+in their gardens, laden with heavy clusters.
+
+Minnesota is a wheat-growing region, climate and soil are alike
+favorable to its production.
+
+On the east bank of the Red River we see a field owned by Mr. McAuley,
+who keeps a store and sells boots, pipes, tobacco, powder, shot, and
+all kinds of supplies needed by hunters and frontiersmen. He sowed his
+wheat this year (1869) on the 5th of May, and it is now, on the 19th of
+July, heading out. "I had forty-five bushels to the acre last year," he
+says, "and the present crop will be equally good."
+
+[Illustration: RED RIVER VALLEY.]
+
+This Red River Valley throughout its length and breadth is very
+fertile. Here are twenty thousand square miles of land,--an area as
+large as Vermont and New Hampshire combined,--unsurpassed for richness.
+
+The construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad and the St. Paul and
+Pacific, both of which are to reach this valley within a few months,
+will make these lands virtually as near market as the farms of Central
+or Western Illinois. From the Red River to Duluth the distance is 210
+miles in a direct line. It is 187 miles from Chicago to Springfield,
+Illinois; so that when the Northern Pacific Railroad is constructed to
+this point, Mr. McAuley will be just as near Boston or New York as the
+farmers who live in the vicinity of the capital of Illinois; for grain
+can be taken from Duluth to Buffalo, Oswego, or Ogdensburg as cheaply
+as from Chicago. The richness of the lands, the supply of timber on the
+Red River and all its branches, with the opening of the two lines of
+railway, will give a rapid settlement to this paradise of the Northwest.
+
+Professor Hind, of Toronto, who was sent out by the Canadian government
+to explore the British Possessions northwest of Lake Superior, in his
+report says: "Of the valley of the Red River I find it impossible to
+speak in any other terms than those which may express astonishment and
+admiration. I entirely concur in the brief but expressive description
+given me by an English settler on the Assinniboine, that the valley
+of the Red River, including a large portion belonging to its great
+affluents, is a paradise of fertility."
+
+In Mr. McAuley's garden we see corn in the spindle. The broad leaves
+wear as rich a green as if fertilized with the best Peruvian guano;
+and no wonder, for the soil is a deep black loam, and as mellow as an
+ash-heap. His peas were sown the 2d of June, and they are already large
+enough for the table! He will have an abundant supply of cucumbers by
+the first of August. They were not started under glass, but the dry
+seeds were dropped in the hills the same day he planted his peas,--the
+2d of June.
+
+Vegetation advances with great rapidity. Mr. McAuley says that
+vegetables and grains come to maturity ten or fifteen days earlier here
+than at Manchester, New Hampshire, where he once resided.
+
+General Pope was formerly stationed at Fort Abercrombie; and in his
+report upon the resources of the country and its climatology, says that
+the wheat, upon an average, is five pounds per bushel heavier than that
+grown in Illinois or the Middle States.
+
+We saw yesterday a gentleman and lady who live at Fort Garry, and who
+call themselves "Winnipeggers." They were born in Scotland, and had
+been home to Old Scotia to see their friends.
+
+"How do you like Winnipeg?" I asked.
+
+"There is no finer country in the world," he replied.
+
+"Do you not have cold winters?"
+
+"Not remarkably so. We have a few cold days, but the air is usually
+clear and still on such days, and we do not mind the cold. If we only
+had a railroad, it would be the finest place in the world to live in."
+
+We wonder at his enthusiasm over a country which we have thought of as
+being almost, if not quite, out of the world, while he doubtless looks
+with pity upon us who are content to remain in such a cooped-up place
+as the East.
+
+Most of us, unless we have become nomads, think that there are no
+garden patches so attractive as our own, and we wonder how other people
+can be willing to live so far off.
+
+This Winnipeg gentleman says that the winters are no more severe at
+Fort Garry than at St. Paul, and that the spring opens quite as early.
+
+The temperature for the year at Fort Garry is much like that of
+Montreal, as will be seen by the following comparison:--
+
+             Spring.   Summer.  Autumn.  Winter.
+                  °         °        °        °
+  Montreal,      43        70       49       17
+  Fort Garry,    36        68       48        7
+
+This shows the mean temperatures for the three months of each season.
+Though the mercury is ten degrees lower at Fort Garry in the winter
+than at Montreal, there is less wind, fewer raw days, much less snow,
+and, taken all in all, the climate is more agreeable.
+
+Bidding good by to the courteous commander of the fort, who supplies
+that portion of our party going to the Missouri with an escort, we
+gallop on through this "Paradise," starting flocks of plovers from the
+waving grass, and bringing down, now and then, a prairie chicken.
+
+Far away, on the verge of the horizon, we can see our wagons,--mere
+specks.
+
+What a place for building a railway! Not a hillock nor a hollow, not
+a curve or loss of gradient; timber enough on the river for ties. And
+when built, what a place to let on steam! The engineer may draw his
+throttle-valve and give the piston full head. Here will be the place to
+see what iron, steel, and steam can do.
+
+We pitch our tents for the night in the suburbs of Burlington, not far
+from the hotel and post-office. The hotel, which just now is the only
+building in town, is built of logs. It is not very spacious inside, but
+it has all the universe outside!
+
+Once a week the mail-carrier passes from Fort Abercrombie to Pembina,
+and as there are a half-dozen pioneers and half-breeds within
+a radius of thirty miles of Burlington, a post-office has been
+established here, which is kept in a shed adjoining the hotel.
+
+The postmaster gives us a cordial greeting. It is a pleasure to hear
+this bluff but wide-awake German say, "O, I have been acquainted with
+you for a long while. I followed you through the war and around the
+world."
+
+From first to last, in letters from the battle-field, from the various
+countries of the world, and in these notes of travel, it has ever
+been my aim to write for the comprehension of the people; and such
+spontaneous and uncalled-for commendation of my efforts out here upon
+the prairies was more grateful than many a well-meant paragraph from
+the public press.
+
+While pitching our tents, a flock of pigeons flew past, and down in the
+woods along the bank of the river we could hear their cooing. Those
+who had shot-guns went to the hunt; while some of us tried the river
+for fish, but returned luckless. The supper was good enough, however,
+without trout or pickerel. Who can ask for anything better than prairie
+chicken, plover, duck, pork, and pigeons?
+
+Then, when hunger is appeased, we sit around the camp-fire and think of
+the future of this paradise. Near by is another camp-fire.
+
+I see by its glimmering light a stalwart man with shaggy beard and a
+slouched hat. The emigrant's wife sits on the other side of the fire,
+and by its light I see that she wears a faded linsey-woolsey dress,
+that her hair is uncombed, and that she has not given much attention
+to her toilet. Two frowzy-headed children, a boy and a girl, are
+romping in the grass. The worldly effects of this family are in that
+canvas-covered ox-wagon, with a chicken-coop at the hinder part, and a
+tin kettle dangling beneath the axle. This emigrant has come from Iowa.
+He is moving into this valley "to take up a claim." That is, he is
+going to select a piece of choice land under the Homestead Act, build a
+cabin, and "make a break in the per-ra-ry," he says.
+
+He will be followed by others. The tide is setting in rapidly, and by
+the time the railway company are ready to carry freight there will be
+population enough here to support the road.
+
+We have an early start in the morning. Our route is along a highway,
+upon which there is more travel than upon many of the old turnpikes of
+New England for Winnipeg, and the Hudson Bay posts receive all their
+supplies over this road.
+
+At our noonday halt we fall in with Father Genin, a French Catholic
+priest, who lives on the bank of the river in a log-hut. He comes
+out to see us, wearing a long black bombazine priestly gown, and
+low-crowned hat. He is in the prime of life, was educated at Paris,
+came to Quebec, and is assigned to the Northwest. He has sailed over
+Lake Winnipeg, and paddled his canoe on the Saskatchawan and Athabasca.
+
+"My parish," he says, "reaches from St. Paul to the Rocky Mountains."
+He speaks in glowing terms of the country up "in the Northwest,"--as if
+we, who are now sixteen hundred miles from Boston, had not reached the
+Northwest!
+
+Our talk with Father Genin, and his enthusiastic description of the
+Saskatchawan Valley, has set us to thinking of this region, to which
+the United States once held claim, and which might now have been a part
+of our domain if it had not been for the pusillanimity of President
+Polk.
+
+Mackenzie was the first European who gave to the world an account
+of the country lying between us and the Arctic Sea. He was in this
+valley in 1789, and was charmed with it. He made his way down to
+Lake Winnipeg, thence up the Saskatchawan to Athabasca Lake. At the
+carrying-place between the Saskatchawan and Athabasca rivers, at
+Portage la Loche, he discovered springs of petroleum, which are thus
+described:--
+
+"Twenty-five miles from the fork are some bituminous springs, into
+which a pole may be inserted without the least resistance. The bitumen
+is in a fluid state, and when mixed with resin is used to gum the
+canoes. In its heated state it emits a smell like sea-coal. The
+banks of Slave River, which are elevated, discover veins of the same
+bituminous quality."[1]
+
+  [Footnote 1: General History of the Fur-Trade, p. 87.]
+
+His winter quarters were near Lake Athabasca, at Fort Chippewayan, more
+than thirteen hundred miles northwest from Chicago. He thus writes in
+regard to the country:--
+
+"In the fall of 1787, when I first arrived at Athabasca, Mr. Pond was
+settled on the bank of the Elk River, where he remained three years,
+and had as fine a kitchen-garden as I ever saw in Canada" (p. 127).
+
+Of the climate in winter he says that the beginning was cold, and about
+one foot of snow fell. The last week in December and the first week in
+January were marked by warm southwest breezes, which dissolved all the
+snow. Wild geese appeared on the 13th of March; and on the 5th of April
+the snow had entirely disappeared. On the 20th he wrote:--
+
+"The trees are budding, and many plants are in blossom" (p. 150).
+
+Mackenzie left the "Old Establishment," as one of the posts of the
+Hudson Bay Company was called, on the Peace River, in the month of May,
+for the Rocky Mountains. He followed the stream through the gap of the
+mountains, passed to the head-waters of Fraser River, and descended
+that stream to the Pacific. He thus describes the country along the
+Peace River:--
+
+"This magnificent theatre of nature has all the decorations which the
+trees and animals can afford it. Groves of poplars in every shape
+vary the scene, and their intervales are relieved with vast herds of
+elk and buffaloes,--the former choosing the steeps and uplands, the
+latter preferring the plains. The whole country displayed an exuberant
+verdure; the trees that bear blossoms were advancing fast to that
+delightful appearance, and the velvet rind of their branches reflecting
+the oblique rays of a rising or setting sun added a splendid gayety to
+the scene which no expressions of mine are qualified to describe" (p.
+154).
+
+This was in latitude 55° 17', about fourteen hundred miles from St.
+Paul.
+
+The next traveller who enlightened the world upon this region was Mr.
+Harman, a native of Vergennes, Vermont, who became connected with the
+Northwest Fur Company, and passed seventeen years in British America.
+He reached Lake Winnipeg in 1800, and his first winter was passed west
+of the lake. Under date of January 5th we have this record in his
+journal:--
+
+"Beautiful weather. Saw in different herds at least a thousand
+buffaloes grazing" (p. 68).
+
+"_February 17th._--We have now about a foot and a half of snow on the
+ground. This morning one of our people killed a buffalo on the prairie
+opposite the fort" (p. 73).
+
+"_March 14th._--The greater part of the snow is dissolved."[2]
+
+  [Footnote 2: On the 16th of March, 1870, while these notes
+  were under review, the streets of Boston were deep with snow,
+  and twenty-four trains were blockaded on the Boston and Albany
+  Railroad between Springfield and Albany.]
+
+On the 6th of April Mr. Harman writes: "I have taken a ride on
+horseback to a place where our people are making sugar. My path led me
+over a small prairie, and through a wood, where I saw a great variety
+of birds that were straining their tuneful throats as if to welcome the
+return of another spring; small animals were running about, or skipping
+from tree to tree, and at the same time were to be seen, swans,
+bustards, ducks, etc. swimming about in the rivers and ponds. All these
+things together rendered my ramble beautiful beyond description" (p.
+75).
+
+During the month of April there were two snow-storms, but the snow
+disappeared nearly as fast as it fell.
+
+One winter was passed by Mr. Harman in the country beyond Lake
+Athabasca, on the Athabasca River, where he says the snow during the
+winter "was at no time more than two feet and a half deep" (p. 174).
+
+On May 6th he writes: "We have planted our potatoes and sowed most of
+our garden-seeds" (p. 178).
+
+"_June 2d._--The seeds which we sowed in the garden have sprung up and
+grown remarkably well. The present prospect is that strawberries, red
+raspberries, shad-berries, cherries, etc. will be abundant this season."
+
+"_July 21st._--We have cut down our barley, and I think it is the
+finest that I ever saw in any country. The soil on the points of land
+along this river is excellent" (p. 181).
+
+"_October 3d._--We have taken our potatoes out of the ground, and
+find that nine bushels which we planted on the 10th of May last have
+produced a little more than one hundred and fifty bushels. The other
+vegetables in our garden have yielded an increase much in the same
+proportion, which is sufficient proof that the soil of the points of
+land along this river is good. Indeed, I am of opinion that wheat, rye,
+barley, oats, peas, etc. would grow well in the plains around us" (p.
+186).
+
+He passed several winters at the head-waters of Peace River, in the
+Rocky Mountains. In his journal we have these records:--
+
+"_May 7th._--The weather is very fine, and vegetation is far advanced
+for the season. Swans and ducks are numerous in the lakes and rivers."
+
+"_May 22d._--Planted potatoes and sowed garden-seeds."
+
+"_October 3rd._--We have taken our vegetables out of the ground. We
+have forty-one bushels of potatoes, the produce of one bushel planted
+last spring. Our turnips, barley, etc. have produced well" (p. 257).
+
+In 1814 he writes under date of September 3d: "A few days since we
+cut down our barley. The five quarts which I sowed on the 1st of May
+have yielded as many bushels. One acre of ground, producing in the
+same proportion, would yield eighty-four bushels. This is sufficient
+proof that the soil in many places in this quarter is favorable to
+agriculture" (p. 267).
+
+Sir John Richardson, who explored the arctic regions by this route,
+says: "Wheat is raised with profit at Fort Liard, lat. 60° 5' N.,
+lon. 122° 31' W., and four or five hundred feet above the sea. This
+locality, however, being in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, is
+subject to summer frosts, and the grain does not ripen every year,
+though in favorable seasons it gives a good return."
+
+In 1857, Captain Palliser, of the Royal Engineers, was sent out by the
+English government to explore the region between Lake Superior and
+the Pacific, looking towards the construction of a railroad across
+the continent, through the British Possessions. His report to the
+government is published in the Blue-Book.
+
+Speaking of the country along the Assinniboine, he says: "The
+Assinniboine has a course of nearly three hundred miles; lies wholly
+within a fertile and partially wooded country. The lower part of the
+valley for seventy miles, before it joins the Red River, affords land
+of surpassing richness and fertility" (p. 9).
+
+Of the South Saskatchawan, he says that "it flows through a
+thick-wooded country" (p. 10).
+
+The natural features of the north branch of that river are set forth in
+glowing language:--
+
+"The richness of the natural pasture in many places on the North
+Saskatchawan and its tributary, Battle River, can hardly be
+exaggerated. Its value does not consist in its long rank grasses or in
+its great quantity, but from its fine quality, comprising nutritious
+species of grasses, along with natural vetches in great variety, which
+remain throughout the winter juicy and fit for the nourishment of stock.
+
+"Almost anywhere along the Saskatchawan a sufficiency of good soil is
+everywhere to be found, fit for all purposes, both for pasture and
+tillage, extending towards the thick-wooded hills, and also to be found
+in the region of the lakes, between Forts Pitt and Edmonton. In almost
+every direction around Edmonton the land is fine, excepting only the
+hilly country at the higher level, such as the Beacon Hills; even there
+there is nothing like sterility, only the surface is too much broken
+to be occupied while more level country can be obtained" (p. 10).
+
+Going up the Saskatchawan he discovered beds of coal, which are thus
+described:--
+
+"In the upper part of the Saskatchawan country, coal of fine quality
+occurs abundantly, and may hereafter be very useful. It is quite fit to
+be employed in the smelting of iron from the ore of that metal, which
+occurs in large quantities in the same strata" (p. 11).
+
+Two hundred miles north of this coal deposit, Mackenzie discovered the
+springs of petroleum and coal strata along the banks of the streams.
+Harman saw the same.
+
+Palliser wintered on the Saskatchawan, and speaks thus of the climate:--
+
+"The climate in winter is more rigorous than that of Red River, and
+partial thaws occur long before the actual opening of spring. The
+winter is much the same in duration, but the amount of snow that falls
+rapidly decreases as we approach the mountains. The river generally
+freezes about the 12th of November, and breaks up from the 17th to
+the 20th of April. During the winter season of five months the means
+of travelling and transport are greatly facilitated by the snow, the
+ordinary depth of which is sufficient for the use of sleighs, without
+at the same time being great enough to impede horses.
+
+"The whole of this region of country would be valuable, not only for
+agriculture, but also for mixed purposes of settlement. The whole
+region is well wooded and watered, and enjoys a climate far preferable
+to that of either Sweden or Norway. I have not only seen excellent
+wheat, but Indian corn (which will not succeed in England or Ireland),
+ripening on Mr. Pratt's farm at the Qui Appelle Lakes in 1857" (p. 11).
+
+Father De Smet, a Catholic missionary, in 1845 crossed the Rocky
+Mountains from British Columbia, eastward to the head-waters of the
+south branch of the Saskatchawan, and passed along the eastern base of
+the mountains to Edmonton. He characterizes the country as "an ocean of
+prairies."
+
+"The entire region," he says, "in the vicinity of the eastern chain of
+the Rocky Mountains, serving as their base for thirty or sixty miles,
+is extremely fertile, abounding in forests, plains, prairies, lakes,
+streams, and mineral springs. The rivers and streams are innumerable,
+and on every side offer situations favorable for the construction of
+mills. The northern and southern branches of the Saskatchawan water the
+district I have traversed for a distance of about three hundred miles.
+Forests of pines, cypress, cedars, poplar and aspen trees, as well as
+others of different kinds, occupy a large portion of it. The country
+would be capable of supporting a large population, and the soil is
+favorable for the production of wheat, barley, potatoes, and beans,
+which grow here as well as in the more southern countries."
+
+It is a region abundantly supplied with coal of the lignite formation.
+Father Genin has a specimen of lignite taken from the banks of Maple
+River, about seven miles from our camp. It is a small branch of the Red
+River flowing from the west. If we were to travel northwest a little
+more than one hundred miles, we should come to the Little Souris or
+Mouse River, a branch of the Assinniboine, where we should find seams
+of the same kind of coal. Continuing on to the Saskatchawan, we shall
+find it appearing all along the river from Fort Edmonton to the Rocky
+Mountains, a distance of between three and four hundred miles.
+
+Dr. Hector, geologist to the exploring expedition under Captain
+Palliser, thus describes the coal on Red Deer River, a branch of the
+South Saskatchawan:--
+
+"The lignite forms beds of great thickness, one group of seams
+measuring twenty-five feet in thickness, of which twelve feet consist
+of pure compact lignite. At one point the seam was on fire, and the
+Indians say that for as long as they can remember the fire at this
+place has not been extinguished, summer or winter" (p. 233).
+
+Father De Smet passed down the river in 1845, and it was then on fire.
+If we were to travel northward from the Red Deer to the Peace River,
+we should find the same formation; and if we were to glide down the
+Mackenzie towards the Arctic Sea, we should, according to the intrepid
+voyager whose name it bears, find seams of coal along its banks.
+
+Mr. Bourgeau, botanist to the Palliser Exploring Expedition, in a
+letter addressed to Sir William Hooker, has the following remarks upon
+the capabilities of the Northwest for supporting a dense population:--
+
+"It remains for me to call the attention of the English government
+to the advantages there would be in establishing agricultural
+districts in the vast plains of Rupert's Land, and particularly in
+the Saskatchawan, in the neighborhood of Fort Carlton. This district
+is much better adapted to the culture of staple crops than one would
+have been inclined to believe from this high latitude. In effect, the
+few attempts at the culture of cereals already made in the vicinity of
+the Hudson Bay Company's posts demonstrate by their success how easy
+it would be to obtain products sufficiently large to remunerate the
+efforts of the agriculturist. Then, in order to put the land under
+cultivation, it would be necessary only to till the better portions
+of the soil. The prairies offer natural pasturage as favorable for
+the maintenance of numerous herds as if they had been artificially
+created. The construction of houses for habitation and for pioneer
+development would involve but little expense, because in many parts
+of the country, independent of wood, one would find fitting stones
+for building purposes, and it is easy to find clay for bricks.... The
+vetches found here are as fitting for nourishment of cattle as the
+clover of European pasturage. The abundance of buffaloes, and the
+facility with which herds of horses and oxen increase, demonstrate that
+it would be enough to shelter animals in winter, and to feed them in
+the shelters with hay.... In the gardens of the Hudson Bay Company's
+posts, beans, peas, and French beans have been successfully cultivated;
+also cabbages, turnips, carrots, rhubarb, and currants" (p. 250).
+
+The winters of the Northwest are wholly unlike those of the Eastern and
+Middle States. The meteorologist of Palliser's Expedition says: "Along
+the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains there is a narrow strip of
+country in which there is never more than a few inches of snow on the
+ground. About forty miles to the eastward, however, the fall begins to
+be much greater, but during the winter rarely exceeds two feet. On the
+prairies the snow evaporates rapidly, and, except in hollows where it
+is drifted, never accumulates; but in the woods it is protected, and in
+spring is often from three to four feet deep" (p. 268).
+
+Captain Palliser and party travelled from post to post during the
+winter without difficulty. In February, 1859, he travelled from
+Edmonton to Lake St. Ann's. On two nights the mercury was frozen in the
+bulb,--as it is not unfrequently at Franconia, New Hampshire. Exclusive
+of those two cold nights, the mean of the temperature was seventeen. He
+says: "This was a trip made during the coldest weather experienced in
+the country. If proper precautions are taken, there is nothing merely
+in extreme cold to stop travelling in the wooded country, but the
+danger of freezing from exposure upon the open plains is so great that
+they cannot be ventured on with safety during any part of the winter"
+(p. 268).
+
+The Wesleyan Missionary Society of England has a mission at Edmonton,
+under the care of Rev. Thomas Woolsey. The following extracts from
+his journal will show the progress of the winter and spring season in
+1855:--
+
+  "Nov.   1.  A little snow has fallen for the first time.
+    "    12.  Swamps frozen over.
+    "    13.  A little more snow.
+    "    17.  Crossed river on the ice.
+   Dec.   2.  The past week has been remarkably mild.
+    "     9.  More snow.
+   1856. Jan. 8 to 11. More like spring than winter.
+   Jan.  13.  Fine open weather.
+    "    17.  Somewhat colder.
+   Feb.  14.  Weather open.
+    "    16.  Snow rapidly disappearing.
+   Mar.  11.  More snow.
+    "    17.  Firing pasture-grounds to-day.
+    "    18.  Thunder-storm.
+    "    21.  Ducks and geese returning.
+    "    30.  More snow, but it is rapidly disappearing.
+    "    31.  Snow quite gone.
+   April  7.  Ploughing commenced.
+    "    28.  First wheat sown."
+
+The succeeding winter was more severe, and three feet of snow fell
+during the season, but the spring opened quite as early as in 1856. The
+comparative mildness of the winter climate of all this vast area of
+the West and Northwest, at the head-waters of the Missouri, and in the
+British dominions, as far north as latitude 70°, is in a great measure
+due to the warm winds of the Pacific.
+
+In the autumn of 1868 I crossed the Pacific, from Japan to San
+Francisco, in the Pacific mail-steamer Colorado. Soon after leaving the
+Bay of Yokohama we entered the Kuro-Siwo, or the Black Ocean River of
+the Asiatic coast. This ocean current bears a remarkable resemblance to
+the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. Along the eastern shore of Japan the
+water, like that along Virginia and the Carolinas, is very cold, but we
+suddenly pass into the heated river, which, starting from the vicinity
+of the Philippine Islands, laves the eastern shore of Formosa, and
+rushes past the Bay of Yeddo at the rate of eighty miles per day. This
+heated river strikes across the Northern Pacific to British Columbia
+and Puget Sound, giving a genial climate nearly up to the Arctic
+Circle. No icebergs are ever encountered in the North Pacific. The
+influence of the Kuro-Siwo upon the Northwest is very much like that
+which the Gulf Stream has upon England and Norway. It gives to Oregon,
+Washington, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island winters so mild that
+the people cannot lay in a supply of ice for the summer. Roses bloom
+in the gardens throughout the year. So the water heated beneath the
+tropics, off the eastern coast of Siam and north of Borneo, flows along
+the shore of Japan up to the Aleutian Isles, imparting its heat to the
+air, which, under the universal law, ascends when heated, and sweeps
+over the Rocky Mountains, and tempers the climate east of them almost
+to Hudson Bay.
+
+So wonderfully arranged is this mighty machinery of nature, that
+millions of the human race in coming years will rear their habitations
+and enjoy the blessings of civilization in regions that otherwise would
+be pathless solitudes.
+
+In the meteorological register kept at Carlton House, in lat. 52° 51',
+on the eastern limit of the Saskatchawan Plain, eleven hundred feet
+above the sea, we find this entry: "At this place westerly winds bring
+mild weather, and the easterly ones are attended by fog and snow."
+
+By the following tabular statement we see at a glance the snow-fall at
+various places in the United States. We give average depths for the
+winter as set down in Blodget's climatology.
+
+  Oxford County, Maine       90   inches.
+  Dover, New Hampshire       68     "
+  Montreal, Canada           66     "
+  Burlington, Vermont        85     "
+  Worcester, Massachusetts   55     "
+  Cincinnati, Ohio           19     "
+  Burlington, Iowa           15     "
+  Beloit, Wisconsin          25     "
+  Fort Abercrombie, Dakota   12     "
+
+From this testimony I am impelled to believe that the immense area
+west of Lake Superior and south of the 60th parallel is as capable of
+being settled as those portions of Russia, Sweden, and Norway south of
+that degree, now swarming with people. That parallel passes through
+St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Christiania, and the Shetland Isles on the
+eastern hemisphere, Fort Liard and Central Alaska on the western.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTHWEST.
+
+
+Hundreds of Winnipeggers were upon the road, either going to or
+returning from St. Cloud, from whence all groceries and other
+supplies are obtained. The teams consist of a single horse or ox, not
+unfrequently a cow, harnessed to a two-wheeled cart. The outfit is
+a curiosity. The wheels are six or seven feet in diameter, and very
+dishing. A small rack is affixed to the wooden axle. The concern is
+composed wholly of wood, with a few raw-hide thongs. It is primitive
+in design and construction, and though so rude, though there is not an
+ounce of iron about the cart, it serves the purpose of these voyagers
+admirably. Our teams have been stuck in the mud, at the crossings of
+creeks, half a dozen times a day; but those high-wheeled carts are
+borne up by the grass roots where ours go down to the hub.
+
+There is a family to each cart,--father, mother, and a troop of
+frowzy-headed, brown-faced children, who, though shoeless and hatless
+and half naked, are as happy as the larks singing in the meadows,
+or the plover skimming the air on quivering wings. They travel in
+companies,--fifteen or twenty carts in a caravan. When night comes on,
+the animals are turned out to graze; the families cook each their own
+scanty supply of food, smoke their pipes by the glimmering camp-fire,
+tell their stories of adventure among the buffaloes, roll themselves
+in a blanket, creep beneath their carts,--all the family in a pile if
+the night is cool,--sleep soundly, and are astir before daylight, and
+on the move by sunrise. The journey down and back is between eight and
+nine hundred miles; and as the average distance travelled is only about
+twenty miles a day, it takes from forty to fifty days to make the round
+trip. No wonder the people of that settlement are anxious to have a
+railroad reach the Red River.
+
+Leaving the Pembina road and striking westward to the river, we descend
+the bank to the bottom-land, which is usually about twenty-five feet
+below the general surface of the valley. We cross the river by a rope
+ferry kept by a half-breed, and strike out upon the Dakota plain. The
+trail that we are upon bears northwest, and is the main road to Fort
+Totten, near Lake Miniwakan, or the "Devil's Lake," and the forts on
+the Upper Missouri. Here, as upon the Minnesota side, the wild-flowers
+are blooming in luxuriance. Our horses remorselessly trample the roses,
+the convolvulus, and the lilies beneath their feet.
+
+The prairie chickens are whirring in every direction, and one of our
+bluff and burly teamsters, who is at home upon the prairies, who in the
+First Minnesota Regiment faced the Rebels in all the battles of the
+Peninsula, who was in the thickest of the fight at Gettysburg, who has
+hunted Indians over the Upper Missouri region, who is as keen-sighted
+as a hawk, takes the grouse right and left as they rise. His slouched
+hat bobs up and down everywhere. He seems to know just where the game
+is; now he is at your right hand, now upon the run a half-mile away
+upon the prairies. He stops, raises his gun,--there is a puff of smoke,
+another, and he has two more chickens in his bag. We are sure of having
+good suppers as long as he is about.
+
+We reach Dakota City,--another thriving town of one log-house,--peopled
+by Monsieur Marchaud, a French Canadian, his Chippewa wife and twelve
+children.
+
+While our tents are being pitched, we cross the river by another
+ferry to Georgetown,--a place consisting of two dwellings and a large
+storehouse owned by the Hudson Bay Company. This is the present
+steamboat landing, though sometimes the one steamer now on the river
+goes up to Fort Abercrombie. The river is narrow and winding south of
+this point, and not well adapted to navigation.
+
+We find an obliging young Scotchman with a thin-faced wife in
+possession of the property belonging to the Company. He takes care of
+the premises through the year on a salary of two hundred dollars, and
+has his tea, sugar, and groceries furnished him. He can cultivate as
+much land as he pleases, though he does not own a foot of it,--neither
+does the Company own an acre. It belongs to the people of the United
+States, and any brave young man with a large-hearted wife may become
+possessor of these beautiful acres if he will, with the moral certainty
+of finding them quadrupled in value in five years.
+
+This great highway of the North lies along the eastern bank of the
+river. We have travelled over it all the way from Fort Abercrombie,
+passing and meeting teams. Here we see a train of thirty wagons drawn
+by oxen, loaded with goods consisting of boxes of tea, sugar, salt,
+pork, bacon, and bales of cloth, which are shipped by steamer from this
+landing. The teas come from England to Montreal, are there shipped to
+Milwaukie, and transported by rail to St. Cloud. Each chest is closely
+packed in canvas and taken through in bond. The transportation of the
+Hudson Bay Company between this place and St. Cloud amounts to about
+seven hundred tons per annum.
+
+In addition, the Red River transportation carried on by the Indians and
+half-breeds is very large. About twenty-five hundred carts pass down
+and up this highway during the year, each one carrying upon an average
+nine hundred pounds.
+
+Besides all this there is the United States government transportation
+to Fort Abercrombie and the forts beyond, amounting last year to
+eighteen hundred tons. The rates paid by the War Department government
+for transportation are $1.36-3/8 per hundred pounds for every hundred
+miles. All of this traffic will be transferred at once to the Northern
+Pacific Railroad upon its completion to the Red River.
+
+The estimated value of the Red River trade is ten millions of dollars
+per annum, and it is increasing every year.
+
+The keen-eyed hunters of our party have been on the lookout for a stray
+buffalo or a deer, but the buffaloes are a hundred miles away. We hear
+that they have come north of the Missouri in great numbers, and those
+who are to go West anticipate rare sport. For want of a buffalo-steak
+we put up with beef. It is juicy and tender, from one of Mr. Marchaud's
+heifers, which has been purchased for the party.
+
+It is a supper fit for sovereigns,--and every one is a sovereign out
+here, on the unsurveyed lands, of which we, in common with the rest of
+the people, are proprietors. We are lords of the manor, and we have sat
+down to a feast. Our eggs are newly laid by the hens of Dakota City,
+our milk is fresh from the cows whose bells are tinkling in the bushes
+along the bank of the river, and the cakes upon our table are of the
+finest flour in the world. Hunger furnishes the best relish, and when
+the cloth is removed we sit around the camp-fire during the evening,
+passing away the hours with wit, repartee, and jest, mingled with sober
+argument and high intellectual thought.
+
+Our tents are pitched upon the river's bank. Far away to the south we
+trace the dim outline of the timber on the streams flowing in from the
+west. Turning our eyes in that direction, we see only the level sea of
+verdure,--the green grass waving in the evening breeze. At this place
+our company will divide,--Governor Marshall, Mr. Holmes, and several
+other gentlemen, going on to the Missouri, while the rest of us will
+travel eastward to Lake Superior.
+
+It would be a pleasure to go with them,--to ride over the rolling
+prairies, to fall in with buffaloes and try my pony in a race with
+a big bull. It would be thrilling,--only if the hunted should right
+about face, and toss the hunter on his horns, the thrill would be of a
+different sort!
+
+We sit by our camp-fires at night with our faces and hands smeared
+with an abominable mixture prepared by our M. D., ostensibly to keep
+the mosquitoes from presenting their bills, but which we surmise is a
+little game of his to daub us with a diabolical mixture of glycerine,
+soap, and tar! Our tents are as odorous as the shop of a keeper of
+naval stores. There is an all-pervading smell of oakum and turpentine.
+Clouds of mosquitoes come, take a whiff, and retire in disgust. We can
+hear them having a big swear at the Doctor for compounding such an
+ointment!
+
+I think of the country which those who are going west will see, and of
+the region beyond,--the valley of the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the
+slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and the hills of Montana,--territory to
+be included in the future Empire of the Northwest. I have written the
+word, but it bears no political meaning in these notes. It has the same
+signification as when applied to the State of New York. The Empire of
+the Northwest will be the territory lying north of the central ridge
+of the continent. Milwaukie may be taken as a starting-point for a
+survey of this imperial domain. That city is near the 43d parallel;
+following it westward, we see that it passes over the mountain-range on
+whose northern slopes the southern affluents of the Yellowstone take
+their rise. All the fertile valleys of the Columbia and its tributaries
+lie north of this parallel; all the streams of the Upper Missouri
+country, and the magnificent water-system of Puget Sound, and the
+intricate bays and inlets of British Columbia, reaching on to Alaska,
+having their only counterpart in the fiords of Norway, are north of
+that degree of latitude. I have already taken a view of the region
+now comprised in the British dominions east of the Rocky Mountains;
+but equally interesting will be a review of the territories of the
+Republic,--Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, also British
+Columbia and Vancouver.
+
+Dakota contains a little more than a hundred and fifty thousand square
+miles,--nearly enough territory to make four States as large as Ohio.
+
+"The climate and soil of Dakota," says the Commissioner of Public
+Lands, General Wilson, in his Report for 1869, "are exceedingly
+favorable to the growth of wheat, corn, and other cereals, while all
+the fruits raised in the Northern States are here produced in the
+greatest perfection.... The wheat crop varied from twenty to forty
+bushels to the acre. Oats have produced from fifty to seventy bushels
+to the acre, and are of excellent quality" (p. 144).
+
+Settlements are rapidly extending up the Missouri, and another year
+will behold this northern section teeming with emigrants. The northern
+section of the territory is bare of wood, but the southern portion is
+well supplied with timber in the Black Hills.
+
+Two thousand square miles of the region of the Black Hills, says
+Professor Hayden, geologist to the United States Exploring Expedition
+under General Reynolds, is covered with excellent pine timber. That
+is an area half as large as the State of Connecticut, ample for the
+southern section; while the settlers of the northern portion will be
+within easy distance by rail of the timbered lands of Minnesota.
+
+The northern half of Wyoming is north of the line we have drawn from
+Milwaukie to the Pacific, and of this Territory the Land Commissioner
+says: "A large portion of Wyoming produces a luxuriant growth of short
+nutritious grass, upon which cattle will feed and fatten during summer
+and winter without other provender. Those lands, even in their present
+condition, are superior for grazing. The climate is mild and healthy,
+the air and water pure, and springs abundant" (p. 159).
+
+Beyond the 104th meridian lies Montana, a little larger than Dakota,
+with area enough for four States of the size of Ohio.
+
+At St. Paul I was fortunate enough to fall in with Major-General
+Hancock, who had just returned from Montana, and who was enthusiastic
+in its praise.
+
+"I consider it," he said, "to be one of the first grazing countries
+in the world. Its valleys are exceedingly fertile. It is capable of
+sustaining a dense population."
+
+Wheat grows as luxuriantly in the valleys at the base of the Rocky
+Mountains as in Minnesota. The Territory appears to be richer in
+minerals than any other section of the country, the gold product
+surpassing that of any other State or Territory. More than one hundred
+million dollars have been taken from the mines of Montana since the
+discovery of gold in this territory in 1862. Coal appears upon the
+Yellowstone in veins ten, fifteen, and twenty feet in thickness. It is
+found on the Big Horn and on the Missouri.
+
+"From the mouth of the Big Horn," says Professor Hayden, "to the union
+of the Yellowstone with the Missouri, nearly all the way, lignite
+(coal) beds occupy the whole country.... The beds are well developed,
+and at least twenty or thirty seams are shown, varying in purity and
+thickness from a few inches to seven feet" (Report, p. 59).
+
+The mountains are covered with wood, and there will be no lack of fuel
+in Montana. The timber lands of this Territory are estimated by the
+Land Commissioner to cover nearly twelve millions of acres,--an area as
+large as New Hampshire and Vermont combined. The agricultural land, or
+land that may be ploughed, is estimated at twenty-three million acres,
+nearly as much as is contained in the State of Ohio. The grazing lands
+are put down at sixty-nine millions,--or a region as large as New York,
+Pennsylvania, and New Jersey together!
+
+Isn't it cold? Are not the winters intolerable? Are not the summers
+short in Montana? Many times the questions have been asked.
+
+The temperature of the climate in winter will be seen from the
+following thermometrical record kept at Virginia City:--
+
+  1866. Dec. Mean for the month, 31°    above zero.
+  1867. Jan.  "      "     "     23°.73   "    "
+   "    Feb.  "      "     "     26°      "    "
+
+The summer climate is exceedingly agreeable, and admirably adapted to
+fruit culture.
+
+In July last Mr. Milnor Roberts, Mr. Thomas Canfield, and other
+gentlemen of the Pacific exploring party, were in Montana. Mr. Roberts
+makes our mouths water by his description of the fruits of that
+Territory.
+
+"Missoula," he says, "is a thriving young town near the western base of
+the Rocky Mountains, containing a grist-mill, saw-mill, two excellent
+stores, and from twenty-five to thirty dwellings, a number of them well
+built. I visited McWhirk's garden of five acres, where I found ripe
+tomatoes, watermelons, muskmelons, remarkably fine potatoes, beans,
+peas, and squashes; also young apple-trees and other fruit-trees, and
+a very fine collection of flowers; and all this had been brought about
+from the virgin soil in two years, and would this year (1869) yield the
+owner over two thousand dollars in gold, the only currency known in
+Montana" (Report, p. 23).
+
+This fruit and flower garden is about one hundred miles from the top of
+the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
+
+Deer Lodge City, fifteen miles from the dividing ridge, is situated in
+the Deer Lodge Valley, and its attractions are thus set forth by Mr.
+Roberts:--
+
+"The Deer Lodge Valley is very wide, in places ten to fifteen miles
+from the hills on one side to the hills on the other, nearly level, and
+everywhere clothed with rich grass, upon which we observed numerous
+herds of tame cattle and horses feeding. The Deer Lodge Creek flows
+through it, and adds immensely to its value as an agricultural region.
+Some farms are cultivated; but farming is yet in its infancy, and there
+are thousands of acres of arable land here and elsewhere in Montana
+awaiting settlement" (p. 25).
+
+West of Montana is Idaho, containing eighty-six thousand square
+miles,--large enough for two States of the size of Ohio. Nearly all of
+this Territory lies north of the 43d parallel. It is watered by the
+Columbia and its tributaries,--mountain streams fed by melting snows.
+
+"The mountains of Idaho," says the Land Commissioner, in his exhaustive
+Report for 1869, "often attain great altitude, having peaks rising
+above the line of perpetual snow, their lower slopes being furrowed
+with numerous streams and alternately clothed with magnificent forests
+and rich grasses. The plains are elevated table-lands covered with
+indigenous grasses, constituting pasturage unsurpassed in any section
+of our country. Numerous large flocks of sheep and herds of domestic
+cattle now range these pastures, requiring but little other sustenance
+throughout the entire year, and no protection from the weather other
+than that afforded by the lower valleys or the cañons, in which many
+of the streams take their way through the upland country. The valleys
+are beautiful, fertile depressions of the surface, protected from
+the searching winds of summer and searching blasts of winter, each
+intersected by some considerable stream, adjoining which on either
+bank, and extending to the commencement of the rise of table-land
+or mountain, are broad stretches of prairies or meadows producing
+the richest grasses, and with the aid of irrigation, crops of grain,
+fruit, and vegetables superior to those of any of the Eastern States,
+and rivalling the vegetation of the Mississippi Valley. The pastures
+of these valleys are generally uncovered with snow in the most severe
+winters, and afford excellent food for cattle and sheep, the herbage
+drying upon the stalk during the later summer and autumn months into a
+superior quality of hay. As no artificial shelter from the weather is
+here required for sheep or cattle, stock-raising is attended with but
+little outlay and is very profitable, promising soon to become one of
+the greatest sources of wealth in this rapidly developing but still
+underrated Territory. It was considered totally valueless except for
+mining purposes, and uninviting to the agriculturist, until emigration
+disclosed its hidden resources.
+
+"It is the favorite custom of herdsmen in Idaho to reserve their
+lower meadows for winter pastures, allowing the stock to range the
+higher plains during spring, summer, and autumn; the greater extent
+of the table-lands, and the superior adaptability of the valleys for
+agriculture presenting reasons for the adoption of this method as one
+of economical importance.
+
+"The climate of Idaho varies considerably with the degrees of latitude
+through which its limits extend, but not so much as would naturally
+be supposed from its great longitudinal extension; the isothermal
+lines of the Territory, running from east to west, have a well-defined
+northward variation, caused by the influence of air currents from the
+Pacific Ocean. Throughout the spring, summer, and autumn months, in the
+northern as well as the southern sections, the weather is generally
+delightful and salubrious; in the winter months the range of the
+thermometer depends greatly upon the altitude of the surface,--the
+higher mountains being visited by extreme cold and by heavy falls of
+snow; the lower mountain-ranges and the plains having winters generally
+less severe than those of northern Iowa and Wisconsin or central
+Minnesota, while greater dryness of the atmosphere renders a lower
+fall of the thermometer less perceptible; and the valleys being rarely
+visited by cold weather, high winds, or considerable falls of snow.
+Considered in its yearly average, the climate is exactly adapted to
+sheep-growing and the production of wool, the herding of cattle, and
+manufacture of dairy products, the raising of very superior breeds of
+horses, as well as the culture of all Northern varieties of fruits,
+such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, grapes, and all of the
+ordinary cereals and vegetables" (p. 164).
+
+This is all different from what we have conceived the Rocky Mountains
+to be.
+
+When the government reports of the explorations of 1853 were issued,
+Jeff Davis was Secretary of War, and he deliberately falsified the
+report of Governor Stevens's explorations from Lake Superior to the
+valley of the Columbia. Governor Stevens reported that the route passed
+through a region highly susceptible of agriculture; but the Secretary
+of War, even then plotting treason, in his summary of the advantages
+of the various routes, asserted that Governor Stevens had overstated
+the facts, and that there were not more than 1,000 square miles, or
+640,000 acres, of agricultural lands. The Land Commissioner in his
+Report estimates the amount of agricultural lands at 16,925,000
+acres. The amount of improved lands in Ohio in 1860 was 12,665,000
+acres, or more than 4,000,000 less than the available agricultural
+lands in Idaho. These are lands that need no irrigation. Of such
+lands there are 14,000,000 acres, which, in the language of the
+Commissioner, are "redeemable by irrigation into excellent pasture
+and agricultural lands." The grazing-lands are estimated at 5,000,000
+acres, the timbered lands at 7,500,000 acres, besides 8,000,000 acres
+of mineral lands. Although the population of Idaho probably does not
+exceed 50,000, half of whom are engaged in mining, the value of the
+agricultural products for 1868 amounted to $12,000,000, while the
+mineral product was $10,000,000.
+
+Passing on to Oregon we find a State containing 95,000 square miles,
+two and a half times larger than Ohio.
+
+"Oregon," says General Wilson, in his Report upon the public lands,
+"is peculiarly a crop-raising and fruit-growing State, though by no
+means deficient in valuable mineral resources. Possessing a climate of
+unrivalled salubrity, abounding in vast tracts of rich arable lands,
+heavily timbered throughout its mountain ranges, watered by innumerable
+springs and streams, and subject to none of the drawbacks arising from
+the chilling winds and seasons of aridity which prevail farther south,
+it is justly considered the most favored region on the Pacific slope as
+a home for an agricultural and manufacturing population" (p. 197).
+
+Of "western Oregon," he says, "the portion of the State first settled
+embraces about 31,000 square miles, or 20,000,000 acres, being nearly
+one third of the area of the whole State, and contains the great
+preponderance of population and wealth. Nearly the whole of this large
+extent of country is valuable for agriculture and grazing; all of the
+productions common to temperate regions may be cultivated here with
+success. When the land is properly cultivated, the farmer rarely fails
+to meet with an adequate reward for his labors. The fruits produced
+here, such as apples, pears, plums, quinces, and grapes, are of
+superior quality and flavor. Large quantities of apples are annually
+shipped to the San Francisco market, where they usually command a
+higher price than those of California, owing to their finer flavor.
+
+"The valleys of the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rouge Rivers, are
+embraced within this portion of the State, and there is no region of
+country on the continent presenting a finer field for agriculture and
+stock-raising, because of the mildness of the climate and the depth
+and richness of the soil. Farmers make no provision for housing their
+cattle during winter, and none is required; although in about the same
+latitude as Maine on the Atlantic, the winter temperature corresponds
+with that of Savannah, Georgia" (p. 194).
+
+North of Oregon lies the Territory of Washington, containing 70,000
+square miles, lacking only 9,000 to make it twice as large as Ohio.
+
+Our camp, where I am taking this westward look, is pitched very near
+the 47th parallel, may be five or six miles north of it. If I were to
+travel due west along the parallel a little more than twelve hundred
+miles, I should reach Olympia, the capital of the Territory, situated
+on Puget Sound,--the name given to that vast ramification of waters
+known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Hood's Canal, and
+Puget Sound, with a shore line of 1,500 miles.
+
+"There is no State in the Union," says the Land Commissioner, "and
+perhaps no country in the world of the same extent, that offers so many
+harbors and such excellent facilities for commerce" (p. 198).
+
+The timbered lands of Washington are approximately estimated at
+20,000,000 acres, and the prairie lands cover an area equally great.
+The forests embrace the red and yellow pine of gigantic growth, often
+attaining the height of three hundred feet, and from nine to twelve
+feet in diameter. It is said that a million feet have been cut from a
+single acre! Says the Commissioner, "The soil in the river-bottoms
+is thinly timbered with maple, ash, and willow. These lands yield
+heavy crops of wheat, barley, and oats, while vegetables attain
+enormous size. The highlands are generally rolling, and well adapted
+to cultivation.... The average yield of potatoes to the acre is six
+hundred bushels, wheat forty, peas sixty, timothy-hay five tons, and
+oats seventy bushels" (p. 199).
+
+Mr. Roberts, who explored this region last year, says that the great
+plain of the Columbia is "a high rolling prairie, covered everywhere
+abundantly with bunch-grass to the summits of the highest hills;
+treeless, excepting along the streams. This is an immense grazing
+area of the most superior character, interspersed with the valleys
+of perennial streams, along which are lands that, when settled by
+industrious farmers, will be of the most productive character, as we
+have seen in the case of a number of improvements already made; while
+the climate is not only salubrious, but remarkably attractive" (Report,
+p. 19).
+
+He gives this estimate of the area suited to agriculture and grazing:--
+
+"In Washington Territory alone, on its eastern side, there are at least
+20,000 square miles, or 12,800,000 acres of the finest grazing-lands,
+on which thousands of cattle and sheep will be raised as cheaply as in
+any other quarter of the globe, and this grass is so nutritious that
+the cattle raised upon it cannot be surpassed in their weight and
+quality. Snow rarely falls to sufficient depth to interfere seriously
+with their grazing all through the winter. Such may be taken as a
+general view upon this important point, respecting a Territory nearly
+half as large as the State of Pennsylvania" (p. 19).
+
+Along the shores of Puget Sound, and on the island of Vancouver, are
+extensive deposits of bituminous coal, conveniently situated for the
+future steam-marine of the Pacific. Large quantities are now shipped to
+San Francisco for the use of the Pacific mail-steamers.
+
+Not only in Washington, but up the coast of British Columbia, the
+coal-deposits crop out in numerous places.
+
+An explorer on Simpson River, which next to the Fraser is the largest
+in British Columbia, thus writes to Governor Douglas: "I saw seams of
+coal to-day fifteen feet thick, better than any mined at Vancouver"
+(Parliamentary Blue-Book).
+
+Coal in Montana, in Idaho, in Washington, on Vancouver, in British
+Columbia; coal on the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Columbia,
+the Fraser; coal on Simpson River, coal in Alaska! Measureless
+forests all over the Pacific slope! Timber enough for all the
+world, masts and spars sufficient for the mercantile marine of
+every nation! Great rivers, thousands of waterfalls, unequalled
+facilities for manufacturing! An agricultural region unsurpassed for
+fertility! Exhaustless mineral wealth! Fisheries equalling those of
+Newfoundland,--salmon in every stream, cod and herring abounding along
+the coast! Nothing wanting for a varied industry.
+
+Unfold the map of North America and look at its western coast. From
+Panama northward there is no harbor that can ever be available to the
+commerce of the Pacific till we reach the Bay of San Francisco. From
+thence northward to the Columbia the waves of the sea break against
+rugged mountains. The Columbia pours its waters through the Coast
+Range, but a bar at its mouth has practically closed it to commerce.
+Not till we reach Puget Sound do we find a good harbor. North of that
+magnificent gateway are numberless bays and inlets. Like the coast
+of Maine, there is a harbor every five or ten miles, where ships may
+ride in safety, sheltered from storms, and open at all seasons of the
+year. There never will be any icebound ships on the coast of British
+Columbia, for the warm breath of the tropics is felt there throughout
+the year.
+
+While the map is unfolded, look at Puget Sound, and think of its
+connection with Japan and China. Latitude and longitude are to be taken
+into account when we make long journeys. Liverpool is between the 53d
+and 54th parallels, or about two hundred and sixty miles farther north
+than Puget Sound, where a degree of longitude is only thirty-five miles
+in length. Puget Sound is on the 49th parallel, where the degrees are
+thirty-eight and a half miles in length. San Francisco is near the 37th
+parallel, where the degrees are nearly forty-nine miles in length.
+Liverpool is three degrees west of Greenwich, from which longitude is
+reckoned. The 122d meridian passes through Puget Sound and also through
+the Bay of San Francisco. It follows from all this that the distance
+from Liverpool in straight lines to these two magnificent gateways of
+the Pacific, in geographical miles, is as follows:--
+
+  Liverpool to San Francisco   4,879 miles.
+       "     " Puget Sound     4,487   "
+                               -----
+                  Difference,    392   "
+
+Looking across the Pacific we see that Yokohama is on the 35th
+parallel, where a degree of longitude is forty-nine miles in length.
+Reckoning the distance across the Pacific between Yokohama and the
+western gateways of the continent, we have this comparison:--
+
+  San Francisco to Yokohama    4,856 miles.
+  Puget Sound    "    "        4,294   "
+                               -----
+                  Difference,    562   "
+
+Adding these differences together, we see that longitude alone makes
+a total of nine hundred and fifty-four miles in favor of Puget Sound
+between Liverpool and Yokohama. When the Northern Pacific Railroad is
+completed, Chicago will be fully six hundred miles nearer Asia by Puget
+Sound than by San Francisco.
+
+Vessels sailing from Japan to San Francisco follow the Kuro-Siwo, the
+heated river, which of itself bears them towards Puget Sound at the
+rate of eighty miles a day. They follow it into northern latitudes till
+within three or four hundred miles of the coast of British Columbia,
+then shape their course southward past Puget Sound to the Golden Gate.
+
+In navigation, then, Asia is nearly, if not quite, one thousand miles
+nearer the ports of Puget Sound than San Francisco. The time will come
+when not only Puget Sound, but every bay and inlet of the northwest
+coast, will be whitened with sails of vessels bringing the products
+of the Orient, not only for those who dwell upon the Pacific slope,
+but for the mighty multitude of the Empire of the Northwest, of the
+Mississippi Valley, and the Atlantic States.
+
+From those land-locked harbors steamships shall depart for other
+climes, freighted with the products of this region, spun and woven,
+hammered and smelted, sawed and planed, by the millions of industrious
+workers who are to improve the unparalleled capabilities of this vast
+domain.
+
+There is not on the face of the globe a country so richly endowed as
+this of the Northwest. Here we find every element necessary for the
+development of a varied industry,--agricultural, mining, manufacturing,
+mercantile, and commercial,--all this with a climate like that of
+southern France, or central and northern Europe.
+
+"The climate," says Mr. Roberts, "of this favored region is very
+remarkable, and will always remain an attractive feature; which must,
+therefore, aid greatly in the speedy settlement of this portion of the
+Pacific coast. Even in the coldest winters there is practically no
+obstruction to navigation from ice; vessels can enter and depart at
+all times; and the winters are so mild that summer flowers which in
+the latitude of Philadelphia, on the Atlantic coast, we are obliged to
+place in the hot-house, are left out in the open garden without being
+injured. The cause of this mildness is usually, and I think correctly,
+ascribed to the warm-water equatorial current, which, impinging against
+the Pacific coast, north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, passes along
+nearly parallel with the shore, diffusing its genial warmth over the
+land far into the interior. Of the fact there is no doubt, whatever may
+be the cause" (Report, p. 14).
+
+The climate of eastern Washington, amid the mountains, corresponds with
+that of Pennsylvania; but upon the sea-coast and along the waters of
+Puget Sound roses blossom in the open air throughout the year, and the
+residents gather green peas and strawberries in March and April.
+
+In a former view we looked at the territory belonging to Great
+Britain lying east of the Rocky Mountains, we saw its capabilities
+for settlement; but far different in its physical features is British
+Columbia from the Saskatchawan country. It is a land of mountains,
+plains, valleys, and forests, threaded by rivers, and indented by
+bays and inlets. The main branch of the Columbia rises in the British
+Possessions, between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains. There
+is a great amphitheatre between those two ranges, having an area of
+forty-five thousand square miles. We hardly comprehend, even with a map
+spread out before us, that there is an area larger than Ohio in the
+basin drained by the northern branch of the Columbia. But such is the
+fact, and it is represented as being a fertile and attractive section,
+possessed of a mild and equable climate. The stock-raisers of southern
+Idaho drive their cattle by the ten thousand into British Columbia to
+find winter pasturage.
+
+The general characteristics of that area have been fully set forth
+in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society of London by
+Lieutenant Palmer of the Royal Engineers. He says:--
+
+"The scenery of the whole midland belt, especially of that portion of
+it lying to the east of the 124th meridian, is exceedingly beautiful
+and picturesque. The highest uplands are all more or less thickly
+timbered, but the valleys present a delightful panorama of woodland
+and prairie, flanked by miles of rolling hills, swelling gently from
+the margin of streams, and picturesquely dotted with yellow pines. The
+forests are almost entirely free from underwood, and with the exception
+of a few worthless tracts, the whole face of the country--hill and
+dale, woodland and plain--is covered with an abundant growth of grass,
+possessing nutritious qualities of the highest order. Hence its value
+to the colony as a grazing district is of the highest importance.
+Cattle and horses are found to thrive wonderfully on the 'bunch' grass,
+and to keep in excellent condition at all seasons. The whole area is
+more or less available for grazing purposes. Thus the natural pastures
+of the middle belt may be estimated at hundreds, or even thousands, of
+square miles.
+
+"Notwithstanding the elevation, the seasons exhibit no remarkable
+extremes of temperature; the winters, though sharp enough for all the
+rivers and lakes to freeze, are calm and clear, so that the cold, even
+when most severe, is not keenly felt. Snow seldom exceeds eighteen
+inches in depth, and in many valleys of moderate elevation cattle often
+range at large during the winter months, without requiring shelter or
+any food but the natural grasses.... Judging from present experience,
+there can be no doubt that in point of salubrity the climate of British
+Columbia excels that of Great Britain, and is indeed one of the finest
+in the world."
+
+In regard to the agricultural capabilities of this mountain region, the
+same author remarks:--
+
+"Here in sheltered and well-irrigated valleys, at altitudes of as much
+as 2,500 feet above the sea, a few farming experiments have been made,
+and the results have thus far been beyond measure encouraging. At farms
+in the San José and Beaver valleys, situated nearly 2,200 feet above
+the sea, and again at Fort Alexander, at an altitude of 1,450 feet,
+wheat has been found to produce nearly forty bushels to the acre, and
+other grain and vegetable crops in proportion.... It may be asserted
+that two thirds at least of this eastern division of the central belt
+may, when occasion arrives, be turned to good account either for
+purposes of grazing or tillage."
+
+Probably there are no streams, bays, or inlets in the world that so
+abound with fish as the salt and fresh waters of the northwest Pacific.
+The cod and herring fisheries are equal to those of Newfoundland,
+while every stream descending from the mountains literally swarms with
+salmon.
+
+In regard to the fisheries of British Columbia, Lieutenant Palmer
+says:--
+
+"The whole of the inlets, bays, rivers, and lakes of British Columbia
+abound with delicious fish. The quantity of salmon that ascend the
+Fraser and other rivers on the coast seems incredible. They first enter
+Fraser and other rivers in March, and are followed in rapid succession
+by other varieties, which continue to arrive until the approach of
+winter; but the great runs occur in July, August, and September. During
+these months so abundant is the supply that it may be asserted without
+exaggeration, that some of the smaller streams can hardly be forded
+without stepping upon them." (Journal of the Geographical Society.)
+
+Ah! wouldn't it be glorious sport to pull out the twenty-five-pounders
+from the foaming waters of the Columbia,--to land them, one after
+another, on the grassy bank, and see the changing light upon their
+shining scales! and then sitting down to dinner to have one of the
+biggest on a platter, delicately baked or boiled, with prairie chicken,
+plover, pigeon, and wild duck! We will have it by and by, when Governor
+Smith and Judge Rice, who are out here seeing about the railroad, get
+the cars running to the Pacific; they will supply all creation east
+of the Rocky Mountains with salmon! There are not many of us who can
+afford to dine off salmon when it is a dollar a pound, and the larger
+part of the crowd can never have a taste even; but these railroad
+gentlemen will bring about a new order of things. When they get the
+locomotive on the completed track, and make the run from the Columbia
+to Chicago in about sixty hours, as they will be able to do, all hands
+of us who work for our daily bread will be able to have fresh salmon at
+cheap rates.
+
+What a country! I have drawn a hypothetical line from Milwaukie to
+the Pacific,--not that the region south of it--Missouri, Kansas,
+Nebraska, or California--does not abound in natural resources, with
+fruitful soil and vast capabilities, but because the configuration of
+the continent--the water-systems, the mountain-ranges, the elevations
+and depressions, the soil and climate--is in many respects different
+north of the 43d parallel from what it is south of it. We need not
+look upon the territory now held by Great Britain with a covetous eye.
+The 49th parallel is an imaginary line running across the prairies, an
+arbitrary political boundary which Nature will not take into account
+in her disposition of affairs in the future. Sooner or later the line
+will fade away. Railway trains--the constant passing and repassing of a
+multitude of people speaking the same language, having ideas in common,
+and related by blood--will rub it out, and there will be one country,
+one people, one government. What an empire then! The region west of
+Lake Michigan and north of the latitude of Milwaukie--the 43d parallel
+extended to the Pacific--will give to the nation, to say nothing of
+Alaska Territory, forty States as large as Ohio, or two hundred States
+of the size of Massachusetts!
+
+I have been accustomed to look upon this part of the world as being
+so far north, so cold, so snowy, so distant,--and all the other
+imaginary so's,--that it never could be available for settlement; but
+the facts show that it is as capable of settlement as New York or New
+England,--that the country along the Athabasca has a climate no more
+severe than that of northern New Hampshire or Maine, while the summers
+are more favorable to the growing of grains than those of the northern
+Atlantic coast.
+
+It is not, therefore, hypothetical geography. Following the 43d
+parallel eastward, we find it passing along the northern shore of the
+Mediterranean, through central Italy, and through the heart of the
+Turkish Empire. Nearly all of Europe lies north of it,--the whole of
+France, half of Italy, the whole of the Austrian Empire, and all of
+Russia's vast dominions.
+
+The entire wheat-field of Europe is above that parallel. The valleys
+of the Alps lying between the 46th and 50th parallels swarm with an
+industrious people; why may not those of the Rocky Mountains at the
+head-waters of the Missouri and Columbia in like manner be hives of
+industry in the future?
+
+If a Christiania, a Stockholm, and a St. Petersburg, with golden-domed
+churches, gorgeous palaces, and abodes of comfort, can be built up
+in lat. 60 in the Old World, why may we not expect to see their
+counterpart in the New, when we take into account the fact that a
+heated current from the tropics gives the same mildness of climate to
+the northwestern section of this continent that the Gulf Stream gives
+to northern Europe?
+
+With this outlook towards future possibilities, we see Minnesota the
+central State of the Continental Republic of the future.
+
+With the map of the continent before me, I stick a pin into
+Minneapolis, and stretch a string to Halifax, then, sweeping southward,
+find that it cuts through southern Florida, and central Mexico. It
+reaches almost to San Diego, the extreme southwestern boundary of the
+United States,--reaches to Donner Pass on the summit of the Sierra
+Nevadas, within a hundred miles of Sacramento. Stretching it due west,
+it reaches to Salem, Oregon. Carrying it northwest, I find that it
+reaches to the Rocky Mountain House on Peace River,--to that region
+whose beauty charmed Mackenzie and Father De Smet. The Peace River
+flows through the Rocky Mountains, and at its head-waters we find the
+lowest pass of the continent. The time may come when we of the East
+will whirl through it upon the express-train bound for Sitka! It is two
+hundred miles from the Rocky Mountain House to that port of southern
+Alaska.
+
+The city of Mexico is nearer Minneapolis by nearly a hundred miles
+than Sitka. Trinity Bay on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, Puerto
+Principe on the island of Cuba, the Bay of Honduras in Central America,
+and Sitka, are equidistant from Minneapolis and St. Paul.
+
+When Mr. Seward, in 1860, addressed the people of St. Paul from the
+steps of the Capitol, it was the seer, and not the politician, who
+said:--
+
+"_I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this
+great continent will be found somewhere within a circle or radius not
+far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on the
+Mississippi River!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE FRONTIER.
+
+
+Bottineau is our guide. Take a look at him as he sits by the camp-fire
+cleaning his rifle. He is tall and well formed, with features which
+show both his French and Indian parentage. He has dark whiskers, a
+broad, flat nose, a wrinkled forehead, and is in the full prime of
+life. His name is known throughout the Northwest,--among Americans,
+Canadians, and Indians. The Chippewa is his mother-tongue, though he
+can speak several Indian dialects, and is fluent in French and English.
+He was born not far from Fort Garry, and has traversed the vast region
+of the Northwest in every direction. He was Governor Stevens's guide
+when he made the first explorations for the Northern Pacific Railroad,
+and has guided a great many government trains to the forts on the
+Missouri since then. He was with General Sully in his campaign against
+the Indians. He has the instinct of locality. Like the honey-bee,
+which flies straight from the flower to its hive, over fields, through
+forests, across ravines or intervening hills, so Pierre Bottineau knows
+just where to go when out upon the boundless prairie with no landmark
+to guide him. He is never lost, even in the darkest night or foggiest
+day.
+
+There is no man living, probably, who has more enemies than he, for the
+whole Sioux nation of Indians are his sworn foes. They would take his
+scalp instantly if they could only get a chance. He has been in many
+fights with them,--has killed six of them, has had narrow escapes, and
+to hear him tell of his adventures makes your hair stand on end. He
+is going to conduct a portion of our party through the Sioux country.
+The Indians are friendly now, and the party will not be troubled; but
+if a Sioux buffalo-hunter comes across this guide there will be quick
+shooting on both sides, and ten to one the Indian will go down,--for
+Bottineau is keen-sighted, has a steady hand, and is quick to act.
+
+The westward-bound members of our party, guided by Bottineau, will be
+accompanied by an escort consisting of nineteen soldiers commanded by
+Lieutenant Kelton. Four Indian scouts, mounted on ponies, are engaged
+to scour the country in advance, and give timely notice of the presence
+of Sioux, who are always on the alert to steal horses or plunder a
+train.
+
+Bidding our friends good by, we watch their train winding over the
+prairie till we can only see the white canvas of the wagons on the
+edge of the horizon; then, turning eastward, we cross the river into
+Minnesota, and strike out upon the pathless plain. We see no landmarks
+ahead, and, like navigators upon the ocean, pursue our way over this
+sea of verdure by the compass.
+
+After a few hours' ride, we catch, through the glimmering haze, the
+faint outlines of islands rising above the unruffled waters of a
+distant lake. We approach its shores, but only to see islands and lake
+alike vanish into thin air. It was the mirage lifting above the horizon
+the far-off groves of Buffalo Creek, a branch of the Red River.
+
+Far away to the east are the Leaf Hills, which are only the elevations
+of the rolling prairie that forms the divide between the waters flowing
+into the Gulf of Mexico and into Hudson Bay.
+
+Wishing to see the hills, to ascertain what obstacles there are to the
+construction of a railroad, two of us break away from the main party
+and strike out over the plains, promising to be in camp at nightfall.
+How exhilarating to gallop over the pathless expanse, amid a sea of
+flowers, plunging now and then through grass so high that horse and
+rider are almost lost to sight! The meadow-lark greets us with his
+cheerful song; the plover hovers around us; sand-hill cranes, flying
+always in pairs, rise from the ground and wing their way beyond the
+reach of harm. The gophers chatter like children amid the flowers, as
+we ride over their subterranean towns.
+
+They are in peaceful possession of the solitude. Five years ago
+buffaloes were roaming here. We see their bones bleaching in the sun.
+Here the Sioux and Chippewas hunted them down. Here the old bulls
+fought out their battles, and the countless herds cropped the succulent
+grasses and drank the clear running water of the stream which bears
+their name. They are gone forever. The ox and cow of the farm are
+coming to take their place. Sheep and horses will soon fatten on the
+rich pasturage of these hills. We of the East would hardly call them
+hills, much less mountains, the slopes are so gentle and the altitudes
+so low. The highest grade of a railroad would not exceed thirty feet to
+the mile in crossing them.
+
+Here we find granite and limestone bowlders, and in some places beds of
+gravel, brought, so the geologists inform us, from the far North and
+deposited here when the primeval ocean currents set southward over this
+then submerged region. They are in the right place for the railroad.
+The stone will be needed for abutments to bridges, and the gravel will
+be wanted for ballast,--provided the road is located in this vicinity.
+
+On our second day's march we come to what might with propriety be
+called the park region of Minnesota. It lies amid the high lands of the
+divide. It is more beautiful even than the country around White Bear
+Lake and in the vicinity of Glenwood. Throughout the day we behold
+such rural scenery as can only be found amid the most lovely spots in
+England.
+
+Think of rounded hills, with green slopes,--of parks and countless
+lakes,--skirted by forests, fringed with rushes, perfumed by
+tiger-lilies--the waves rippling on gravelled beaches; wild geese,
+ducks, loons, pelicans, and innumerable water-fowl building their nests
+amid the reeds and rushes,--think of lawns blooming with flowers, elk
+and deer browsing in the verdant meadows. This is their haunt. We see
+their tracks along the sandy shores, but they keep beyond the range of
+our rifles.
+
+So wonderfully has nature adorned this section, that it seems as if we
+were riding through a country that has been long under cultivation, and
+that behind yonder hillock we shall find an old castle, a mansion, or,
+at least, a farm-house, as we find them in Great Britain.
+
+I do not forget that I am seeing Minnesota at its best season, that it
+is midsummer, that the winters are as long as in New England; but I can
+say without reservation, that nowhere in the wide world--not even in
+old England, the most finished of all lands; not in _la belle France_,
+or sunny Italy, or in the valley of the Ganges or the Yangtse, or on
+the slopes of the Sierra Nevadas--have I beheld anything approaching
+this in natural beauty.
+
+How it would look in winter I cannot say, but the members of our
+party are unanimous in their praises of this portion of Minnesota. The
+nearest pioneer is forty miles distant; but land so inviting will soon
+be taken up by settlers.
+
+It was a pleasure, after three days' travel over the trackless wild,
+to come suddenly and unexpectedly upon a hay-field. There were the
+swaths newly mown. There was no farm-house in sight, no fenced area or
+upturned furrow, but the hay-makers had been there. We were approaching
+civilization once more. Ascending a hill, we came in sight of a
+settler, a pioneer who is always on the move; who, when a neighbor
+comes within six or eight miles of him, abandons his home and moves on
+to some spot where he can have more elbow-room,--to a region not so
+thickly peopled.
+
+He informed us that we should find the old trail we were searching
+for about a mile ahead. He had long matted hair, beard hanging upon
+his breast, a wrinkled countenance, wore a slouched felt hat, an
+old checked-cotton shirt, and pantaloons so patched and darned, so
+variegated in color, that it would require much study to determine what
+was original texture and what patch and darn. He came from Ohio in
+his youth, and has always been a skirmisher on the advancing line of
+civilization,--a few miles ahead of the main body. He was thinking now
+of going into the "bush," as he phrased it.
+
+Settlers farther down the trail informed us that he was a little
+flighty and queer; that he could not be induced to stay long in one
+place, but was always on the move for a more quiet neighborhood!
+
+The road that we reached at this point was formerly traversed by the
+French and Indian traders between Pembina and the Mississippi, but has
+not been used much of late years. Striking that, we should have no
+difficulty in reaching the settlements of the Otter-Tail, forty miles
+south.
+
+Emigration travels fast. As fires blown by winds sweep through the
+dried grass of the prairies, so civilization spreads along the frontier.
+
+We reached the settlement on Saturday night, and pitched our tents
+for the Sabbath. It was a rare treat to these people to come into
+our camp and hear a sermon from Rev. Dr. Lord. The oldest member of
+the colony is a woman, now in her eightieth year, with eye undimmed
+and a countenance remarkably free from the marks of age, who walks
+with a firm step after fourscore years of labor. Sixty years ago she
+moved from Lebanon, New Hampshire, a young wife, leaving the valley
+of the Connecticut for a home in the State of New York, then moving
+with the great army of emigrants to Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa
+in succession, and now beginning again in Minnesota. Last year her
+hair, which had been as white as the purest snow, began to take on its
+original color, and is now quite dark! There are but few instances on
+record of such a renewal of youth.
+
+The party have come from central Iowa to make this their future home,
+preferring the climate of this region, where the changes of temperature
+are not so sudden and variable. The women and children of the four
+families lived here alone for six weeks, while the men were away after
+their stock. Their nearest neighbors are twelve miles distant. On the
+4th of July all hands--men, women, and children--travelled forty-five
+miles to celebrate the day.
+
+"We felt," said one of the women, "that we couldn't get through the
+year without going somewhere or seeing somebody. It is kinder lonely so
+far away from folks, and so we went down country to a picnic."
+
+Store, church, and school are all forty miles away, and till recently
+the nearest saw-mill was sixty miles distant. Now they can get their
+wheat ground by going forty miles.
+
+The settlement is already blooming with half a dozen children. Other
+emigrants are coming, and these people are looking forward to next year
+with hope and confidence, for then they will have a school of their own.
+
+In our march south from Detroit Lake we meet a large number of Chippewa
+Indians going to the Reservation recently assigned them by the
+government in one of the fairest sections of Minnesota. Among them we
+see several women with blue eyes and light hair and fair complexions,
+who have French blood in their veins, and possibly some of them may
+have had American fathers. Nearly all of the Indians wear pantaloons
+and jackets; but here and there we see a brave who is true to his
+ancestry, who is proud of his lineage and race, and is in all respects
+a savage, in moccasons, blanket, skunk-skin head-dress, and painted
+eagle's feathers.
+
+They are friendly, inoffensive, and indolent, and took no part in the
+late war. They have been in close contact with the whites for a long
+time, but they do not advance in civilization. All efforts for their
+elevation are like rain-drops falling on a cabbage-leaf, that roll off
+and leave it dry. There is little absorption on the part of the Indians
+except of whiskey, and in that respect their powers are great,--equal
+to those of the driest toper in Boston or anywhere else devoting all
+his energies to getting round the Prohibitory Law.
+
+Our halting-place for Monday night is on the bank of the Otter-Tail,
+near Rush Lake. The tents are pitched, the camp-fire kindled, supper
+eaten, and we are sitting before a pile of blazing logs. The dew is
+falling, and the fire is comfortable and social. We look into the
+glowing coals and think of old times, and of friends far away. We
+dream of home. Then the jest and the story go round. The song would
+follow if we had the singers. But music is not wanting. We hear
+martial strains,--of cornets, trombones, ophicleides, and horns, and
+the beating of a drum. Torches gleam upon the horizon, and by their
+flickering light we see a band advancing over the prairie. It is a
+march of welcome to the Northern Pacific Exploring Party.
+
+Not an hour ago these musicians heard of our arrival, and here they
+are, twelve of them, in our camp, doing their best to express their
+joy. They are Germans,--all young men. Three years ago several families
+came here from Ohio. They reported the soil so fertile, the situation
+so attractive, the prospects so flattering, that others came; and now
+they have a dozen families, and more are coming to this land of promise.
+
+Take a good long look at these men as they stand before our camp-fire,
+with their bright new instruments in their hands. They received them
+only three weeks ago from Cincinnati.
+
+"We can't play much yet," says the leader, Mr. Bertenheimer, "but we do
+the best we can. We have sent to Toledo for a teacher who will spend
+the winter with us. You will pardon our poor playing, but we felt so
+good when we heard you were here looking out a route for a railroad,
+that we felt like doing something to show our good-will. You see we
+are just getting started, and have to work hard, but we wanted some
+recreation, and we concluded to get up a band. We thought it would be
+better than to be hanging round a grocery. We haven't any grocery yet,
+and if we keep sober, and give our attention to other things, perhaps
+we sha'n't have one,--which, I reckon, will be all the better for us."
+
+Plain and simple the words, but there is more in them than in many a
+windy speech made on the rostrum or in legislative halls. Just getting
+started! Yet here upon the frontier Art has planted herself. The
+flowers of civilization are blooming on the border.
+
+As we listen to the parting strains, and watch the receding forms, and
+look into the coals of our camp-fire after their departure, we feel
+that there must be a bright future for a commonwealth that can grow
+such fruit on the borders of the uncultivated wilderness.
+
+Now just ride out and see what has been done by these emigrants.
+Here is a field containing thirty acres of as fine wheat as grows in
+Minnesota. It is just taking on the golden hue, and will be ready for
+the reaper next week. Beside it are twenty acres of oats, several acres
+of corn, an acre or two of potatoes. This is one farm only. On yonder
+slope there stands a two-storied house, of hewn logs and shingled
+roof. See what adornment the wife or daughter has given to the front
+yard,--verbenas, petunias, and nasturtiums, and round the door a living
+wreath of morning-glories.
+
+Cows chew their cud in the stable-yard, while
+
+    "Drowsy tinklings lull the distant field"
+
+where the sheep are herded.
+
+We shall find the scene repeated on the adjoining farm. Sheltered
+beneath the grand old forest-trees stands the little log church with
+a cross upon its roof, and here we see coming down the road the
+venerable father and teacher of the community, in long black gown and
+broad-brimmed hat, with a crucifix at his girdle. It is a Catholic
+community, and they brought their priest with them.
+
+In the morning we ride over smiling prairies, through groves of oak and
+maple, and behold in the distance a large territory covered with the
+lithe foliage of the tamarack. Here and there are groves of pine rising
+like islands above the wide level of the forest.
+
+At times our horses walk on pebbly beaches and splash their hoofs in
+the limpid waters of the lakes. We pick up agates, carnelians, and
+bits of bright red porphyry, washed and worn by the waves. Wild swans
+rear their young in the reeds and marshes bordering the streams. They
+gracefully glide over the still waters. They are beyond the reach of
+our rifles, and we would not harm them if we could. There is a good
+deal of the savage left in a man who, under the plea of sport, can
+wound or kill a harmless bird or beast that cannot be made to serve his
+wants. It gives me pleasure to say that our party are not bloodthirsty.
+Ducks, plover, snipe, wild geese, and sand-hill cranes are served at
+our table, but they are never shot in wanton sport.
+
+The stream which we have crossed several times is the Otter-Tail
+and flows southward into Otter-Tail Lake; issuing from that it runs
+southwest, then west, then northward, taking the name of the Red River,
+and pours its waters into Lake Winnipeg. From that great northern
+reservoir the waters of this western region of Minnesota reach Hudson
+Bay through Nelson River.
+
+Looking eastward we see gleaming in the morning sunlight the Leaf
+Lakes, the head-waters of the Crow-Wing, one of the largest western
+tributaries of the Upper Mississippi.
+
+The neck of land between these lakes and the Otter-Tail is only one
+mile wide. Here, from time out of mind among the Indians, the transit
+has been made between the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico and
+into Hudson Bay. When the Jesuit missionaries came here, they found it
+the great Indian carrying-place.
+
+Mackenzie, Lord Selkirk, and all the early adventurers, came by this
+route on their way to British America. For a long time it has been a
+trading-post. The French Jesuit fathers were here a century ago and are
+here to-day,--not spiritual fathers alone, but according to the flesh
+as well! The settlement is composed wholly of French Canadians, their
+Indian wives and copper-colored children. There are ten or a dozen
+houses, but they are very dilapidated. A little old man with twinkling
+gray eyes, wearing a battered white hat, comes out to welcome us,
+while crowds of swarthy children and Indian women gaze at us from the
+doorways. Another little old man, in a black gown and broad-brimmed
+hat, with a long chain and crucifix dangling from his girdle, salutes
+us with true French politeness. He is the priest, and is as seedy as
+the village itself.
+
+Around the place are several birch-bark Indian huts, and a few lodges
+of tanned buffalo-hides. Filth, squalor, and degradation are the
+characteristics of the lodge, and the civilization of the log-houses is
+but little removed from that of the wigwams.
+
+The French Canadian takes about as readily to the Indian maiden as to
+one of his own race. He is kinder than the Indian brave, and when he
+wants a wife he will find the fairest of the maidens ready to listen to
+his words of love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.
+
+
+Our halting-place at noon furnishes a pleasing subject for a comic
+artist. Behold us beneath the shade of old oaks, our horses cropping
+the rank grass, a fire kindled against the trunk of a tree that has
+braved the storms of centuries, each toasting a slice of salt pork.
+
+[Illustration: TOASTING PORK.]
+
+Governor, members of Congress, minister, judge, doctor, teamster,
+correspondent,--all hands are at it. Salt pork! Does any one turn up
+his nose at it? Do you think it hard fare? Just come out here and
+try it, after a twenty-five-mile gallop on horseback, in this clear,
+bracing atmosphere, with twenty more miles to make before getting into
+camp. We slept in a tent last night; had breakfast at 5 A. M.; are
+camping by night and tramping by day; are bronzed by the sun; and are
+roughing it! The exercise of the day gives sweet sleep at night. We had
+a good appetite at breakfast, and now, at noon, are as hungry as bears.
+Salt pork is not of much account in a down-town eating-house, but out
+here it is epicurean fare.
+
+Just see the Ex-Governor of the Green Mountain State standing before
+the fire with a long stick in his hand, having three prongs like
+Neptune's trident. He is doing his pork to a beautiful brown. Now he
+lays it between two slices of bread, and eats it as if it were a most
+delicious morsel,--as it is.
+
+A dozen toasting-forks are held up to the glowing coals. A dozen slices
+of pork are sizzling. We are not all of us quite so scientific in our
+toasting as the Ex-Governor in his.
+
+Although I have had camp-life before, and have fried flapjacks on an
+old iron shovel, I am subject to mishaps. There goes my pork into the
+ashes; never mind! I shall need less pepper. I job my trident into the
+slice,--flaming now, and turning to crisp,--hold it a moment before the
+coals, and slap it on my bread in season to save a little of the drip.
+
+Do I hear some one exclaim, How can he eat it? Ah! you who never have
+had experience on the prairies don't know the pleasures of such a lunch.
+
+Now, because we are all as jolly as we can be, because I have praised
+salt pork, I wouldn't have everybody rushing out here to try it,
+as they have rushed to the Adirondacks, fired to a high pitch of
+enthusiasm by the spirited descriptions of the pleasures of the
+wilderness by the pastor of the Boston Park Street Church. What is
+sweet to me may be sour to somebody else. I should not like this manner
+of life all the time, nor salt pork for a steady diet.
+
+Wooded prairies, oak openings, hills and vales, watered by lakes and
+ponds,--such is the character of the region lying south of Otter-Tail.
+Over all this section the water is as pure as that gurgling from the
+hillsides of New Hampshire.
+
+Minnesota is one of the best-watered States of the Union. The thousands
+of lakes and ponds dotting its surface are fed by never-failing
+springs. This one feature adds immeasurably to its value as an
+agricultural State. In Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska the farmer is
+compelled to pump water for his stock, and in those States we see
+windmills erected for that purpose; but here the ponds are so numerous
+and the springs so abundant that far less pumping will be required than
+in the other prairie States of the Union.
+
+We fall in with a Dutchman, where we camp for the night, who has taken
+up a hundred and sixty acres under the Pre-emption Act. He has put up a
+log-hut, turned a few acres of the sod, and is getting ready to live.
+His thrifty wife has a flock of hens, which supply us with fresh eggs.
+This pioneer has recently come from Montana. He had a beautiful farm in
+the Deer Lodge Pass of the Rocky Mountains, within seven miles of the
+summit.
+
+"I raised as good wheat there as I can here," he says,--"thirty bushels
+to the acre."
+
+"Why did you leave it?"
+
+"I couldn't sell anything. There is no market there. The farmers raise
+so much that they can hardly give their grain away."
+
+"Did you sell your farm?"
+
+"No, I left it. It is there for anybody to take."
+
+"Is it cold there?"
+
+"No colder than it is here. We have a few cold days in winter, but not
+much snow. Cattle live in the fields through the winter, feeding on
+bunch-grass, which grows tall and is very sweet."
+
+Here was information worth having,--the experience of a farmer. The
+Deer Lodge Pass is at the head-waters of the Missouri, in the main
+divide of the Rocky Mountains, and one of the surveyed lines of the
+Northern Pacific Railroad passes through it. We have thought of it as
+a place where a railroad train would be frozen up and buried beneath
+descending avalanches; but here is a man who has lived within seven
+miles of the top of the mountains, who raised the best of wheat, the
+mealiest of potatoes, whose cattle lived in the pastures through
+the winter, but who left his farm for the sole reason that he could
+not sell anything. Montana has no market except among the mining
+population, and the miners are scattered over a vast region. A few
+farmers in the vicinity of a mining-camp supply the wants of the place.
+Farming will not be remunerative till a railroad is completed up the
+valley of the Yellowstone or Missouri. What stronger argument
+can there be, what demonstration more forcible, for the immediate
+construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad? It will pass through the
+heart of the Territory which is yielding more gold and silver than any
+other Territory or State.
+
+This farmer says that Montana is destined to be a great stock-growing
+State. Cattle thrive on the bunch-grass. The hills are covered with it,
+and millions of acres that cannot be readily cultivated will furnish
+pasturage for flocks and herds. This testimony accords with statements
+made by those who have visited the Territory, as well as by others who
+have resided there.
+
+We have met to-day a long train of wagons filled with emigrants, who
+have come from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and some from Ohio.
+
+Look at the wagons, each drawn by four oxen,--driven either by the
+owner or one of his barefoot boys. Boxes, barrels, chairs, tables,
+pots, and pans constitute the furniture. The grandmother, white-haired,
+old, and wrinkled, and the wife with an infant in her arms, with three
+or four romping children around her, all sitting on a feather-bed
+beneath the white canvas covering. A tin kettle is suspended beneath
+the axle, in which a tow-headed urchin, covered with dust, is swinging,
+clapping his hands, and playing with a yellow dog trotting behind the
+team. A hoop-skirt, a chicken-coop, a pig in a box, are the most
+conspicuous objects that meet the eye as we look at the hinder part of
+the wagon. A barefooted boy, as bright-eyed as Whittier's ideal,--now
+done in chromo-lithograph, and adorning many a home,--marches behind,
+with his rosy-cheeked sister, driving a cow and a calf.
+
+To-night they will be fifteen miles nearer their destination than
+they were in the morning. Some of the teams have been two months on
+the road, and a few more days will bring them to the spot which the
+emigrant has already selected for his future home. They halt by the
+roadside at night. The oxen crop the rich grasses; the cow supplies
+the little ones with milk; the children gather an armful of sticks,
+the mother makes a cake, and bakes it before the camp-fire in a tin
+baker such as was found in every New England home forty years ago;
+the emigrant smokes his pipe, rolls himself in a blanket, and snores
+upon the ground beneath the wagon, while his family sleep equally well
+beneath the canvas roof above him. Another cake in the morning, with a
+slice of fried pork, a drink of coffee, and they are ready for the new
+day.
+
+Not only along this road, but everywhere, we may behold just such
+scenes. A great army of occupation is moving into the State. The
+advance is all along the line. Towns and villages are springing up as
+if by magic in every county. Every day adds thousands of acres to
+those already under cultivation. The fields of this year are wider than
+they were a year ago, and twelve months hence will be much larger than
+they are to-day.
+
+In all new countries, no matter how fertile they may be, breadstuffs
+must be imported at the outset. It was so when California was first
+settled; but to-day California is sending her wheat all over the world.
+The first settlers of Minnesota were lumbermen, and up to 1857 there
+was not wheat enough produced in the State to supply their wants. The
+steamers ascending the Mississippi to St. Paul were loaded with flour,
+and the world at large somehow came to think of Minnesota as being so
+cold that wheat enough to supply the few lumbermen employed in the
+forests and on the rivers could never be raised there.
+
+See how this region, which we all thought of as lying too near the
+north pole to be worth anything, has developed its resources! In 1854
+the number of acres under cultivation in the State was only fifteen
+thousand, or about two thirds of a single township.
+
+Fifteen years have passed by, and the tilled area is estimated at about
+two million acres! In 1857 she imported grain; but her yield of wheat
+the present year is estimated _at more than twenty million bushels_!
+
+I would not make the farmers of New England discontented. I would not
+advise all to put up their farms at auction, or any well-to-do farmer
+of Massachusetts or Vermont to leave his old home and rush out here
+without first coming to survey the country; but if I were a young man
+selling corsets and hoop-skirts to simpering young ladies in a city
+store, I would give such a jump over the counter that my feet would
+touch ground in the centre of a great prairie!
+
+I would have a homestead out here. True, there would be hard fare at
+first. The cabin would be of logs. There would be short commons for
+a year or two. But with my salt pork I would have pickerel, prairie
+chickens, moose, and deer. I should have calloused hands and the
+back-ache at times; but my sleep would be sweet. I should have no
+theatre to visit nightly, no star actors to see, and should miss the
+tramp of the great multitude of the city,--the ever-hurrying throng.
+The first year might be lonely; possibly, I should have the blues
+now and then; but, possessing my soul with patience a twelvemonth, I
+should have neighbors. The railroad would come. The little log-hut
+would give place to a mansion. Roses would bloom in the garden, and
+morning-glories open their blue bells by the doorway. The vast expanse
+would wave with golden grain. Thrift and plenty, and civilization with
+all its comforts and luxuries, would be mine.
+
+Are the colors of the picture too bright? Remember that in 1849
+Minnesota had less than five thousand inhabitants, and that to-day she
+has nearly five hundred thousand.
+
+I am writing to young men who have the whole scope of life before them.
+You are a clerk in a store, with a salary of five hundred dollars,
+perhaps seven hundred. By stinting here and there you can just bring
+the year round. It is a long, long look ahead, and your brightest
+day-dream of the future is not very bright.
+
+Now take a look in this direction. You can get a hundred and sixty
+acres of land for two hundred dollars. If you obtain it near a
+railroad, it will cost three hundred and twenty dollars. It will cost
+three dollars an acre to plough the ground and prepare it for the first
+crop, besides the fencing. But the first crop, ordinarily, will more
+than pay the entire outlay for ground, fencing, and ploughing. Five
+years hence the land will be worth fifteen or twenty-five dollars per
+acre. This is no fancy sketch. It is simply a statement as to what has
+been the experience of thousands of people in Minnesota.
+
+Think of it, young men, you who are rubbing along from year to year
+with no great hopes for the future. Can you hold a plough? Can you
+drive a span of horses? Can you accept for a while the solitude of
+nature, and have a few hard knocks for a year or two? Can you lay
+aside paper collars and kid gloves, and wear a blue blouse and blister
+your hands with work? Can you possess your soul in patience, and hold
+on your way with a firm purpose? If you can, there is a beautiful home
+for you out here. Prosperity, freedom, independence, manhood in its
+highest sense, peace of mind, and all the comforts and luxuries of
+life, are awaiting you.
+
+There is no medicine for a wearied mind or jaded body equal to life
+on the prairies. When our party left the East, every member of it was
+worn down by hard work. Some of us were dyspeptic, some nervous, while
+others had tired brains. It is the misfortune of Americans to be ever
+working as if they were in the iron-mills, or as if the Philistines had
+them in the prison-house!
+
+We have been a few weeks upon the frontier,--been beyond the reach of
+the daily newspaper, beyond care and trouble. The world has got on
+without us, and now we are on our way back, changed beings. We are as
+good as new,--tough, rugged, hale, hearty, and ready for a frolic here,
+or another battle with life when we reach home.
+
+Behold us at our halting-place for the night; a clear stream near
+by winding through pleasant meadows, bordered by oaks and maples.
+The horses are unharnessed, and are rolling in the tall grass after
+their long day's work. The teamsters are pitching the tents, the
+cook is busy with his pots and kettles. Already we inhale the aroma
+steaming from the nose of the coffee-pot. The pork and fish and plover
+over the fire, like a missionary or colporteur or Sunday-school
+teacher, are doing good! What odor more refreshing than that exhaled
+from a coffee-pot steaming over a camp-fire, after twelve hours in
+the saddle,--the fresh breeze fanning your cheeks, and every sense
+intensified by beholding the far-reaching fields blooming with flowers
+or waving with ripening grain?
+
+The shadows of night are falling, and though the sun has shone through
+a cloudless sky the evening air is chilly. We will warm it by kindling
+a grand bivouac-fire, where, after supper, we will sit in solemn
+council, or crack jokes, or tell stories, as the whim of the hour shall
+lead us.
+
+There was a time when the gray-beards of our party were youngsters
+and played "horse" with a wooden bit between the teeth, the reins
+handled by a white-haired schoolmate. How we trotted, cantered, reared,
+pranced, backed, and then rushed furiously on, making the little old
+hand-cart rattle over the stones! It was long ago, but we have not
+forgotten it, and to-night we will be boys once more.
+
+Yonder by the roadside lies a fallen oak, a monarch of the forest,
+broken down by the wind,--by the same tempest that levelled our tents.
+It shall blaze to-night. We will sit in its cheerful light. It would
+be ignoble to hack it to pieces and bring it into camp an armful at a
+time; we will drag it bodily, lop off the limbs and pile them high upon
+the trunk, touch a match to the withered leaves, and warm the chilly
+air.
+
+"All hands to the harness!" It is a royal team. How could it be
+otherwise with the Ex-Governor of the Green Mountain State for leader,
+matched with our Judge, who, for sixteen years, honored the judiciary
+of Maine, with three members of Congress past and present, a doctor of
+divinity and another of medicine,--all in harness? We have a strong
+cart-rope of the best Manilla hemp, which has served us many a turn in
+pulling our wagons through the sloughs, and which is brought once more
+into service. A few strokes of the axe provide us with levers which
+serve for yokes. We pair off, two and two, and take our places in the
+team.
+
+"Are you all ready? Now for it!" It is the voice of our leader.
+
+"Gee up! Whoa! Whoa! Hip! Hurrah! Now she goes!"
+
+We shout and sing, and feel an ecstatic thrill running all over us,
+from the tips of our fingers down into our boots!
+
+What a deal of power there is in a yell! The teamster screams to his
+horses; the plough-boy makes himself hoarse by shouting to his oxen;
+the fireman feels that he is doing good service when he goes tearing
+down the street yelling with all his might. He never would put out the
+fire if he couldn't yell. A hurrah elected General Harrison President
+of the United States, and it has won many a political battle-field. A
+hurrah starts the old oak from its bed. See the Executive as he sets
+his compact shoulders to the work, making the lever bend before him.
+Notice the tall form of the Judge bowing in the traces! If the rope
+does not break, the log is bound to come.
+
+The two are good at pulling. They have shown their power by dragging
+one of the greatest enterprises of modern times over obstacles that
+would have discouraged men of weaker nerve. The public never will know
+of the hard work performed by them in starting the Northern Pacific
+Railroad,--how they have raised it from obscurity, from obloquy,
+notwithstanding opposition and prejudice. The time will come when
+the public will look upon the enterprise in its true light. When the
+road is opened from Lake Superior westward, when the traveller finds
+on every hand a country of surpassing richness, a climate in the
+Northwest as mild as that of Pennsylvania, when he sees the numberless
+attractions and exhaustless resources of the land, then, and not till
+then, will the labors of Governor Smith and his associates in carrying
+on this work be appreciated.
+
+To-night they enter with all the zest of youth into the project of
+building a camp-fire, and tug at the rope with the enthusiasm of
+boyhood.
+
+It is a strong team. Our doctor of divinity, whether in the pulpit
+or on the prairie, pulls with "a forty parson power," to use Byron's
+simile. And our M. D., whether he has hold of a gnarled oak or the
+stump of a molar in the mouth of a pretty young lady, is certain to
+master it.
+
+[Illustration: A STRONG TEAM.]
+
+A member of Congress "made believe pull," as we used to say in our
+boyhood, but complacently smoked his pipe the while; the correspondent
+tipped a wink at the smoker, seized hold of a lever, shouted and yelled
+as if laying out all his strength, and pulled--about two pounds! But
+_we_ dragged it in amid the hurrahs of the teamsters, wiped the sweat
+from our brows, and then through the evening sat round the blazing
+log, and made the air ring with our merry laughter. So we rubbed out
+the growing wrinkles, smoothed the lines of care, and turned back the
+shadow creeping up the dial.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+IN THE FOREST.
+
+
+In preceding chapters the characteristics of the country west of the
+Mississippi have been set forth; but many a man seeking a new home
+would be lonely upon the prairies. The lumberman of Maine, who was born
+in the forest, who in childhood listened to the sweet but mournful
+music of the ever-sighing pines, would be home-sick away from the grand
+old woods. The trees are his friends. The open country would be a
+solitude, but in the depths of the forest he would ever find congenial
+company. There the oaks, the elms, and maples reach out their arms
+lovingly above him, sheltering him alike from winter's blasts and
+summer's heats. Even though he may have no poetry in his soul, the
+woods will have a charm for him, for there he finds a harvest already
+grown and waiting to be gathered, as truly as if it were so many acres
+of ripened wheat.
+
+It is not difficult to pick out the "Down-Easters" in Minnesota. When I
+hear a man talk about "stumpage" and "thousands of feet," I know that
+he is from the Moosehead region, or has been in a lumber camp on the
+Chesuncook. He has eaten pork and beans, and slept on hemlock boughs
+on the banks of the Madawaska. When he cocks his head on one side and
+squints up a pine-tree, I know that he has Blodget's Table in his
+brain, and can tell the exact amount of clear and merchantable lumber
+which the tree will yield. His paradise is in the forest, and there
+alone.
+
+The region east of the Mississippi and around its head-waters is the
+Eden of lumbermen.
+
+The traveller who starts from St. Paul and travels westward will find a
+prairie country; but if he travels eastward, or toward the northeast,
+he will find himself in the woods, where tall pines and spruces and
+oaks and maples rear their gigantic trunks. It is not all forest, for
+here and there we see "openings" where the sunlight falls on pleasant
+meadows; but speaking in general terms, the entire country east of the
+Mississippi, in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and in that portion
+of Michigan lying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, is the place
+for the lumberman.
+
+The soil is sandy, and the geologist will see satisfactory traces of
+the drift period, when a great flood of waters set southward, bringing
+granite bowlders, pebbles, and stones from the country lying between
+Hudson Bay and Lake Superior.
+
+The forest growth affects the climate. There is more snow and rain
+east of the Mississippi than west of it. The temperature in winter on
+Lake Superior is milder than at St. Paul, but there is more moisture
+in the air. The climate at Duluth or Superior City during the winter
+does not vary much from that of Chicago. Notwithstanding the difference
+of latitude, the isothermal line of mean temperature for the year
+runs from the lower end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake
+Superior. Probably more snow falls in Minnesota than around Chicago,
+for in all forest regions in northern latitudes there is usually a
+heavier rain and snow fall than in open countries. The time will
+probably come when the rain-fall of eastern Minnesota and northern
+Michigan will be less than it is now. When the lumbermen have swept
+away the forests, the sun will dry up the moisture, there will be
+less rain east of the Mississippi, while the probabilities are that
+it will be increased westward over all the prairie region. Orchards,
+groves, corn-fields, wheat-fields, clover-lands,--all will appear with
+the advance of civilization. They will receive more moisture from
+the surrounding air than the prairie grasses do at the present time.
+Everybody knows that the hand of man is powerful enough to change
+climate,--to increase the rain-fall here, to diminish it there; to
+lower the temperature, or to raise it.
+
+The Ohio River is dwindling in size because the forests of Ohio and
+Pennsylvania are disappearing. Palestine, Syria, and Greece, although
+they have supported dense populations, are barren to-day because
+the trees have been cut down. If this were an essay on the power of
+man over nature, instead of the writing out of a few notes on the
+Northwest, I might go on and give abundant data; but I allude to it
+incidentally in connection with the climate, which fifty years hence
+will not in all probability be the same that it is to-day.
+
+Having in preceding pages taken a survey of the magnificent farming
+region beyond the Mississippi, it remains for us to take a look at the
+country between the Mississippi and Lake Superior.
+
+Leaving our camp equipage and the horses that had borne us over the
+prairies, bidding good by to our many friends in Minneapolis and St.
+Paul, we started from the last-named city for a trip of a hundred and
+fifty miles through the woods. The first fifty miles was accomplished
+by rail, through a country partially settled. Upon the train were
+several ladies and gentlemen on their way to White Bear Lake, not the
+White Bear of the West, but a lovely sheet of water ten miles north of
+St. Paul. It is but a few years since Wabashaw and his dusky ancestors
+trolled their lines by day and speared pickerel and pike by torchlight
+at night upon its placid bosom, but now it is the favorite resort of
+picnic-parties from St. Paul. Here and there along the shores are
+low grass-grown monuments, raised by the Chippewas when they were a
+powerful nation among the Red Men.
+
+    "But now the wheat is green and high
+    On clods that hid the warrior's breast,
+    And scattered in the furrows lie
+    The weapons of his rest."
+
+The lake is six miles long and dotted with islands. It was a general
+gathering-place of the Indians, as it is now of the people of the
+surrounding country. Its curving shores and pebbly beaches, bordered by
+a magnificent forest, present a charming and peaceful picture.
+
+We are accompanied on our trip by the President of the Lake Superior
+and Mississippi Railroad, and other gentlemen connected with the
+railroads of the Northwest. At Wyoming we leave our friends, bid good
+by to the locomotive, and say how do you do to a bright new mud-wagon!
+It is set on thorough-braces, with a canvas top. There are seats for
+nine inside and one with the driver outside. Carpet-bags and valises
+are stowed under the seats. We have no extra luggage, but are in light
+staging order.
+
+We are bound for Superior and Duluth.
+
+"You will have a sweet time getting there," is the remark of a
+mud-bespattered man sitting on a pile of lumber by the roadside. He has
+just come through on foot with a dozen men, who have thrown down the
+shovel to take up the sickle, or rather to follow the reaper during
+harvest.
+
+What he means by our having a sweet time we do not quite comprehend.
+
+"You will find the road baddish in spots," says another.
+
+A German, with bushy beard and uncombed hair, barefooted, and carrying
+his boots in his hands, exclaims, "It ish von tam tirty travel all the
+time!"
+
+We understand him. With a crack of the whip we roll away, our horses on
+the trot, passing cleared fields, where cattle are up to their knees in
+clover, past wheat-fields ready for the reaper, reaching at noon our
+halting-place for dinner.
+
+Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out West where there are
+delicious apple-pies, or anything especially nice in the pastry line,
+on the table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess came from Maine;
+at least, such has been my experience. I remember calling at a house in
+central Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the standard
+dish of the Southwest "hog and hominy," obtaining a luxurious dinner,
+finishing off with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands that
+were trained to housework on the banks of the Penobscot. Last year
+I found a lady from Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confident
+that she was from the Pine-Tree State the moment I saw her pies; for
+somehow the daughters of Down East have the knack of making pastry
+that would delight an epicure. And now in Minnesota we sit down to a
+substantial dinner topped off, rounded, and made complete by a piece of
+Maine apple-pie.
+
+The daughters of New Hampshire and of Vermont may possibly make just
+as good cooks, but it has so happened that we have fallen in with
+housewives from Maine when our appetite was sharpened for something
+good.
+
+Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who came to Minnesota from
+the Kennebec. He knew how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples
+have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough and harrow and
+stump-puller have been at work, and now we look out upon wheat-fields
+and acres of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white clover, and
+hear the humming of the bees. We see at a glance the capabilities of
+the forest region of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as if
+we were to read all the works extant on soil, climatology, natural
+productions, etc. Here, as well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat,
+corn, potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully and profitably
+cultivated.
+
+"I raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre last year, and I
+guess I shall have that this year," said the owner of the farm.
+
+This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here without capital, or
+rather with capital arms and strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it
+is: a neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the floor, a sofa,
+a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls; a large barn; granary well
+filled,--a comfortable home with a bright future before them.
+
+When the timber has disappeared from eastern Minnesota, the land
+will produce luxuriantly. The country will not be settled quite as
+rapidly here as west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever a
+wilderness. The time will come when along every stream there will be
+heard the buzzing of saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click
+and clatter of machinery. This vast area of timber will invite every
+kind of manufacturing, and the same elements which have contributed
+so largely to build up the Eastern States--the manufacturing and
+industrial--will here aid in building up one of the strongest
+communities of our future republic.
+
+Clearings here and there, cabins by the roadside, bark wigwams which
+have sheltered wandering Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest,
+are the features of the country through which we ride this glorious
+afternoon, with the sunlight glimmering among the trees, till suddenly
+we come upon Chengwatona.
+
+It is a small village on Snake River, with a hotel, half a dozen
+houses, and a saw-mill where pine logs are going up an incline from the
+pond at one end, and coming out in the shape of bright new lumber at
+the other.
+
+The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an immense area, and looking toward
+the descending sun we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless,
+and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed of all their beauty,
+present an indescribable scene of desolation when contrasted with the
+luxuriance of the living forest through which we have passed.
+
+With a fresh team we move on, finding mud "spots" now and then. We
+remember the remarks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into
+holes, the forward wheels going down _kerchug_, sending bucketsful
+of muddy water upward to the roof of the wagon and forward upon the
+horses; jounce over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering;
+then come upon a series of hollows through which we ride as in a
+jolly-boat on the waves of the sea. The wagon is ballasted by two
+members of Congress on the back seat, and by our rotund physician and
+the Vice-President of the Northern Pacific on the middle seat. The
+President is outside with the driver, on the lookout for breakers,
+while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard, stowed beneath the
+hatches, must take whatever comes. The members of Congress bob up and
+down like electric pith-balls between the negative and positive poles
+of a galvanic battery,--only that the positive is the prevailing force!
+When the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go up; and then, as
+they descend, the seat, by some unaccountable process, comes up, meets
+them half-way,--and with such a bump!
+
+Then we who are shaking our sides with laughter on the front seat,
+congratulating ourselves, like the Pharisees, that we are not as they
+are, suddenly find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we regain
+our places, the M. D. and Vice-President come forward with a rush
+and embrace us fraternally. We get our legs so mixed up with our
+neighbors' that we can hardly tell whether our feet belong to ourselves
+or to somebody else! The light weights of the party are knocked about
+like shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those ridiculous,
+round-bottomed, grinning images that we see in the toy-shops! I find
+myself going up and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when tossed
+in a blanket.
+
+Our dinners are well settled when we reach Grindstone,--our
+stopping-place for the night. The town is located on Grindstone Creek,
+and consists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by burnt timber.
+
+Half a dozen men who have footed it from Duluth are nursing their sore
+feet in one of the three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture of
+the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in the centre and three
+rough benches against the walls, which are papered with pictorial
+newspapers.
+
+The occupants are discussing the future prospects of Duluth.
+
+"It is a right smart chance of a place," says a tall, thin-faced,
+long-nosed man stretched in one corner. We know by the utterance of
+that one sentence that he is from southern Illinois.
+
+"They have got their _i_-deas pretty well up though, on real estate,
+for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent
+of the _i_, has shown that he too is a Western man.
+
+An Amazon in stature, with a round red face, hurries up a supper of
+pork and fried eggs; and then we who are going northward, and they
+who are travelling southward,--sixteen of us, all told,--creep up the
+narrow stairway to the unfinished garret, and go to bed, with our noses
+close to the rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of which
+we look out and behold the stars marching in grand procession across
+the midnight sky.
+
+It is glorious to lie there and feel the _tire_ and weariness go out
+of us; to look into the "eternities of space," as Carlyle says of
+the vault of heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the measureless
+empyrean are brought down to sublunary things by four of the sleepers
+who engage in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck and neck,
+or rather nose and nose, that it is impossible to decide whether the
+deep sonorous--not to say _snorous_?--bass of the big fellow by the
+window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts of the thin-faced,
+lantern-jawed, long-nosed man from southern Illinois, is entitled to
+the trumpet or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to signalize such
+championship. Either of them would have been a power in the grand
+chorus of the Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be equal to the
+big organ!
+
+We are off early in the morning, feeling a little sore in spots. The
+first thump extorts a sudden oh! from a member of Congress, but we
+are philosophic, and accommodate ourselves to circumstances, tell
+stories between the bumpings, and make the grand old forest ring with
+our laughter. It is glorious to get away from the town, and out into
+the woods, where you can shout and sing and let yourself out without
+regard to what folks will say! The fountain of perennial youth is in
+the forest,--never in the city. Its healing, beautifying, and restoring
+waters do not run through aqueducts; they are never pumped up; but you
+must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old trees and drink from the
+crystal stream to obtain them.
+
+We quench our thirst from gurgling brooks, pick berries by the
+roadside, walk ahead of the lumbering stage, and enjoy the solitude of
+the interminable forest.
+
+Eighteen miles of travel brings us to Kettle River Crossing, where we
+sit down to a dinner of blackberries and milk, bread and butter, and
+blackberry-pie, in a clean little cottage, with pictures on the walls,
+books on a shelf, a snow-white cloth on the table, and a trim little
+woman waiting upon us.
+
+"May I ask where you are from?"
+
+"Manchester, New Hampshire."
+
+It was Lord Morpeth or the Duke of Argyle, I have forgotten which, who
+said that New England looked as if it had just been taken out of a
+bandbox; so with this one-storied log-house and everything around it.
+We had sour-krout at Grindstone, but have blackberries here; and that
+is just the difference between Dutchland and New England, whether you
+seek for them on the Atlantic slope or in the heart of the continent.
+
+Space is wanting to tell of all the incidents of a three days' forest
+ride,--how we trolled for pickerel on a little lake, seated in a
+birch-bark canoe, and hauled them in hand over hand,--bouncing fellows
+that furnished us a delicious breakfast; how we laughed and told
+stories, never minding the bumping and thumping of the wagon, and came
+out strong, like Mark Tapley, every one of us; how we gazed upon the
+towering pines and sturdy oaks, and beheld the gloom settling over
+nature when the great eclipse occurred; and how, just as night was
+coming on, we entered Superior, and saw a horned owl sitting on the
+ridge-pole of a deserted house in the outskirts of the town, surveying
+the desolate scene in the twilight,--looking out upon the cemetery, the
+tenantless houses, and the blinking lights in the windows.
+
+Superior has been, and still is, a city of the Future, rather than of
+the Present. It was laid out before the war on a magnificent scale by a
+party of Southerners, among whom was John C. Breckenridge, who is still
+a large owner in corner lots.
+
+It has a fine situation at the southwestern corner of the lake, on a
+broad, level plateau, with a densely timbered country behind it. The
+St. Louis River, which rises in northern Minnesota, and which comes
+tumbling over a series of cascades formed by the high land between Lake
+Superior and the Mississippi, spreads itself out into a shallow bay in
+front of the town, and reaches the lake over a sand-bar.
+
+Government has been erecting breakwaters to control the current of the
+river, with the expectation of deepening the channel, which has about
+nine feet of water; but thus far the improvements have not accomplished
+the desired end. The bar is a great impediment to navigation, and its
+existence has had a blighting effect on the once fair prospects of
+Superior City. Dredges are employed to deepen the channel, but those
+thus far used are small, and not much has been accomplished. The
+citizens of Superior are confident that with a liberal appropriation
+from government the channel can be deepened, and that, when once
+cleared out, it can be kept clear at a small expense.
+
+Superior has suffered severely from the reaction which followed
+the flush times in 1857. A large amount of money was expended in
+improvements,--grading streets, opening roads, building piers, and
+erecting houses. Then the war came on, and all industry was paralyzed.
+The Southern proprietors were in rebellion. The growth of the place,
+which had been considerable, came to a sudden stand-still.
+
+The situation of the town, while it is fortunate in some respects,
+is unfortunate in others. It is in Wisconsin, while the point which
+reaches across the head of the lake is in Minnesota. The last-named
+State wanted a port on the lake in its own dominion, and so Duluth has
+sprung into existence as the rival of its older neighbor.
+
+The St. Paul and Superior Railroad, having its terminus at Duluth, lies
+wholly within the State of Minnesota, and comes just near enough to
+Superior to tantalize and vex the good people of that place.
+
+But the citizens of that town have good pluck. I do not know what motto
+they have adopted for their great corporate seal, but _Nil Desperandum_
+would best set forth their hopefulness and determination. They are
+confident that Superior is yet to be the queen city of the lake, and
+are determined to have railway communication with the Mississippi by
+building a branch line to the St. Paul and Superior Road.
+
+Our party is kindly and hospitably entertained by the people of the
+place, and to those who think of the town as being so far northwest
+that it is beyond civilization, I have only to say that there are few
+drawing-rooms in the East where more agreeable company can be found
+than that which we find in one of the parlors of Superior; few places
+where the sonatas of Beethoven and Mendelssohn can be more exquisitely
+rendered upon the pianoforte, by a lady who bakes her own bread and
+cares for her family without the aid of a servant.
+
+It is the glory of our civilization that it adapts itself to all the
+circumstances of life. I have no doubt that if Minnie, or Winnie, or
+Georgiana, or almost any of the pale, attenuated young ladies who are
+now frittering away their time in studying the last style of _paniers_,
+or thrumming the piano, or reading the last vapid novel, were to have
+their lot cast in the West,--on the frontiers of civilization,--where
+they would be _compelled_ to do something for themselves or those
+around them, that they would manfully and _womanfully_ accept the
+situation, be far happier than they now are, and worth more to
+themselves and to the world.
+
+I dare say that nine out of every ten young men selling dry-goods in
+retail stores in Boston and elsewhere have high hopes for the future.
+They are going to do something by and by. When they get on a little
+farther they will show us what they can accomplish. But the chances are
+that they will never get that little farther on. The tide is against
+them. One thing we are liable to forget; we measure ourselves by what
+we are going to do, whereas the world estimates us by what we have
+already done. How any young man of spirit can settle himself down to
+earning a bare existence, when all this vast region of the Northwest,
+with its boundless undeveloped resources before him, is inviting him
+on, is one of the unexplained mysteries of life. They will be Nobodies
+where they are; they can be Somebodies in building up a new society.
+The young man who has measured off ribbon several years, as thousands
+have who are doing no better to-day than they did five years ago, in
+all probability will be no farther along, except in years, five years
+hence than he is now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+DULUTH.
+
+
+Embarking at a pier, and steering northwest, we pass up the bay, with
+the long, narrow, natural breakwater, Minnesota Point, on our right
+hand, and the level plateau of the main-land, with a heavy forest
+growth, on our left. Before us, on the sloping hillside of the northern
+shore, lies the rapidly rising town of Duluth, unheard of twelve months
+ago, but now, to use a Western term, "a right smart chance of a place."
+
+One hundred and ninety years ago Duluth, a French explorer, was
+coasting along these shores, and sailing up this bay over which we are
+gliding. He was the first European to reach the head of the lake. He
+crossed the country to the Upper Mississippi, descended it to St. Paul,
+where he met Father Hennipen, who had been held in captivity by the
+Indians.
+
+It is suitable that so intrepid an explorer should be held in
+remembrance, and the founders of the new town have done wisely in
+naming it for him, instead of calling it Washington or Jackson,
+or adding another "ville" to the thousands now so perplexing to
+post-office clerks.
+
+The new city of the Northwest is sheltered from northerly winds by
+the high lands behind it. The St. Louis River, a stream as large as
+the Merrimac, after its turbulent course down the rocky rapids, with
+a descent altogether of five hundred feet, flows peacefully past the
+town into the Bay of Superior. The river and lake together have thrown
+up the long and narrow strip of land called Minnesota Point, reaching
+nearly across the head of the lake, and behind which lies the bay. It
+is as if the Titans had thrown up a wide railway embankment, or had
+tried their hand at filling up the lake. The bay is shallow, but the
+men who projected the city of Duluth are in no wise daunted by that
+fact. They have planned to make a harbor by building a mole out into
+the lake fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. It is to extend from
+the northern shore far enough to give good anchorage and protection to
+vessels and steamers.
+
+The work to be done is in many respects similar to what has been
+accomplished at both ends of the Suez Canal. When M. Lesseps set about
+the construction of that magnificent enterprise, he found no harbor on
+the Mediterranean side, but only a low sandy shore, against which the
+waves, driven by the prevailing western winds, were always breaking.
+
+The shore was a narrow strip of sand, behind which lay a shallow lagoon
+called Lake Menzaleh. There was no granite or solid material of any
+description at hand for the construction of a breakwater. Undaunted
+by the difficulties, he commenced the manufacture of blocks of stone
+on the beach, mixing hydraulic lime brought from France with the sand
+of the shore, and moistening it with salt water. He erected powerful
+hydraulic presses and worked them by steam. After the blocks, which
+weighed twenty tons each, had dried three months, they were taken out
+on barges and tumbled into the ocean in the line of the moles, one of
+which was 8,178 feet, nearly a mile and a half, in length; the other
+5,000 feet, enclosing an area of about five hundred acres. More than
+100,000 blocks of manufactured stone were required to complete these
+two walls. They were not laid in cement, for it has been found that a
+rubble wall is better than finished masonry to resist the action of the
+waves. Having completed the walls, dredges were set to work, and the
+area has been deepened enough to enable the largest vessels navigating
+the Mediterranean to find safe anchorage.
+
+These breakwaters were required for the outer harbor, but an inner
+basin was needed. To obtain it, M. Lesseps cut a channel through the
+low ridge of sand to Lake Menzaleh, where the water upon an average was
+four feet deep. A large area has been dredged in the lake, and docks
+constructed, and now the commerce of the world between the Orient and
+the Occident passes through the basin of Port Said.
+
+The Suez Canal, the construction of a large harbor on the sand-beach of
+the Mediterranean, and another of equal capacity on the Red Sea, is one
+of the wonders of modern times,--a triumph of engineering skill and of
+the indomitable will of one energetic man.
+
+The people of Duluth will not be under the necessity of manufacturing
+the material for the breakwater, for along the northern shore there
+is an abundant supply of granite which can be easily quarried. It is
+proposed to make an inner harbor by digging a canal across Minnesota
+Point and excavating the shallows.
+
+The difficulties to be overcome at Duluth bear slight comparison with
+those already surmounted on the Mediterranean. The commercial men of
+Chicago contemplate the fencing in of a few hundred acres of Lake
+Michigan; and there is no reason to doubt that a like thing can be done
+at the western end of Lake Superior.
+
+Two years ago Duluth was a forest; but in this month of May, 1870,
+it has two thousand inhabitants, with the prospect of doubling its
+population within a twelvemonth. The woodman's axe is ringing on the
+hills, and the trees are falling beneath his sturdy strokes. From
+morning till night we hear the joiner's plane and the click of the
+mason's trowel. You may find excellent accommodation in a large hotel,
+erected at a cost of forty thousand dollars. We may purchase the
+products of all climes in the stores,--sugar from the West Indies,
+coffee from Java, tea from China, or silks from the looms of France.
+
+The printing-press is here issuing the Duluth Minnesotian, a sprightly
+sheet that looks sharply after the interests of this growing town.
+
+Musical as the ripples upon the pebbly shore of the lake are the voices
+of the children reciting their lessons in yonder school-house. I am
+borne back to boyhood days,--to the old school-house, with its hard
+benches, where I studied, played, caught flies, was cheated swapping
+jack-knives, and got a licking besides! Glorious days they were for all
+that!
+
+Presbyterian and Episcopal churches are already organized, also an
+Historical Society. During the last winter a course of lectures was
+sustained.
+
+The stumps are yet to be seen in the streets, but such is the beginning
+of a town which may yet become one of the great commercial cities of
+the interior.
+
+A meteorological record kept at Superior since 1855 shows that the
+average period of navigation has been two hundred and sixteen days,
+which is fully as long as the season at Chicago.
+
+  Year.     Opening.      Close.     No. of Days.
+  1855      April 15     December  6     235
+  1856        "   16     November 22     220
+  1857      May   27        "     20     177
+  1858      March 20        "     22     247
+  1859      May   25        "      9     164
+  1860      April  7     December  4     238
+  1861      June  12        "     12     184
+  1862      April 28        "     16     233
+  1863      May   10        "      7     212
+  1864      April 23        "      1     222
+  1865        "   22        "      5     227
+  1866      May    5        "     10     220
+  1867      April 19        "      1     225
+
+Steaming up the river several miles to the foot of the first rapids,
+and landing on the northern shore, climbing up a wet and slippery bank
+of red clay we are on the line of the railroad, upon which several
+hundred men are employed.
+
+Grades of fifty feet to the mile are necessary from the lake up to the
+falls of the St. Louis, but the tonnage of the road will be largely
+eastward, down the grade, instead of westward.
+
+The road will be about a hundred and forty miles in length, connecting
+the lake with the network of railroads centring at St. Paul. It is
+liberally endowed, having in all 1,630,000 acres of land heavily
+timbered with pine, butternut, white oak, sugar-maple, ash, and other
+woods.
+
+There is no doubt that this line of road will do an immense amount of
+business. Such is the estimation in which it is held by the moneyed
+men of Philadelphia, that Mr. Jay Cooke obtained the entire amount of
+money necessary to construct it in four days! The bonds, I believe,
+were not put upon the market in the usual manner, by advertising, but
+were taken at once by men who wanted them for investment.
+
+A single glance at the map must be sufficient to convince any
+intelligent observer of the value of such a franchise. The wheat of
+Minnesota, to reach Chicago now, must be taken by steamers to La Crosse
+or Prairie du Chien, and thence transported by rail across Wisconsin,
+but when this road is put in operation, the products of Minnesota,
+gathered at St. Paul or Minneapolis, will seek this new outlet.
+
+Think of the scene of activity there will be along the line, not only
+of this road, but of the Northern Pacific, when the two are completed
+to the lake, of an almost continuous train of cars, of elevators
+pouring grain from cars to ships and steamers. Think of the fleet that
+will soon whiten this great inland sea, bearing the products of the
+immense wheat-field eastward to the Atlantic cities, and bringing back
+the industries of the Eastern States!
+
+It is only when I sit down to think of the future, to measure it by
+the advancement already made, that I can comprehend anything of the
+coming greatness of the Northwest,--20,000,000 bushels of wheat this
+year; 500,000 inhabitants in the State, yet scarcely a hundredth part
+of the area under cultivation. What will be the product ten years
+hence, when the population will reach 1,500,000? What will it be twenty
+years hence? How shall we obtain any conception of the business to be
+done on these railways when Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oregon,
+and all the vast region of the Assinniboine and the Saskatchawan, pour
+their products to the nearest water-carriage eastward? We are already
+beyond our depth, and are utterly unable to comprehend the probable
+development.
+
+The men who are building this railroad from St. Paul to Duluth have not
+failed to recognize this one fact, that by water Duluth is as near as
+Chicago to the Atlantic cities. Wheat and flour can be transported as
+cheaply from Duluth to Buffalo or Ogdensburg as from the southern end
+of Lake Michigan, while the distance from St. Paul to Lake Superior is
+only one hundred and forty miles against four hundred and eighty to
+Chicago. We may conclude that the wheat of Minnesota can be carried
+fifteen or twenty cents a bushel cheaper by Duluth than by Lake
+Michigan,--a saving to the Eastern consumer of almost a dollar on each
+barrel of flour. Twenty cents on a bushel saved will add at least four
+dollars to the yearly product of an acre of land.
+
+The difference in freight on articles manufactured in the East and
+shipped to Minnesota will be still more marked, for grain in bulk is
+taken at low rates, while manufactured goods pay first-class. The
+completion of this railway will be a great blessing to the people of
+New England and of all the East, as well as to those of the Northwest.
+Anything that abridges distance and cheapens carriage is so much
+absolute gain. I do not think that there is any public enterprise in
+the country that promises to produce more important results than the
+opening of this railway.
+
+An elevator company has been organized by several gentlemen in Boston
+and Philadelphia, and the necessary buildings are now going up. The
+wheat will be taken directly from the cars into the elevator, and
+discharged into the fleet of propellers running to Cleveland, Buffalo,
+and Ogdensburg, already arranged for this Lake Superior trade.
+
+The region around the western end of the Lake has resources for the
+development of a varied industry. The wooded section extends from
+Central Wisconsin westward to the Leaf Hills beyond the Mississippi,
+and northward to Lake Winnipeg. This is to be the lumbering
+region of the Northwest, for the manufacture of all agricultural
+implements,--reapers, mowers, harvesters, ploughs, drills, seed-sowers,
+wagons, carriages, carts, and furniture,--besides furnishing lumber
+for fencing, for railroad and building purposes.
+
+Upon the St. Louis River there is exhaustless water-power,--a descent
+of five hundred feet, with a stream always pouring an abundant flood.
+Its source is among the lakes of northern Minnesota, which, being
+filled to overflowing by the rains of spring and early summer, become
+great reservoirs. With such a supply of water there is no locality more
+favorably situated for the manufacture of every variety of domestic
+articles. Undoubtedly the water-power will be largely employed for
+flouring-mills. The climate is admirably adapted to the grinding
+of grain. The falls being so near the lake, there will be cheap
+transportation eastward to Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York,
+and Boston, while westward are the prairies, easily reached by the
+railroads.
+
+The geological formation on the north side of Lake Superior is granite,
+but as we follow up the St. Louis River we come upon a ridge of
+slate. It forms the backbone of the divide between the lake and the
+Mississippi River.
+
+A quarry has been opened from which slates of a quality not inferior
+to those of Vermont are obtained, and so far as we know it is the only
+quarry in the Northwest. It is almost invaluable, for Nebraska, Kansas,
+Iowa, western Minnesota, and Dakota have very little wood. Shingles
+are costly, but here is abundant material to cover the roofs of the
+millions of houses that are yet to rise upon the prairies.
+
+This slate formation is thus referred to by Thomas Clark, State
+Geologist, in his Report to the Governor of Minnesota, dated December,
+1864 (pp. 29, 30):--
+
+"These slates are found in all degrees of character, from the common
+indurated argillaceous fissile to the highly metamorphosed and even
+trappous type. The working of these slates demands the attention of
+builders; their real value is economically of more importance to the
+prairie and sparsely timbered valley of the Mississippi than any other
+deposit in the State's possession on the lake. The annual draught of
+hundreds of millions of lumber upon the pine forests of the St. Croix
+and Upper Mississippi and tributaries will exhaust those regions before
+the close of this century. The trustees of our young Commonwealth are
+emphatically admonished to encourage and foster the working of these
+slates, and to bring them into use at the earliest time possible. A
+hundred square feet of dressed slates at the quarries of Vermont, New
+York, and Canada are worth from one and a half to two dollars; the
+weight ranges from four to six hundred pounds, or about four squares
+to the ton. A ton of this roofing may be transported from the St.
+Louis quarry to the Mississippi, by railway, at three dollars, and
+thence by river to the landings as far down as St. Louis or Cairo; but
+the article may be at all points in this State accessible by boats or
+railway, at an average cost of fifteen dollars per ton, or, at most,
+four dollars per square,--little, if any, more than pine shingles; the
+former as good for a century as the latter is for a decade. The supply
+of these cliffs is literally inexhaustible; if one fourth of this slate
+area in the St. Louis Valley proves available,--and doubtless one half
+will,--it will yield one thousand millions of tons.
+
+"The demand for this slate at ten roofs to the square mile, and for
+forty thousand square miles, would be one million of tons, or one
+thousandth part of the material. The annual demand for slates in the
+Mississippi Valley may be reasonably estimated at one hundred thousand
+tons, an exportable product of two hundred thousand dollars, besides
+the element of a permanent income to the railways and water-craft of
+the State of a half-million of dollars annually."
+
+To-day the country along the St. Louis is a wilderness. Climb the
+hills, and look upon the scene, and think of the coming years.
+
+                    "Thou shalt look
+    Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
+    And down into the secrets of the glens
+    And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
+    To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze at once,
+    Here on white villages, and tilth and herds,
+    And swarming roads, and there on solitudes
+    That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
+    And eagle's shriek."
+
+Here, through the bygone centuries, the Indians have set their nets and
+hooks without ever dreaming of laying their hands upon the wealth that
+Nature has ever in store for those who will labor for it.
+
+A few of the original lords of the forests are here, and they are the
+only idlers of this region. They lounge in the streets, squat in groups
+under the lee of buildings, and pick animated _somethings_ from their
+hair!
+
+Their chief appears in an old army coat with three stars on each
+shoulder, indicating that he ranks as a lieutenant-general among his
+people. He walks with dignity, although his old black stove-pipe hat
+is badly squashed. The warriors follow him, wrapped in blankets, with
+eagle feathers stuck into their long black hair, and are as dignified
+as the chief. Labor! not they. Pale-faces and squaws may work, they
+never. Squaw-power is their highest conception of a labor-saving
+machine. They have fished in the leaping torrent, but never thought of
+its being a giant that might be put to work for their benefit.
+
+It is evident that a great manufacturing industry must spring up in
+this region. At Minneapolis, St. Cloud, and here on the St. Louis,
+we find the three principal water-powers of the Northwest. The town
+of Thompson, named in honor of one of the proprietors, Mr. Edgar A.
+Thompson of Philadelphia, has been laid out at the falls, and being
+situated on the line of the railroad, and so convenient to the lake,
+will probably have a rapid growth. The St. Paul and Mississippi
+Railroad, which winds up the northern bank of the river, crosses the
+stream at that point, and strikes southward through the forests to St.
+Paul.
+
+The road, in addition to its grant of land, has received from the city
+of St. Paul $200,000 in city bonds, and this county of St. Louis at the
+head of the lake has given $150,000 in county bonds.
+
+The lands of this company are generally heavily timbered,--with pine,
+maple, ash, oak, and other woods.
+
+The white pines of this region are almost as magnificent as those
+that formerly were the glory of Maine and New Hampshire. Norway pines
+abound. Besides transporting the lumber from its own extensive tracts
+and the lands of the government adjoining, it will be the thoroughfare
+for an immense territory drained by the Snake, Kettle, St. Louis, and
+St. Croix Rivers.
+
+The lands that bear such magnificent forest-trees are excellent for
+agriculture. Nowhere in the East have I ever seen ranker timothy and
+clover than we saw on our journey from St. Paul.
+
+The company offers favorable terms to all settlers. Men from Maine
+and New Hampshire are already locating along the line, and setting up
+saw-mills. They were lumbermen in the East, and they prefer to follow
+the same business in the West, rather than to speed the plough for a
+living. I doubt not that the chances for making money are quite as good
+in the timbered region as on the prairies, for the lumber will pay
+for the land several times over, which, when put into grain or grass,
+yields enormously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE MINING REGION.
+
+
+The sun was throwing his morning beams upon the tree-tops of the
+Apostle Islands, as our little steamer, chartered for the occasion at
+Superior, rounded the promontory of the main-land, turned its prow
+southward, and glided into the harbor of Bayfield, on the southern
+shore of the lake.
+
+We had made the passage from Superior City during the night, and were
+on deck at daybreak to see the beauties of the islands, of which so
+much has been written by explorers and tourists. The scenery is not
+bold, but beautiful. Perhaps there is no place on the lake where more
+charming vistas open to the eye, or where there is such a succession of
+entrancing views.
+
+The islands, eighteen in number, lie north of the promontory. They
+would appear as high hills, with rounded summits, crowned with a dense
+forest growth, if the waters were drained off; for all around, between
+the islands and the mainland, are deep soundings. There is no harbor on
+the Atlantic coast, none in the world, more accessible than Bayfield,
+or more securely land-locked. It may be approached during the wildest
+storm, no matter which way the wind is blowing. When the northeasters
+raise a sea as terrible as that which sometimes breaks upon Nahant, the
+captains of steamers and schooners on Lake Superior run for the Apostle
+Islands.
+
+Bayfield is about sixty miles from Superior City, and is the first
+harbor where vessels can find shelter east of the head of the lake. The
+Apostle Islands seem to have been dumped into the lake for the benefit
+of the mighty tide of commerce which in the coming years is to float
+upon this inland sea.
+
+"It is," said our captain, "the only first-class harbor on the lake. It
+can be approached in all weathers; the shores are bold, the water deep,
+the anchorage excellent, and the ice leaves it almost two weeks earlier
+in spring than the other harbors at the head of the lake."
+
+The town of Bayfield is named for an officer of the Royal Engineers,
+who was employed years ago in surveying the lake. His work was
+well done, and till recently his charts have been relied on by the
+sailing-masters; but the surveys of the United States Engineers, now
+approaching completion, are more minute and accurate.
+
+The few houses that make up the town are beautifully located, on the
+western side of the bay. Madeline Island, the largest of the group,
+lies immediately in front, and shelters the harbor and town from the
+northeast storms.
+
+The scream of the steamer's whistle rings sharply on the morning
+air,--while main-land and island, harbor and forest, repeat its echoes.
+It wakes up all the braves, squaws, and pappooses in the wigwams and
+log-houses of the Chippewa reservation, and all the inhabitants of
+Bayfield. The sun is just making his appearance when we run alongside
+the pier. It is an early hour for a dozen strangers, with sharp-set
+appetites, to make a morning call,--more than that, to drop in thus
+unceremoniously upon a private citizen for breakfast.
+
+There being no hotel in the place, we are put to this strait. Possibly
+old Nokomis, who is cooking breakfast in a little iron pot with a big
+piece knocked out of its rim, who squats on the ground and picks out
+the most savory morsels with her fingers, would share her meal with
+us, but she does not invite us to breakfast, nor do we care to make
+ourselves at home in the wigwam.
+
+But there is rare hospitality awaiting us. A gentleman who lives in a
+large white house in the centre of the town, Captain Vaughn, though not
+through with his morning nap when we steam up the harbor, is wide awake
+in an instant.
+
+I wonder if there is another housewife in the United States who would
+provide such an ample repast as that which, in an incredibly short
+space of time, appeared on the table, prepared by Mrs. Vaughn,--such a
+tender steak, mealy potatoes, nice biscuit, delicious coffee, berries
+and sweet milk; a table-cloth as white as the driven snow; and the
+hostess the picture of health, presiding at the table with charming
+ease and grace, not at all disturbed by such an avalanche of company at
+such an hour!
+
+Where the breakfast came from, or who cooked it so quickly, is an
+unexplained mystery; and then there was a basketful of lunch put up by
+somebody for us to devour while coasting about the bay, and the hostess
+the while found time to talk with us, to sit down to the parlor organ
+and charm us with music. So much for a Bayfield lady, born in Ohio, of
+stanch Yankee stock.
+
+Embarking on Captain Vaughn's little steam-yacht, we go dancing along
+the shores, now running near the bluffs to examine the sandstone
+formation like that of the Hudson, or looking up to the tall pines
+waving their dark green plumes, or beholding the lumbermen felling
+the old monarchs and dragging them with stout teams to the Bayfield
+saw-mills. A run of about fifteen miles brings us to the city of
+Ashland, situated at the head of the bay. It makes quite an imposing
+appearance when you are several miles distant, and upon landing you
+find that you have been _imposed_ upon. Somebody came here years ago,
+laid out a town, surveyed the lots, cut out magnificent avenues through
+the forest, found men who believed that Ashland was to be a great
+city, who bought lots and built houses; but the crowd did not come; the
+few who came soon turned their backs upon the place, leaving all their
+improvements. One German family remains. Two pigs were in possession of
+a parlor in one deserted house, and a cow quietly chewing her cud in
+another.
+
+A mile east of Ashland is Bay City, another place planned by
+speculators, but which probably might be purchased at a discount.
+
+The country around Bayfield is in a primitive condition now, but the
+time is rapidly approaching for a change. By and by this will be a
+great resort for tourists and seekers after health. Nature has made it
+for a _sanitarium_. No mineral springs have been discovered warranted
+to cure all diseases, but nowhere in this Northwest has nature
+compounded purer air, distilled sweeter water, or painted lovelier
+landscapes. The time will come when the people of Chicago, Milwaukie,
+and other Western cities, seeking rest and recreation during the summer
+months, will flee to this harbor of repose. The fish are as numerous
+here, and as eager to bite the hook, as anywhere else on the lake,
+while the streams of the main-land abound with trout. By and by this
+old red sandstone will be transformed into elegant mansions overlooking
+the blue waters, and it would not be strange if commerce reared a great
+mart around this harbor. The charter of the Northern Pacific Railroad
+extends to this point, and as the road would pass through heavily
+timbered lands, the company will find it for their interest to open the
+line, as it will also form a connecting link between the West and the
+iron region of Lake Superior.
+
+But whether a city rises here, whether a railroad is constructed or
+not, let me say to any one who wants to pull out big trout that this is
+the place.
+
+An Indian who has been trying his luck shows a string of five-pounders,
+caught in one of the small streams entering the bay. There is no sport
+like trout-fishing. Think of stealing on tiptoe along the winding
+stream, dropping your hook into the gurgling waters, and feeling a
+moment later something tugging, turning, pulling, twisting, running,
+now to the right, now to the left, up stream, down stream, making the
+thin cord spin, till your heart leaps into your throat through fear
+of its breaking,--fear giving place to hope, hope to triumph, when at
+length you land a seven-pounder on the green and mossy bank! You find
+such trout in the streams that empty into the lake opposite the Apostle
+Islands,--trout mottled with crimson and gold!
+
+Bidding good by to our generous host and hostess we take an
+eastward-bound steamer in the evening for a trip down the lake,
+stopping for an hour or two at Ontonagon, then steaming on, rounding
+Keweenaw Point during the night, and reaching Marquette in the morning.
+
+Fishing-boats are dancing on the waves, yachts scudding along the
+shore, tourists rambling over the rocks at our right hand, throwing
+their lines, pulling up big trout, steamers and schooners are lying in
+the harbor, and thrift, activity, and enterprise is everywhere visible.
+
+We see an immense structure, resembling a railway bridge, built out
+into the harbor. It is several hundred feet in length, and twenty or
+more in height. A train of cars comes thundering down a grade, and out
+upon the bridge, while men running from car to car knock out here and
+there a bolt or lift a catch, and we hear a rumbling and thundering,
+and feel the wharf tremble beneath our feet. It is not an earthquake;
+they are only unloading iron ore from the cars into bins.
+
+A man by means of machinery raises a trap-door, and the black mass,
+starting with a rush, thunders once more as it plunges into the hold of
+a schooner. It requires but a few minutes to take in a cargo. And then,
+shaking out her sails, the schooner shapes her course eastward along
+the "Pictured Rocks" for the St. Mary's Canal, bound for Cleveland,
+Erie, or Chicago with her freight of crude ore to be smelted and rolled
+where coal is near at hand.
+
+The town is well laid out. Although the business portion was destroyed
+by fire not many months ago, it has been rebuilt. There are elegant
+residences, churches, school-houses, and stores. Men walk the streets
+as if they had a little more business on hand than they could well
+attend to.
+
+The men who used to frequent this region to trade with the Indians
+knew as early as 1830 that iron existed in the hills. But it was not
+till 1845, just a quarter of a century ago, that any attempt was made
+to test the ore. Dr. Jackson, of Boston, who visited Lake Superior in
+1844, pronounced it of excellent quality. He informed Mr. Lyman Pray,
+of Charlestown, Mass., of its existence, and that the Indians reported
+a "mountain" of it not far from Marquette. Mr. Pray at once started
+on an exploring expedition, reached Lake Superior, obtained an Indian
+guide, penetrated the forest, and found the hills filled with ore.
+
+About the same time a gentleman named Everett obtained half a ton of
+it, which the Indians and half-breeds carried on their backs to the
+Carp River, and transported it to the lake in canoes.
+
+It was smelted, but was so different from that of Pennsylvania that
+the iron-masters shook their heads. Some declared that it was of no
+particular value, others that it could not be worked.
+
+The Pittsburg iron-men pronounced it worthless. But Mr. Everett
+persevered, sent a small quantity to the Coldwater forge, where it
+was smelted and rolled into a bar, from which he made a knife-blade,
+and was convinced that the metal was superior in quality to any other
+deposit in the country.
+
+The Jackson Company was at once formed for mining in the iron and
+copper region. The copper fever was at its height, and the company was
+organized with a view of working both metals if thought advisable. A
+forge was erected on the Carp River in 1847, making four blooms a day,
+each about four feet long and eight inches thick.
+
+Another was built, in 1854, by a company from Worcester, Mass., but so
+small was the production that in 1856 the shipment only reached five
+thousand tons. The superior qualities of the metal began to be known.
+Other companies were formed and improvements made; railroads and docks
+were constructed, and the production has had a steady increase, till it
+has reached a high figure.
+
+There are fourteen companies engaged in mining,--two have just
+commenced, while the others are well developed. The production of
+the twelve principal mines for the year 1868 will be seen from the
+following figures:--
+
+                      Tons.
+  Jackson,           131,707
+  Cleveland,         102,213
+  Marquette,           7,977
+  Lake Superior,     105,745
+  New York,           45,665
+  Lake Angeline,      27,651
+  Edwards,            17,360
+  Iron Mountain,       3,836
+  Washington,         35,757
+  New England,         8,257
+  Champion,            6,255
+  Barnum,             14,380
+                      _______
+  Total,              506,803
+
+The increase over the previous year is between forty and fifty thousand
+tons. The yield for 1869 was about 650,000 tons. The entire production
+of all the mines up to the close of 1868 is 2,300,000 tons.
+
+Iron mining in this region is in its infancy; and yet the value of the
+metal produced last year amounts to _eighteen million dollars_.
+
+The cause for this rapid development is found in the fact that the
+Lake Superior ore makes the best iron in the world. Persistent efforts
+were made to cry it down, but those who were engaged in its production
+invited rigid tests.
+
+Its tenacity, in comparison with other qualities, will be seen by the
+following tabular statement:--
+
+  Swedish,                59
+  English Cable bolt,     59
+  Russian,                76
+  Lake Superior,          89-1/2
+
+When this fact was made known, railroad companies began to use Lake
+Superior iron for the construction of locomotives, car-wheels, and
+axles. Boiler builders wanted it. Those who tried it were eager to
+obtain more, and the result is seen in the rapidly increasing demand.
+
+The average cost of mining and delivering the ore in cars at the mines
+is estimated at about $2 per ton. It is shipped to Cleveland at a cost
+of $4.35, making $6.35 when laid on the dock in that city, where it is
+readily sold for $8, leaving a profit of about $1.65 per ton for the
+shipper. Perhaps, including insurance and incidentals, the profit may
+be reduced to about $1.25 per ton. It will be seen that this is a very
+remunerative operation.
+
+About one hundred furnaces in Ohio and Pennsylvania use Lake Superior
+ore almost exclusively, while others mix it with the ores of those
+regions.
+
+A large amount is smelted at Lake Superior, where charcoal is used.
+The forests in the vicinity of the mines are rapidly disappearing.
+The wide-spreading sugar-maple, the hardy yellow birch, the feathery
+hackmatack and evergreen hemlock are alike tumbled into the coal-pit
+to supply fuel for the demands of commerce.
+
+The charcoal consumed per ton in smelting costs about eleven cents
+per bushel. For reducing a ton of the best ore about a hundred and
+ten bushels are required; for a ton of the poorest about a hundred
+and forty bushels, giving an average of $13 per ton. The cost of
+mining is, as has already been stated, about $2 per ton. To this must
+be added furnace-labor, interest on capital employed, insurance,
+freight, commission, making the total cost about $35 a ton. As the iron
+commands the highest price in the market, it will be seen that the iron
+companies of Lake Superior are having an enormous income.
+
+Some men who purchased land at government price are on the high road
+to fortune. One man entered eighty acres of land, which now nets him
+_twenty-four thousand dollars per annum_!
+
+A railroad runs due west from Marquette, gaining by steep gradients the
+general level of the ridge between Superior and Michigan. It is called
+the Marquette and Ontonagon Railroad, and will soon form an important
+link in the great iron highway across the continent. It is about twenty
+miles from Marquette to the principal mines, which are also reached by
+rail from Escanaba, on Green Bay, a distance of about seventy miles.
+
+The ore is generally found in hills ranging from one to five hundred
+feet above the level of the surrounding country. The elevations can
+hardly be called mountains; they are knolls rather. They are iron warts
+on Dame Nature's face. They are partially covered with earth,--the
+slow-forming deposits of the alluvial period.
+
+There are five varieties of ore. The most valuable is what is called
+the specular hematite, which chemically is known as a pure _anhydrous
+sesquioxide_. This ore yields about sixty-five per cent of pure iron.
+It is sometimes found in conjunction with red quartz, and is then known
+as mixed ore.
+
+The next in importance is a soft hematite, resembling the ores of
+Pennsylvania and Connecticut. It is quite porous, is more easily
+reduced than any other variety, and yields about fifty per cent of pure
+iron.
+
+The magnetic ores are found farther west than those already described.
+The Michigan, Washington, Champion, and Edwards mines are all magnetic.
+Sometimes the magnetic and specular lie side by side, and it is a
+puzzle to geologists and chemists alike to account for the difference
+between them. As yet we are not able to understand by what subtle
+alchemy the change has been produced.
+
+Another variety is called the silicious hematite, which is more
+difficult of reduction than the others. It varies in richness, and
+there is an unlimited supply.
+
+The fifth variety is a silicious hematite found with manganese, which,
+when mixed with other ores, produces an excellent quality of iron. Very
+little of this ore has been mined as yet, and its relative value is not
+ascertained.
+
+The best iron cannot be manufactured from one variety, but by mixing
+ores strength and ductility both are obtained. England sends to Russia
+and Sweden for magnetic ores to mix with those produced in Lancashire,
+for the manufacture of steel. The fires of Sheffield would soon go
+out if the manufactures in that town were dependent on English ore
+alone. The iron-masters there could not make steel good enough for a
+blacksmith's use, to say nothing of that needed for cutlery, if they
+were cut off from foreign magnetic ores.
+
+Here, at Lake Superior, those necessary for the production of the best
+of steel lie side by side. A mixture of the hematite and magnetic gives
+a metal superior, in every respect, to any that England can produce.
+
+This one fact settles the question of the future of this region. It is
+to become one of the great iron-marts of the world. It is to give, by
+and by, the supremacy to America in the production of steel.
+
+It is already settled, by trial, that every grade of iron now in use in
+arts and manufactures can be produced here at Lake Superior by mixing
+the various ores.
+
+The miners are a hardy set of men, rough, uncouth, but enterprising.
+They live in small cottages, make excellent wages, drink whiskey, and
+rear large families. How happens it that in all new communities there
+is such an abundance of children? They throng every doorway, and by
+every house we see them tumbling in the dirt. Nearly every woman has a
+child in her arms.
+
+We cannot expect to see the refinements and luxuries of old communities
+in a country where the stumps have not yet been cleared from the
+streets, and where the spruces and hemlocks are still waving above the
+cottages of the settlers, but here are the elements of society. These
+hard-handed men are developing this region, earning a livelihood for
+themselves and enriching those who employ them. Towns are springing
+into existence. We find Ishpeming rising out of a swamp. Imagine a
+spruce forest standing in a bog where the trees are so thick that there
+is hardly room enough for the lumbermen to swing their axes, the swamp
+being a stagnant pool of dark-colored water covered with green slime!
+
+An enterprising town-builder purchased this bog for a song, and has
+laid out a city. Here it is,--dwelling-houses and stores standing on
+posts driven into the mud, or resting on the stumps. He has filled up
+the streets with the _débris_ from the mines. Frogs croak beneath the
+dwellings, or sun themselves on the sills. The town is not thus growing
+from the swamp because there is no solid land, but because the upland
+has exhaustless beds of iron ore beneath, too valuable to be devoted to
+building purposes.
+
+I have seen few localities so full of promise for the future, not this
+one little spot in the vicinity of Marquette, but the entire metallic
+region between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
+
+Look at the locality! It is half-way across the continent. Lake
+Michigan laves the southern, Superior the northern shore, while the
+St. Lawrence furnishes water-carriage to the Atlantic. A hundred
+and fifty miles of rail from Bayfield will give connection with the
+navigable waters of the Mississippi. Through this peninsula will yet
+lie the shortest route between the Atlantic and Pacific. Westward are
+the wheat-fields of the continent, to be peopled by an industrious and
+thriving community. There is no point more central than this for easy
+transportation.
+
+Here, just where the future millions can be easiest served, exhaustless
+deposits of the best ore in the world have been placed by a Divine hand
+for the use and welfare of the mighty race now beginning to put forth
+its energies on this western hemisphere.
+
+Towns, cities, and villages are to arise amid these hills; the forests
+and the hills themselves are to disappear. The product, now worth
+seventeen millions of dollars per annum, erelong will be valued at a
+hundred millions.
+
+I think of the coming years when this place will be musical with the
+hum of machinery; when the stillness of the summer day and the crisp
+air of winter will be broken by the songs of men at work amid flaming
+forges, or at the ringing anvil. From Marquette, and Bayfield, and
+Ontonagon, and Escanaba, from every harbor on these inland seas,
+steamers and schooners, brigs and ships, will depart freighted with
+ore; hither they will come, bringing the products of the farm and
+workshop. Heavily loaded trains will thunder over railroads, carrying
+to every quarter of our vast domain the metals manufactured from the
+mines of Lake Superior.
+
+We have but to think of the capabilities of this region, its extent
+and area, the increase of population, the development of resources,
+the construction of railways, the growth of cities and towns; we have
+only to grasp the probabilities of the future, to discern the dawning
+commercial greatness of this section of our country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A FAMILIAR TALK.
+
+
+"I have called to have a little talk about the West, and think that I
+should like a farm in Minnesota or in the Red River country," said a
+gentleman not long since, who introduced himself as Mr. Blotter, and
+who said he was "clerking it."
+
+"I want to go out West and raise stock," said another gentleman who
+stopped me on the street.
+
+"Where would you advise a fellow to go who hasn't much money, but who
+isn't afraid to work?" said a stout young man from Maine.
+
+"I am a machinist, and want to try my luck out West," said another
+young man hailing from a manufacturing town in Massachusetts.
+
+"I am manufacturing chairs, and want to know if there is a place out
+West where I can build up a good business," said another.
+
+Many other gentlemen, either in person or by letter, have asked for
+specific information.
+
+It is not to be expected that I can point out the exact locality suited
+to each individual, or with which they would be suited, but for the
+benefit of all concerned I give the substance of an evening's talk with
+Mr. Blotter.
+
+"I want a farm, I am tired of the city," said he.
+
+Well, sir, you can be accommodated. The United States government has
+several million acres of land,--at least 30,000,000 in Minnesota, to
+say nothing of Dakota and the region beyond,--and you can help yourself
+to a farm out of any unoccupied territory. The Homestead Law of 1862
+gives a hundred and sixty acres, free of cost, to actual settlers,
+whether foreign or native, male or female, over twenty-one years old,
+or to minors having served fourteen days in the army. Foreigners
+must declare their intention to become citizens. Under the present
+Pre-emption Law settlers often live on their claims many years before
+they are called on to pay the $1.25 per acre,--the land in the mean
+time having risen to $10 or $12 per acre. A recent decision gives
+single women the right to pre-empt. Five years' residence on the land
+is required by the Homestead Law, and it is not liable to any debts
+contracted before the issuing of the patent.
+
+The State of Minnesota has a liberal law relative to the exemption of
+real estate from execution. A homestead of eighty acres, or one lot
+and house, is exempt; also, five hundred dollars' worth of furniture,
+besides tools, bed and bedding, sewing-machine, three cows, ten hogs,
+twenty sheep, a span of horses, or one horse and one yoke of oxen,
+twelve months' provisions for family and stock, one wagon, two
+ploughs, tools of a mechanic, library of a professional man, five
+hundred dollars' worth of stock if a trader, and various other articles.
+
+You will find several railroad companies ready to sell you eighty,
+or a hundred and sixty, or six hundred and forty acres in a body, at
+reasonable rates, giving you accommodating terms.
+
+"Would you take a homestead from government, or would you buy lands
+along the line of a railroad?"
+
+That is for you to say. If you take a homestead it will necessarily be
+beyond the ten-mile limit of the land granted to the road, where the
+advance in value will not keep pace with lands nearer the line. You
+will find government lands near some of the railroads, which you can
+purchase for $2.50 per acre, cash down. The railroad companies will
+charge you from $2 to $10, according to location, but will give you
+time for payment.
+
+"What are their terms?"
+
+The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, the main line of which is to be
+completed to the Red River this year, and which owns the branch line
+running from St. Paul up the east bank of the Mississippi to St. Cloud,
+have a million acres of prairie, meadow, and timber lands which they
+will sell in tracts of forty acres or more, and make the terms easy.
+Suppose you were to buy eighty acres at $8 per acre, that would give
+you a snug farm for $640. If you can pay cash down, they will make
+it $7 per acre,--$80 saved at the outset; but if you have only a few
+dollars in your pocket they will let you pay a year's interest at seven
+per cent to begin with, and the principal and interest in ten annual
+payments. The figures would then run in this way:--
+
+  Eighty acres at $8 per acre,     $640
+
+               Interest.  Principal.   Total.
+  1st year,     $44.80
+  2d   "         40.32     $64.00     $104.32
+  3d   "         35.84      64.00       99.84
+  4th  "         31.36      64.00       95.36
+  5th  "         26.88      64.00       90.88
+  6th  "         22.40      64.00       86.40
+  7th  "         17.92      64.00       81.92
+  8th  "         13.44      64.00       77.44
+  9th  "          8.96      64.00       72.96
+  10th "          4.48      64.00       68.48
+  11th "                    64.00       64.00
+
+"The second year will be the hardest," said Mr. Blotter, "for I shall
+have to fence my farm, build a cabin, and purchase stock and tools. Is
+there fencing material near?"
+
+That depends upon where you locate. If you are near the line of the
+railway, you can have it brought by cars. If you locate near the "Big
+Woods" on the main line west of Minneapolis, you will have timber near
+at hand. Numerous saw-mills are being erected, some driven by water
+and others by steam. The timbered lands of the company are already
+held at high rates,--from $7 to $10 per acre. The country beyond the
+"Big Woods" is all prairie, with no timber except a few trees along
+the streams. It is filling up so rapidly with settlers that wood-lands
+are in great demand, for when cleared they are just as valuable as the
+prairie for farming purposes.
+
+Many settlers who took up homesteads before the railroad was surveyed
+now find themselves in good circumstances, especially if they are near
+a station. In many places near towns, land which a year ago could have
+been had for $2.50 per acre is worth $20 to-day.
+
+"Is the land in the Mississippi Valley above St. Paul any better than
+that of the prairies?"
+
+Perhaps you have a mistaken idea in regard to the Mississippi Valley.
+There are no bottom-lands on the Upper Mississippi. The prairie borders
+upon the river. You will find the land on the east side better adapted
+to grazing than for raising wheat. The company do not hold their lands
+along the branch at so high a figure as on the main line. Some of my
+Minnesota friends say that stock-growing on the light lands east of the
+Mississippi is quite as profitable as raising wheat. Cattle, sheep, and
+horses transport themselves to market, but you must draw your grain.
+
+If you are going into stock-raising, you can afford to be at a greater
+distance from a railroad station than the man who raises wheat. It
+would undoubtedly be for the interest of the company to sell you their
+outlying lands along the branch line at a low figure, for it would
+enhance the value of those nearer the road. You will find St. Cloud
+and Anoka thriving places, which, with St. Paul and Minneapolis, will
+give a good home demand for beef and mutton, to say nothing of the
+facilities for reaching Eastern markets by the railroads and lakes.
+
+"Do the people of Minnesota use fertilizers?"
+
+No; they allow the manure to accumulate around their stables, or else
+dump it into the river to get rid of it!
+
+They sow wheat on the same field year after year, and return nothing to
+the ground. They even burn the straw, and there can be but one result
+coming from such a process,--exhaustion of the soil,--poor, worn-out
+farms by and by.
+
+The farmers of the West are cruel towards Mother Earth. She freely
+bestows her riches, and then, not satisfied with her gifts, they
+plunder her. Men everywhere are shouting for an eight-hour law; they
+must have rest, time for recreation and improvement of body and mind;
+but they give the soil no time for recuperation. Men expect to be
+paid for their labors, but they make no payment to the kind mother
+who feeds them; they make her work and live on nothing. Farming, as
+now carried on in the West and Northwest, is downright robbery and
+plunder, and nothing else. If the present exhaustive system is kept
+up, the time will come when the wheat-fields of Minnesota, instead of
+producing twenty-five bushels to the acre upon an average throughout
+the State, will not yield ten, which is the product in Ohio; and yet,
+with a systematic rotation of crops and application of fertilizers, the
+present marvellous richness of the soil can be maintained forever.
+
+"Do the tame grasses flourish?"
+
+Splendidly; I never saw finer fields of timothy than along the line of
+the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, west of Minneapolis. White clover
+seems to spring up of its own accord. I remember that I saw it growing
+luxuriantly along a pathway in the Red River Valley, and by the side
+of the military road leading through the woods to Lake Superior. Hay
+is very abundant, and exceedingly cheap in Minnesota. I doubt if there
+is a State in the Union that has a greater breadth of first-class
+grass-lands. Hon. Thomas Clarke, Assistant State Geologist, estimates
+the area of meadow-lands between the St. Croix and the Mississippi, and
+south of Sandy Lake, at a million acres. He says: "Some of these are
+very extensive, and bear a luxuriant growth of grass, often five or six
+feet in height. It is coarse, but sweet, and is said to make excellent
+hay."
+
+I passed through some of those meadows, and can speak from personal
+observation. I saw many acres that would yield two tons to the acre.
+The grasses are native, flat-leaved, foul-meadow and blue-joint, just
+such as I used to swing a scythe through years ago in a meadow in New
+Hampshire which furnished a fair quality of hay. The time will come
+when those lands will be valuable, although they are not held very high
+at present. A few years ago the Kankakee swamps in Illinois and Indiana
+were valueless, but now they yield many thousand tons of hay, and are
+rising in the market.
+
+"How about fruit? I don't want to go where I cannot raise fruit."
+
+Those native to the soil are strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,
+gooseberries, huckleberries, cherries, and plums. I picked all of these
+upon the prairies and along the streams while there. The wild plum
+is very abundant, and in the fall of the year you will see thousands
+of bushels in the markets at St. Paul and Minneapolis. They make an
+excellent sauce or preserve.
+
+Minnesota may be called the Cranberry State. Many farmers make more
+money from their cranberry-meadows than from their wheat-fields. The
+marshes in the northern section of the State are covered with vines,
+and the lands along the St. Croix yield abundantly.
+
+Mr. Clarke, the geologist, says: "There are 256,000 acres of
+cranberry-marsh in the triangle between the St. Croix and Mississippi,
+and bounded north by the St. Louis and Prairie Rivers! The high price
+paid for this delicious fruit makes its cultivation very profitable in
+Minnesota, as well as in New Jersey and on Cape Cod."
+
+"Can apples be raised? I am fond of them, and should consider it a
+drawback if I could not have an apple-orchard," said the persistent Mr.
+Blotter.
+
+I understand that till within a year or two the prospect for apples was
+not very encouraging. The first orchards were from Illinois nurseries,
+and it was not till native stocks were started that success attended
+the fruit-growers' efforts; but now they have orchards as thrifty
+and bountiful as any in the country. At the last State Fair held at
+Rochester, one fruit-grower had fifty bushels on exhibition, and two
+hundred more at home. It was estimated that the yield in Winona County
+last year was thirty thousand bushels.[3]
+
+  [Footnote 3: These and many other facts relating to Minnesota are
+  obtained from "Minnesota as it is in 1870," by J. W. McClung, of St.
+  Paul,--an exceedingly valuable work, crammed with information.]
+
+The St. Paul Press, noticing the display of fruits at the Ramsay and
+Hennipen County Fair, says: "These two fairs have set at rest the
+long-mooted question, whether Minnesota is an apple-growing State.
+Over two hundred varieties of the apple, exclusive of the crab species,
+were exhibited at Minneapolis, and a large number at St. Paul, of the
+finest development and flavor, and this fact will give an immense
+impetus to fruit-growing in our State."
+
+The following varieties were exhibited at the last meeting of the
+Fruit-Growers' Association, of Winona County: The Duchess of Oldenburg,
+Utter's Large, Early Red, Sweet June, Perry Russet, Fall Stripe,
+Keswick Codlin, Red Astracan, Plum Cider, Phoenix, Wagner, Ben Davis,
+German Bough, Carolina Red June, Bailey Sweet, St. Lawrence, Sops of
+Wine, Seek-no-further, Famuse, Price Sweet, Pomme Grise, Tompkins
+County King, Northern Spy, Golden Russet, Sweet Pear, Yellow Ingestrie,
+Yellow Bellflower, Lady Finger, Raule's Jannet, Kirkbridge White,
+Janiton, Dumelow, Winter Wine Sap, Chronicle, Fall Wine Sap, Rosseau,
+Colvert, Benoni, Red Romanite.
+
+Many of the above are raised in New England, so that those people who
+may cut loose from the East need not be apprehensive that they are
+bidding good by forever to the favorite fruits that have been a comfort
+as well as a luxury in their former homes.
+
+"I take it that grapes do not grow there; it must be too far north,"
+said my visitor.
+
+On the contrary, they are indigenous. You find wild grapes along the
+streams, and in the gardens around St. Paul and Minneapolis you will
+see many of the cultivated varieties bearing magnificent clusters on
+the luxuriant vines.
+
+"How about corn, rye, oats, and other grains; can they be raised with
+profit?"
+
+The following figures, taken from the official report made to the last
+legislature of the products for 1869, will show the capabilities of the
+soil:--
+
+                                       Average per Acre.
+  Wheat,         18,500,000 bushels,         18-1/2
+  Corn,           6,125,000   "              35
+  Oats,          11,816,400   "              43
+  Potatoes,       2,745,000   "              90
+  Barley,           625,000   "              30.6
+  Rye,               58,000   "              18
+  Buckwheat,         28,000   "              16
+  Hay,              430,000 tons,             2.08
+  Wool,             390,000 pounds.
+  Butter,         5,600,000   "
+  Cheese,           145,000   "
+  Sorghum,           80,000 gallons syrup.
+  Maple Sugar,      300,000 pounds.
+  Flax,             170,000   "
+
+From this it would seem that the State is destined to be one of the
+most productive in the Union.
+
+"Have they good schools out there?"
+
+Just as good as in New England. Two sections of land are set aside for
+the common-school fund. The entire amount of school lands in the State
+will be three million acres.
+
+These are sold at the rate of five dollars per acre, and the money
+invested in State or government bonds. Governor Marshall, in his last
+message, estimated the sum ultimately to be derived from the lands at
+sixteen million dollars. A school tax of two mills on the dollar is
+levied, which, with the interest from the fund, gives a liberal amount
+for education.
+
+"At what season of the year ought a man to go West?"
+
+That depends very much upon what you intend to do. If you are going to
+farming, and intend to settle upon the prairies, you must be there in
+season to break up your ground in July. If the sod is turned when the
+grass is full of juices, it decays quickly, and your ground will be in
+good condition for next year's ploughing. If you go into the timbered
+lands along the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, or along that
+of the Northern Pacific, you can go any time; but men having families
+will do well to go in advance and select their future home, and make
+some preparations before cutting loose from the old one.
+
+"Which is the best way to go?"
+
+You will find either of the great trunk railroads leading westward
+comfortable routes, and their rates of fare do not greatly vary.
+
+"Do you think that the State will have a rapid development?"
+
+If the past is any criterion for the future, its growth will be
+unparalleled. Twenty years only have passed since it was organized as a
+Territory. The population in 1850 was 5,330; in 1860 it was 172,022; in
+1865, by the State census, 250,099. The census of 1870 will give more
+than half a million. The tide of emigration is stronger at the present
+time than it ever has been before, and the construction of the various
+railroads, the liberal policy of the State, its munificent school-fund,
+the richness of the lands, the abundance of pure, fresh water, the
+delightful climate, the situation of the State in connection with
+the transcontinental line of railway, altogether will give Minnesota
+rapid advancement. Of the Northwest as of a pumpkin-vine during the
+hot days and warm nights of midsummer, we may say that we can almost
+see it grow! Look at the increase of wealth as represented by real and
+personal estates:--
+
+  1850       $806,437
+  1855     10,424,157
+  1860     36,753,408
+  1865     45,127,318
+  1868     75,795,366
+
+From the report of the Assistant Secretary of State made to the
+Legislature in January, 1870, we have the following facts:--
+
+  Total tilled acres,                  1,690,000
+  Value of real estate,             $120,000,000
+  " " personal property,              65,000,000
+  " " live stock,                     15,561,887
+  " " agricultural productions,       25,000,000
+  " " annual manufactures,            11,000,000
+  Amount of school-fund,               2,371,199
+
+Not only is Minnesota to have a rapid development, but Dakota as
+well. Civilization is advancing up the Missouri. Emigrants are moving
+on through Yankton and taking possession of the rich lands of that
+section, and the present year will see the more northern tide pouring
+into the Red River Valley, which Professor Hind called the Paradise of
+the Northwest.
+
+"How much will it cost me to reach Minnesota, and get started on a
+farm?"
+
+The fare from Boston to St. Paul will be from $35 to $40. If you go
+into the timbered regions, you will have lumber enough near at hand to
+build your house, and it will take a great many sturdy strokes to get
+rid of the oaks and pines. If you go upon the prairies, you will have
+to obtain lumber from a distance. The prices at Minneapolis are all the
+way from $12 to $45 per thousand, according to quality. Shingles cost
+from $3.50 to $4.50.
+
+Most of the farmers begin with a very small house, containing two
+or three rooms. They do not start with much furniture. We who are
+accustomed to hot and cold water, bath-room, and all the modern
+conveniences of houses in the city, might think it rather hard at
+first to use a tin wash-basin on a bench out-doors, and ladies might
+find it rather awkward to go up to their chamber on a ladder; but we
+can accommodate ourselves to almost anything, especially when we are
+working towards independence. Settlers start with small houses, for a
+good deal of lumber is required for fencing. A fence around forty acres
+requires 1,700 rails, 550 posts, and a keg of large nails. The farmers
+do not dig holes, but sharpen the lower ends of the posts and drive
+them down with a beetle. Two men by this process will fence in forty
+acres in a very short time. Such fences are for temporary use, but will
+stand for several years,--till the settler has made headway enough to
+replace them with others more substantial. You will want horses and
+oxen. A span of good farm horses will cost $250; a yoke of good oxen,
+$125. Cows are worth from $20 to $50.
+
+Carpenters, masons, and mechanics command high prices,--from $2 to
+$4.50 per day. Farm laborers can be hired for $20 to $25 per month.
+
+"What section of the Northwest is advancing most rapidly?"
+
+The southern half of Minnesota. As yet there are no settlements in the
+northern counties. Draw a line from Duluth to Fort Abercrombie, and
+you will have almost the entire population south of that line. A few
+families are living in Otter-Tail County, north of that line, and there
+are a few more in the Red River Valley.
+
+Two years hence there will probably be many thousand inhabitants in
+the northern counties; the fertility of the Red River lands and the
+construction of two railroads cannot fail of attracting settlers in
+that direction. There is far more first quality of agricultural land
+now held by government in the northwestern counties than in any other
+section of the State. The land-office for that region is at Alexandria
+in Douglas County. The vacant land subject to pre-emption as per share
+in the eleven counties composing the district amounts to 10,359,000
+acres, nearly the same area as Massachusetts and New Hampshire
+together. Take a glance at the counties.
+
+_Douglas._--Four years ago it did not contain a single inhabitant,
+but now it has a population of about 5,000! The county has an area of
+twenty townships, 460,000 acres, and about 250,000 are still held by
+government.
+
+_Grant._--It lies west of Douglas. We passed through it on our way to
+the Red River. The main line of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will
+run through the southwestern township this year. There are 295,000
+acres still vacant.
+
+_Otter-Tail._--We travelled through this county on our return from
+Dakota, and were serenaded by the Germans in our camp on the bank of
+Rush Lake. It contains 1,288,000 acres, of which 850,000 are held by
+government. This county is abundantly supplied with timber,--pine as
+well as oak, and other of the hard woods. There are numerous lakes and
+ponds, and several fine mill-sites. The soil is excellent. The lakes
+abound with whitefish. In 1868 the population was 800. Now it may be
+set down at 2,000.
+
+_Wilkin._--This county is on the Red River. It was once called Andy
+Johnson, but now bears the name of Wilkin. There you may take your
+choice of 650,000 acres of fertile lands. You can find timber on the
+streams, or you may float it down from Otter-Tail. The St. Paul and
+Pacific Railroad will be constructed through the county during the year
+1870.
+
+_Clay._--North of Wilkin on the Red River is Clay County, containing
+650,000 acres of government land, all open to settlement. The Northern
+Pacific Railroad will probably strike the Red River somewhere in this
+county. The distance from Duluth will be two hundred and twenty-five
+miles, and the settler there will be as near market as the people of
+central Illinois or eastern Iowa.
+
+_Polk._--The next county north contains 2,480,000 acres, unsurpassed
+for fertility, well watered by the Red, the Wild Rice, Marsh,
+Sand Hill, and Red Lake Rivers. The county is half as large as
+Massachusetts, and is as capable of sustaining a dense population as
+the kingdom of Belgium or the valley of the Ganges. The southern half
+will be accommodated by the Northern Pacific Railroad. Salt springs
+abound on the Wild Rice River, and the State has reserved 23,000 acres
+of the saline territory.
+
+_Pembina._--The northwestern county of the State contains 2,263,000
+acres, all held by government.
+
+_Becker._--This county lies north of Otter-Tail We passed through
+it on our way from the Red River to the head-waters of the Buffalo.
+(Description, p. 113.) It is a region surpassingly beautiful. The
+Northern Pacific Railroad will pass through it, and there you may find
+435,000 acres of rolling prairie and timbered hills. Probably there are
+not fifty settlers in the county. A large portion of these northwestern
+counties are unsurveyed, but that will not debar you from pre-empting a
+homestead.
+
+"How about the southwestern section of the State?" asked my visitor.
+
+I cannot speak from personal observation beyond Blue Earth County,
+where the Minnesota River crooks its elbow and turns northeast; but
+from what I have learned I have reason to believe that the lands there
+are just as fertile as those already settled nearer the Mississippi,
+and they will be made available by the railroad now under construction
+from St. Paul to Sioux City.
+
+"Can a man with five hundred dollars make a beginning out there with a
+reasonable prospect of success?"
+
+Yes, provided he has good pluck, and is willing to work hard and to
+wait. If he can command one thousand dollars, he can do a great deal
+better than he can with half that sum.
+
+If you were to go out sixty miles beyond St Paul to Darsel, on the
+St. Paul and Pacific Railroad you would see a farm worked by seven
+sisters. The oldest girl is about twenty-five, the youngest fifteen.
+They lived in Ohio, but their father and mother were invalids, and for
+their benefit came to Minnesota in April, 1867, and secured a hundred
+and sixty acres of land under the Homestead Law. The neighbors turned
+out and helped them build a log-house, and the girls went to work on
+the farm. Last year (1869) they had forty acres under cultivation,
+and sold 900 bushels of potatoes, 500 bushels of corn, 200 of wheat,
+250 of turnips, 200 of beets, besides 1,100 cabbage-heads, and about
+two hundred dollars' worth of other garden products. They hired men
+to split rails for fencing, and also to plough the land; but all the
+other work has been done by the girls, who are hale and hearty, and
+find time to read the weekly papers and magazines. The mother of these
+girls made the following remark to a gentleman who visited the farm:
+"The girls are not fond of the hard work they have had to do to get the
+farm started, but they are not ashamed of it. We were too poor to keep
+together, and live in a town. We could not make a living there, but
+here we have become comfortable and independent. We tried to give the
+girls a good education, and they all read and write, and find a little
+spare time to read books and papers."
+
+These plucky girls have set a good example to young men who want to get
+on in the world.
+
+Perhaps I am too enthusiastic over the future prospects of the region
+between Lake Superior and the Pacific, but having travelled through
+Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada, I have had an opportunity to
+contrast the capabilities of the two sections. Kansas has magnificent
+prairies, and so has Nebraska, but there are no sparkling ponds, no
+wood-fringed lakes, no gurgling brooks abounding with trout. The great
+want of those States is water. The soil is exceedingly fertile, even
+in Utah and Nevada, though white with powdered alkali, but they are
+valueless for want of moisture. In marked contrast to all this is the
+great domain of the Northwest. For a few years the tide of emigration
+will flow, as it is flowing now, into the central States; but when the
+lands there along the rivers and streams are all taken up, the great
+river of human life, setting towards the Pacific, will be turned up
+the Missouri, the Assinniboine, and the Saskatchawan. The climate, the
+resources of the country, the capabilities for a varied industry, and
+the configuration of the continent, alike indicate it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am not sure that Mr. Blotter accepted all this, but he has gone to
+Minnesota with his wife, turning his back on a dry-goods counting-house
+to obtain a home on the prairies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
+
+
+The statesman, the political economist, or any man who wishes
+to cast the horoscope of the future of this country, must take
+into consideration the great lakes, and their connection with the
+Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Columbia Rivers, and those portions
+of the continent drained by these water-ways.
+
+Communities do not grow by chance, but by the operation of physical
+laws. Position, climate, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, arable
+lands, coal, wood, iron, silver, and gold are predestinating forces
+in a nation's history, decreeing occupation, character, power, and
+influence.
+
+Lakes and navigable streams are natural highways for trade and traffic;
+valleys are natural avenues; mountains are toll-gates set up by nature.
+He who passes over them must pay down in sweat and labor.
+
+Humboldt discussed the question a third of a century ago. "The natural
+highways of nations," said he, "will usually be along the great
+watercourses."
+
+It impressed me deeply, as long ago as 1846, when the present enormous
+railway system of the continent had hardly begun to be developed.
+Spreading out a map of the Western Hemisphere, I then saw that from
+Cape Horn to Behring's Strait there was only one river-system that
+could be made available to commerce on the Pacific coast. In South
+America there is not a stream as large as the Merrimac flowing into the
+Pacific. The waves of the ocean break everywhere against the rocky wall
+of the Andes.
+
+In North America the Colorado rises on the pinnacle of the continent,
+but it flows through a country upheaved by volcanic fires during the
+primeval years. Its chasms and cañons are the most stupendous on the
+globe. The course of the stream is southwest to the Gulf of California,
+out of the line of direction for commerce.
+
+The only other great stream of the Pacific coast is the Columbia, whose
+head-waters are in a line with those of the Missouri, the Mississippi,
+the Red River of the North, and Lake Superior.
+
+This one feature of the physical geography of the continent was
+sufficient to show me that the most feasible route for a great
+continental highway between the Atlantic and the Pacific must be from
+Lake Superior to the valley of the Columbia.
+
+In childhood I had read the travels of Lewis and Clark over and over
+again, till I could almost repeat the entire volume, and, remembering
+their glowing accounts of the country,--the fertility of the valley
+of the Yellowstone, the easy passage from the Jefferson fork of the
+Missouri to the Columbia, and the mildness of the winters on the
+Western slope, the conviction was deepened that the best route for
+a railway from the lakes to the Pacific would be through one of the
+passes of the Rocky Mountains at the head-waters of the Missouri.
+
+Doubtless, many others observant of the physical geography of the
+continent had arrived at the same natural conclusion. Seven years
+later the government surveys were made along several of the parallels,
+that from Lake Superior to the Columbia being under the direction of
+Governor I. I. Stevens. Jeff Davis was then Secretary of War, and his
+report set forth the northern route as being virtually impracticable.
+It was, according to his representation, incapable of sustaining
+population. A careful study of Governor Stevens's Report, and a
+comparison with the reports along the more southern lines, showed that
+the Secretary of War had deliberately falsified the statements of
+Governor Stevens and his assistants. While the surveys were being made,
+Mr. Edwin F. Johnson, of Middletown, Conn., the present chief engineer
+of the Pacific Railroad, published a pamphlet which set forth in a
+clear and forcible manner the natural advantages of the route by the
+Missouri.
+
+In 1856 the British government sent out an exploring expedition
+under Captain Palliser, whose report upon the attractions of British
+America, the richness of the soil, the ease with which a road could be
+constructed to the Pacific through British territory, created great
+interest in Parliament.
+
+"The accomplishment of such a scheme," said Mr. Roebuck, "would unite
+England with Vancouver Island and with China, and they would be enabled
+widely to extend the civilization of England, and he would boldly
+assert that the civilization of England was greater than that of
+America."
+
+"Already," said the Colonial Secretary, Lord Lytton, better known to
+American readers as Bulwer, "in the large territory which extends west
+of the Rocky Mountains, from the American frontier and up to the skirts
+of the Russian dominions, we are laying the foundations of what may
+become hereafter a magnificent abode of the human race."
+
+There was a tone about these speeches that stirred my blood, and I
+prepared a pamphlet for circulation entitled "The Great Commercial
+Prize," which was published in 1858. It was a plea for the immediate
+construction of a railway up the valley of the Missouri, and down the
+Columbia to Puget Sound, over the natural highway, giving facts and
+figures in regard to its feasibility; but I was laughed at for my
+pains, and set down as a visionary by the press.
+
+It is gratifying to have our good dreams come to pass. That which
+was a dream of mine in 1846 is in process of fulfilment in 1870. The
+discovery of gold in California and the building up of a great city
+demanded the construction of a railroad to San Francisco, which was
+chartered in 1862, and which has been constructed with unparalleled
+rapidity, and is of incalculable service to the nation.
+
+The charter of the Northern Pacific was granted, in 1864, and approved
+by President Lincoln on the 2d of July of that year. Government granted
+no subsidy of bonds, but gave ten alternate sections per mile on each
+side of the road in the States and twenty on each side of the line in
+the Territories through which it might pass.
+
+Though the franchise was accompanied by this liberal land-grant, it
+has been found impossible to undertake a work of such magnitude till
+the present time. Nearly every individual named as corporators in
+the charter, with the exception of Governor J. G. Smith, its present
+President, Judge R. D. Rice, the Vice-President, and a few others,
+abandoned it under the many difficulties and discouragements that beset
+the enterprise. The few gentlemen who held on studied the geography
+of the country, and their faith in the future of the Northwest was
+strengthened. A year ago they were fortunate enough to find other men
+as enthusiastic as themselves over the resources and capabilities
+of the region between Lake Superior and the Pacific,--Messrs. Jay
+Cooke & Co., the well-known bankers of Philadelphia, whose names
+are indissolubly connected with the history of the country as its
+successful financial agents at a time when the needs of the nation
+were greatest; Messrs. Edgar Thompson and Thomas A. Scott, of the
+Pennsylvania Central Railroad; Mr. G. W. Cass, of the Pittsburg and
+Fort Wayne; Mr. B. P. Cheney, of Wells, Fargo, & Co.; Mr. William B.
+Ogden, of the Chicago and Northwestern Road; Mr. Stinson, of Chicago;
+and other gentlemen, most of whom are practical railroad men of large
+experience and far-reaching views.
+
+Mr. Cooke became the financial agent of the company, and from that hour
+the advancement of the enterprise may be dated. It required but a few
+days to raise a subscription of $5,600,000 among the capitalists of the
+country to insure the building of the road from Lake Superior to the
+Red River, to which place it is now under construction. The year 1871
+will probably see it constructed to the Missouri River, thus opening
+easy communication with Montana. The gentlemen who have taken hold of
+the work contemplate its completion to the Pacific in three years.
+
+The line laid down upon the accompanying map only indicates the general
+direction of the road. It is the intention of the company to find
+the best route across the continent,--direct in course, with easy
+grades,--and this can only be ascertained by a thorough exploration of
+the valley of the Yellowstone, the passes at the head-waters of the
+Missouri, the valley of the Columbia, and the shores and harbors of
+Puget Sound.
+
+The engineers are setting their stakes from Lake Superior to the
+Red River, and laborers with spade and shovel are following them.
+Imagination bounds onward over the prairies, across the mountains, down
+the valley of the Columbia, and beholds the last rail laid, the last
+spike driven, and a new highway completed across the continent.
+
+I think of myself as being upon the locomotive, for a run from the
+lakes to the western ocean.
+
+Our starting-point on the lake is 600 feet above the sea. We gain the
+height of land between the lake and the Mississippi by a gentle ascent.
+Thirty-one miles out from Duluth we find the waters trickling westward
+to the Mississippi. There we are 558 feet above Lake Superior. It is
+almost a dead level, as the engineers say, from that point to the
+Mississippi, which is 552 feet above the lake at Crow Wing, or 1,152
+feet above tide-water. The distance between the lake and Crow Wing is
+about a hundred miles, and the country is so level that it would be
+an easy matter to dig a canal and turn the Mississippi above Crow Wing
+eastward into the waters that reach the sea through the St. Lawrence.
+
+The Leaf Hills are 267 feet higher than the Mississippi, and the ascent
+is only seven feet to the mile,--so slight that the engineers on the
+locomotive reckon it as level grade. These hills form the divide
+between the Mississippi and the Red River. Straight on, over the level
+valley of the Red River, westward to the summit of the rolling prairies
+between the Red River and the Missouri, the locomotive speeds its way.
+Gradually we rise till we are 2,400 feet above tide-water,--the same
+elevation that is reached on the Union Pacific 250 miles west of Omaha.
+
+A descent of 400 feet carries us to the Missouri. We wind up its
+fertile valley to the richer bottom-lands of the Yellowstone, over a
+route so level that at the mouth of the Big Horn we are only 2,500
+feet above tide-water. The Yellowstone flows with a swifter current
+above the Big Horn. We are approaching the mountains, and must pass the
+ridge of land that separates the Yellowstone from the upper waters of
+the Missouri. It lies 950 miles west of Lake Superior, and the summit
+is 4,500 feet above the sea. Through the entire distance, thus far,
+there have been no grades greater than those of the Illinois Central
+and other prairie railroads of the West. Crossing the Missouri we are
+at the back-bone of the continent, depressed here like the vertebra of
+a hollow-backed horse. We may glide through the Deer Lodge Pass by a
+grade of fifty feet, at an altitude of only 5,000 feet above tide-water.
+
+Mr. Milnor Roberts, civil engineer, approached it from the west, and
+this is his description of the Pass:--
+
+"Considered as a railroad route, this valley is remarkably favorable,
+the rise from Deer Lodge City to the pass or divide between the waters
+of the Pacific and Atlantic being quite gentle, and even on the last
+few miles, the summit, about 5,000 feet above the sea, may be attained
+without employing a gradient exceeding fifty feet to the mile, with
+a moderate cut. The whole forty miles from Deer Lodge City to the
+summit of the Rocky Mountains by this route can be built as cheaply
+as roads are built through prairie countries generally. A little more
+work will be required in passing to the east side from this side,
+down Divide Creek to Wisdom or Big Hole River; but the line will be
+highly favorable on an average all the way to the Jefferson Fork of
+the Missouri River. This favorable pass comes into connection more
+particularly with the Yellowstone Valley route to the main Missouri
+Valley. A remarkable circumstance connected with this pass will
+convey a very clear view of its peculiarly favorable character.
+Private parties engaged in gold mining, in the gold-fields which exist
+abundantly on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, have dug a ditch
+across this summit which is only eighteen feet deep at the apex of
+the divide, through which they carry the waters of 'Divide Creek,' a
+tributary of the Missouri, across to the Pacific side, where it is used
+in gold-washing, and the waste water passes into the Pacific Ocean.
+This has been justly termed highway robbery."
+
+There are half a dozen passes nearly as low,--Mullan's, Blackfoot,
+Lewis and Clark's, Cadotte's, and the Marias.
+
+Going through the Deer Lodge Pass, we find that the stream changes its
+name very often before reaching the Pacific. The little brook on the
+summit of the divide, turbid with the washings of the gold-mines, is
+called the Deer Lodge Creek. Twenty-five miles farther on it is joined
+by a small stream that trickles from the summit of Mullan's Pass, near
+Helena, and the two form the Hell Gate, just as the Pemigewasset and
+Winnipesaukee form the Merrimac in New Hampshire, receiving its name
+from the many Indian fights that have taken place in its valley, where
+the Blackfeet and Nez Perces have had many a battle. The stream bears
+the name of Hell Gate for about eighty miles before being joined by the
+Blackfoot, which flows from the mountains in the vicinity of Cadotte's
+and Lewis and Clark's Passes.
+
+A little below the junction it empties into the Bitter Root, which,
+after a winding course of a hundred miles, is joined by the Flathead,
+that comes down from Flathead Lake and the country around Marias Pass.
+The united streams below the junction take the name of Clark's River,
+which has a circuitous course northward, running for a little distance
+into British America, then back again through a wide plain till joined
+by the Snake, and the two become the Columbia, pouring a mighty flood
+westward to the ocean. The line of the road does not follow the river
+to the boundary between the United States and the British Possessions,
+but strikes across the plain of the Columbia.
+
+The characteristics of Clark's River and the surrounding country are
+thus described by Mr. Roberts:--
+
+"Clark's River has a flow in low water at least six times greater
+than the low-water flow of the Ohio River between Pittsburg and
+Wheeling; and while its fall is slight, considered with reference to
+railroad grades, it is so considerable as to afford a great number of
+water-powers, whose future value must be very great,--an average of
+eleven feet per mile.
+
+"Around Lake Pend d'Oreille, and for some miles westward, and all
+along Clark's River above the lake as far as we traversed it, there is
+a magnificent region of pine, cypress, hemlock, tamarack, and cedar
+timber, many of the trees of prodigious size. I measured one which
+was thirty-four feet in circumference, and a number that were over
+twenty-seven feet, and saw hundreds, as we passed along, that were from
+twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference, and from two hundred to
+two hundred and fifty feet high. A number of valleys containing large
+bodies of this character of timber enter Clark's River from both sides,
+and the soil of these valleys is very rich. Clark's River Valley itself
+is for much of the distance confined by very high hills approaching
+near to the stream in many places; but there are sufficient sites for
+cities and farms adjacent to water-powers of the first class, and not
+many years can elapse after the opening of a railroad through this
+valley till it will exhibit a combination of industries and population
+analogous to those which now mark the Lehigh, the Schuylkill, the
+Susquehanna, and the Pomroy region of the Ohio River. Passing along its
+quiet scenes of to-day, we can see in the near future the vast change
+which the enterprise of man will bring. That which was once the work of
+half a century is now the product of three or four years. Indeed, in a
+single year after the route of this Northern Pacific Railroad shall
+have been determined, and the work fairly begun, all this region, now
+so calm and undisturbed, will be teeming with life instilled into it by
+hardy pioneers from the Atlantic and from the Pacific.
+
+"Passing along the Flathead River for a short distance, we entered the
+valley of the Jocko River. The same general remarks concerning Clark's
+River Valley are applicable to the Flathead and Bitter Root Valleys.
+The climate, the valleys, the timber, the soil, the water-powers, all
+are here, awaiting only the presence of the industrious white man
+to render to mankind the benefits implanted in them by a beneficent
+Creator."
+
+The entire distance from Lake Superior by the Yellowstone Valley to
+the tide-waters of the Pacific below the cascades of the Columbia will
+be about eighteen hundred miles. It is nearly the same distance to
+Seattle, on Puget Sound, by the Snoqualmie Pass of the Cascade Range.
+
+The Union Pacific line has had no serious obstruction from snow
+since its completion. It has suffered no more than other roads of
+the country, and its trains have arrived as regularly at Omaha
+and Sacramento as the trains of the New York Central at Buffalo
+or Albany. That the Northern Pacific road will be quite as free
+from snow-blockades will be manifest by a perusal of the following
+paragraphs from the report of Mr. Roberts:--
+
+"There is evidence enough to show that the line of road on the
+general route herein described will, in ordinary winters, be much
+less encumbered with snow where it crosses the mountains than are
+the passes at more southerly points, which are much more elevated
+above the sea. The difference of five or six degrees of latitude is
+more than compensated by the reduced elevation above the sea-level,
+and the climatic effect of the warm ocean-currents from the equator,
+already referred to, ameliorating the seasons from the Pacific to the
+Rocky Mountains. An examination of the profile of the Union Pacific
+and Central Pacific lines between Omaha, on the Missouri River, and
+Sacramento, California, a distance of 1,775 miles, shows that there are
+four main summits,--Sherman Summit, on the Black Hills, about 550 miles
+from Omaha, 8,235 feet above the sea; one on the Rocky Mountains, at
+Aspen Summit, about 935 miles from Omaha, 7,463 feet; one at Humboldt
+Mountain, about 1,245 miles from Omaha, 6,076 feet; and another on the
+Sierra Nevada, only 105 miles from the western terminus at Sacramento,
+7,062 feet; whilst from a point west of Cheyenne, 520 miles from Omaha,
+to Wasatch, 970 miles from Omaha, a continuous length of 450 miles,
+every portion of the graded road is more than 6,000 feet above the
+sea, being about 1,000 feet on this long distance higher than the
+highest summit grade on the Northern Pacific Railroad route; whilst for
+the corresponding distance on the Northern Pacific line the average
+elevation is under 3,000 feet, or _three thousand feet_ lower than the
+Sherman Summit on the Pacific line.
+
+"On the Union Pacific road the profile also shows that for 900
+continuous miles, from Sidney westward, the road has an average height
+of over 5,000 feet, and the lowest spot on that distance is more than
+4,000 feet above the sea, whereas on the Northern route only about
+sixty miles at most are as high as 4,000 feet, and the corresponding
+distance of 900 miles, extending from the mouth of the Yellowstone to
+the valley of Clark's River, is, on an average, about 3,000 feet lower
+than the Union Pacific line. Allowing that 1,000 feet of elevation
+causes a decrease of temperature of three degrees, this would be a
+difference of nine degrees. There is, therefore, a substantial reason
+for the circumstance, now well authenticated, that the snows on the
+Northern route are much less troublesome than they are on the Union
+Pacific and Central Pacific routes" (Report, p. 43).
+
+That the Northern Pacific can be economically worked is demonstrated by
+a comparison of its grades with those of the line already constructed.
+The comparison is thus presented by Mr. Roberts:--
+
+"The grades on the route across through the State of Minnesota and
+Territory of Dakota to the Missouri River will not be materially
+dissimilar to those on the other finished railroads south of it,
+passing from Chicago to Sioux City, Council Bluffs, etc.; namely,
+undulating within the general limit of about forty feet per mile,
+although it may be deemed advisable, at a few points for short
+distances, to run to a maximum of one foot per hundred or fifty-three
+feet per mile. There is sufficient knowledge of this portion of the
+route to warrant this assumption. And beyond the Missouri, along the
+valley of the Yellowstone, to near the Bozeman Pass, there is no known
+reason for assuming any higher limits. In passing Bozeman Summit of the
+Belt Range, and in going up the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, it
+may be found advisable to adopt a somewhat higher gradient for a few
+miles in overcoming those summits. This, however, can only be finally
+determined after careful surveys.
+
+"The highest ground encountered between Lake Superior and the Missouri
+River, at the mouth of the Yellowstone, is only 2,300 feet above the
+sea; the low summit of the Rocky Mountains is but little over 5,000
+feet, and the Bozeman Pass, through the Belt Range, is assumed to
+be about 500 feet lower. The height of the country upon which the
+line is traced, and upon which my estimate of cost is based, may be
+approximately stated thus, beginning at Lake Superior, going westward:--
+
+                          Miles.   Average height
+                                   above the sea.
+  To Dakota Valley,        300      1,200 feet.
+  Yellowstone River,       300      2,200   "
+  Along Yellowstone,       400      2,500   "
+  Flathead Valley,         300      3,500   "
+  Lewis or Snake River,    200      3,000   "
+  Puget Sound,             500        400   "
+                          -----
+                          2,000
+
+"Compare this with the profiles of the finished line of the Union and
+Central Pacific roads. Properly, the comparison should be made from
+Chicago, the eastern water terminus of Lake Michigan, of the Omaha
+line. There are, on that route, approximately, as follows:--
+
+                             Miles.   Average height
+                                      above the sea.
+  From Chicago to Omaha,       500     1,000 feet.
+  Near Cheyenne,               500     3,300   "
+  Cooper's,                    100     7,300   "
+  Promontory Point,            485     6,200   "
+  Humboldt,                    406     4,750   "
+  Reno,                        130     4,000   "
+  Auburn,                      118     4,400   "
+  Sacramento,                   36       300   "
+  San Francisco,               100        50   "
+                             -----
+  Chicago to San Francisco   2,375
+
+"On the Northern Pacific line there need be but two principal summits,
+whilst on the other there are four, the lowest of which is about a
+thousand feet higher than the highest on the northern route. If,
+therefore, the roads were the same length between the Pacific waters
+and the great lakes and navigable rivers east of the Rocky Mountains,
+the advantage would be largely in favor of the Northern route; but this
+actual distance is three hundred and seventy-five miles less, and the
+equated distance for ascents and descents in its favor will be very
+considerable" (Report, p. 45).
+
+From the explorations and surveys already made by the engineers, it is
+believed that there need be no gradient exceeding sixty feet per mile
+between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean. If such be the fact, it
+will enable the company to transport freight much more cheaply than the
+central line can carry it, where the grades are one hundred and sixteen
+feet to the mile, over the Sierra Nevada Range. To those who never have
+had time to examine the subject, the following tabular statement in
+regard to the power of a thirty-ton engine on different grades will be
+interesting. An engine weighing thirty tons will draw loaded cars on
+different grades as follows:--
+
+   On a level                   94    cars
+   10 feet per mile ascending   56      "
+   20  "    "   "      "        40      "
+   30  "    "   "      "        30-1/2  "
+   40  "    "   "      "        25      "
+   50  "    "   "      "        20-1/2  "
+   60  "    "   "      "        17      "
+   70  "    "   "      "        15      "
+   80  "    "   "      "        13      "
+   90  "    "   "      "        11-1/2  "
+  100  "    "   "      "        10      "
+  110  "    "   "      "         8-1/2  "
+  120  "    "   "      "         6      "
+
+A full car-load is reckoned at seven tons. It has been found in the
+operation of railroads that an engine which will move one hundred and
+seventeen tons on a grade sixty feet per mile will move only about
+fifty tons on a grade of one hundred and sixteen feet. A second glance
+at the diagram (p. 48) shows us that the sum of ascents and descents on
+the line already constructed must be vastly greater than that now under
+construction; and inasmuch as it is impossible to carry a load up or
+down hill without costing something, it follows that this road can be
+operated more economically than a line crossing four mountain-ranges,
+and the ultimate result will be a cheapening of transportation across
+the continent, and a great development of the Asiatic trade.
+
+Throughout the entire distance between Lake Superior and the Pacific
+Ocean along the line, the husbandman may turn the sod with his plough,
+the herdsman fatten his flocks, the lumberman reap the harvest of the
+forests, or the miner gather golden ore.
+
+A Bureau of Emigration is to be established by the company, which will
+be of invaluable service to the emigrant.
+
+Many persons in the Eastern and Middle States are desirous of moving to
+the Northwest, but it is hard to cut loose from old associations, to
+leave home and friends and strike out alone upon the prairie; they want
+company. The human race is gregarious. There are not many who care to
+be hermits, and most of us prefer society to solitude.
+
+This feature of human nature is to be kept in view, and it will be
+the aim of the Bureau of Emigration to offer every facility to those
+seeking new homes to take their friends with them.
+
+Upon the completion of every twenty-five miles of road, the company
+will be put in possession of forty sections of land per mile. The
+government will hold the even-numbered sections, and the company those
+bearing the odd numbers.
+
+The land will be surveyed, plotted, and the distinctive features of
+each section described. Emigration offices are to be established in our
+own country as well as abroad, where maps, plans, and specifications
+will be found.
+
+One great drawback to the settlement of the prairie lands of Illinois
+and Iowa has been the want of timber for the construction of houses.
+Persons with limited means, having only their own hands, found it hard
+to get started on a treeless prairie. Their first work is to obtain
+a house. The Bureau propose to help the man who is anxious to help
+himself on in the world, by putting up a portable house for him on
+the land that he may select. The houses will be small, but they will
+serve till the settler can get his farm fenced in, his ground ploughed,
+and two or three crops of wheat to market. The abundance of timber in
+Minnesota will enable the company to carry out this new feature of
+emigration.
+
+It will be an easy matter for a family from Lowell, another from
+Methuen, a third from Andover, a fourth from Reading, a fifth from
+Haverhill, to select their land in a body and start a Massachusetts
+colony in the Seat of Empire.
+
+Far better this method than for each family to go out by itself. Going
+as a colony they will carry the moral atmosphere of their old homes
+with them. They will have a school in operation the week after their
+arrival. And on Sabbath morning, swelling upward on the summer air,
+sweeter than the lay of lark amid the flowers, will ascend the songs
+of the Sunday school established in their new home. Looking forward
+with ardent hope to prosperous years, they will still look beyond the
+earthly to the heavenly, and sing,--
+
+    "My heavenly home is bright and fair,
+    Nor pain nor death shall enter there."
+
+This is no fancy sketch; it is but a description of what has been
+done over and over again in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and all
+the Western States. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company want their
+lands settled by an industrious, thrifty, energetic people, who prize
+everything that goes to make up the highest grade of civilization, and
+they are ready to render such help as no colonies have yet had.
+
+The land will be sold to actual settlers at low rates, and on liberal
+terms of payment. The portable houses will be sold at cost, transported
+on the cars, and set up for the colonists if they desire it.
+
+The Bureau will be put in operation as soon as it can be systematically
+organized, and I doubt not that thousands will avail themselves of its
+advantages to establish their future homes near a railroad which will
+give the shortest line across the continent, marked by low gradients,
+running through the lowest passes of the Rocky Mountains, through
+a country capable of cultivation all the way from the lakes to the
+Pacific.
+
+Am I dreaming?
+
+Across this belt of land between Lake Superior and the Pacific lies the
+world's great future highway. The physical features of this portion of
+the continent are favorable for the development of every element of a
+high civilization.
+
+Take one more look at the map, and observe the situation of the
+St. Lawrence and the lakes, furnishing water-carriage for freight
+half-way from ocean to ocean,--the prairies extending to the base of
+the Rocky Mountains,--the one summit to be crossed,--the bays, inlets,
+and harbors of the Pacific shore laved by ocean currents and warmed
+by winds wafted from the equator to the Arctic Sea. Observe also the
+shortest lines of latitude.
+
+The geographical position is in the main axial line of the world's
+grand commercial movement. San Francisco and Puget Sound are the two
+western gateways of the continent. Rapid as has been the advancement of
+civilization around the Golden Gate, magnificent as its future may be,
+yet equally grand and majestic will be the northern portal of the great
+Republic. Not only will it be on the shortest possible route between
+England and Asia, but it will be in the direct line between England and
+the Asiatic dominions of Russia.
+
+While we are building our railroads westward from the Atlantic to the
+Pacific, the Emperor of Russia is extending his from the Ural Mountains
+eastward, down the valley of the Amoor, to open communication with
+China and Japan. The shortest route of travel round the world a few
+years hence will lie through the northern section of this continent and
+through Siberia. The Himalaya Range of mountains and the deserts of
+Central Asia will be impassible barriers to railroads between India
+and China, or Central Europe and the East; but the valley of the Amoor
+is fertile, and there is no fairer section of the Czar's dominions than
+Siberia. From Puget Sound straight across the Pacific will be found, a
+few years hence, the shortest route around the world.
+
+Farm-houses dot the landscape, roses climb by cottage-doors, bees fill
+the air with their humming, bringing home to their hives the sweets
+gathered from far-off prairie-flowers; the prattle of children's voices
+floats upon the air, the verdant waste becomes an Eden, villages,
+towns, and cities spring into existence. A great metropolis rises upon
+the Pacific shore, where the winter air is laden with the perfume of
+ever-blooming flowers.
+
+The ships of all nations lie at anchor in the land-locked bays, or
+shake out their sails for a voyage to the Orient. Steamships come and
+go, laden with the teas of China and Japan, the coffee of Java, the
+spices of Sumatra. I hear the humming of saws, the pounding of hammers,
+the flying of shuttles, the click and clatter of machinery. By every
+mill-stream springs up a town. The slopes are golden with ripening
+grain. The forest, the field, the mine, the river, alike yield their
+abundance to the ever-growing multitude.
+
+Such is the outlook towards the future. Will the intellectual and
+moral development keep pace with the physical growth? If those are
+wanting, the advancement will be towards Sodom. The future man of
+the Northwest will have American, Norse, Celtic, and Saxon blood in
+his veins. His countenance, in the pure, dry, electric air, will be
+as fresh as the morning. His muscles will be iron, his nerves steel.
+Vigor will characterize his every action,--for climate gives quality to
+the blood, strength to the muscles, power to the brain. Indolence is
+characteristic of people living in the tropics, and energy of those in
+temperate zones.
+
+The citizen of the Northwest will be a freeman. No shackles will bind
+him, nor will he wear a lock upon his lips. To the emigrant from the
+Old World the crossing of the ocean is an act of emancipation; it is
+like the Marseillaise,--it fires him with new hopes and aspirations.
+
+    "Here the free spirit of mankind at length
+      Throws its last fetters off, and who shall place
+    A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
+      Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
+      For like the comet's way through infinite space,
+    Stretches the long untravelled path of light
+      Into the depth of ages; we may trace,
+    Distant, the brightening glory of its flight,
+    Till the receding rays are lost to human sight."
+
+I do not look with desponding eyes into the future. The nations
+everywhere,--in Europe and Asia,--the new and the old, are moving
+onward and upward as never before, and America leads them. Railroads,
+steamships, school-houses, printing-presses, free platforms and
+pulpits, an open Bible, are the propelling forces of the nineteenth
+century. It remains only for the Christian men and women of this
+country to give the Bible, the Sunday and the common school to the
+coming millions, to insure a greatness and grandeur to America far
+surpassing anything in human history.
+
+It will not be for America alone; for, under the energizing powers of
+this age the entire human race is moving on towards a destiny unseen
+except to the eye of faith, but unmistakably grand and glorious.
+
+I have been an observer of the civilization of Europe, and have seen
+the kindlings of new life, at the hands of England and the United
+States, in India and China; and through the drifting haze of the future
+I behold nations rising from the darkness of ancient barbarism into
+the light of modern civilization, and the radiant cross once reared on
+Calvary throwing its peaceful beams afar,--over ocean, valley, lake,
+river, and mountain, illuming all the earth.
+
+Situated where the great stream of human life will pour its mightiest
+flood from ocean to ocean, beneficently endowed with nature's riches,
+and illumed by such a light, there will be no portion of all earth's
+wide domain surpassing in glory and grandeur this future Seat of Empire.
+
+
+Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company.
+
+
+
+
+  GREAT CENTRAL ROUTE
+  via Niagara Falls.
+
+  MICHIGAN CENTRAL & GREAT WESTERN
+  RAILROADS.
+
+  From Boston and New York to Chicago, connecting
+  there with all the great Railways,
+  North, South, and West.
+
+  =Four Trains Daily.=
+
+  Pullman's Palace, Hotel, Drawing-Room, and
+  Sleeping Cars on Express Trains.
+
+
+  FREIGHT TRAINS.
+
+  Freight taken through by the "=BLUE LINE="
+  without breaking bulk, and in as short
+  time as by any other line.
+
+
+  PASSENGER AGENTS.
+
+  P. K. RANDALL,        Boston.
+  CHARLES E. NOBLE,     New York.
+  HENRY C. WENTWORTH,   Chicago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE FIRST DIVISION OF THE
+  St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company.
+
+
+  LAND DEPARTMENT.
+
+  THE COMPANY NOW OFFERS FOR SALE
+  =1,000,000 Acres of Land=,
+
+  Located along their two Railroad Lines, viz.: From St. Paul, via St.
+  Anthony, Anoka, St. Cloud, and Sauk Rapids, to Watab; and from St.
+  Anthony, via Minneapolis, Wayzata, Crow River,
+  Waverly, and Forest City, to the Western
+  Boundary of the State.
+
+  =THESE LANDS COMPRISE TIMBER, MEADOW,
+  AND PRAIRIE LANDS,=
+
+  And are all within easy distance of the Railroad, in the midst of
+  considerable Settlements, convenient to Churches and Schools.
+
+
+Inducement to Settlers.
+
+The attention of persons whose limited means forbid the purchase of
+a homestead in the older States, is particularly invited to these
+lands. The farms are sold in tracts of 40 or 80 acres and upwards, at
+prices ranging from $5.00 to $10.00 per acre. Cash sales are always One
+Dollar per acre less than Credit sales. In the latter case 10 years are
+granted if required.
+
+EXAMPLE.--80 acres at $8.00 per acre, on long credit,--$640.00. A part
+payment on the principal is always desired; but in case the means
+of the settler are very limited, the Company allows him to pay only
+One Year's Interest down, dividing the principal in ten equal annual
+payments, with seven per cent interest each year on the unpaid balance:
+
+                  Int.  Prin.
+   1st payment   $44.80
+   2d     "       40.32   $64
+   3d     "       35.84    64
+   4th    "       31.36    64
+   5th    "       26.28    64
+   6th    "       22.40    64
+   7th    "       17.92    64
+   8th    "       13.44    64
+   9th    "        8.96    64
+  10th    "        4.48    64
+  11th    "                64
+
+The purchaser has the privilege to pay up any time within the 10 years,
+thereby saving the payment of interest.
+
+The same land may be purchased for $560.00 cash. Any other information
+will be furnished on application in person, or by letter, in English,
+French or German, addressed to
+
+  =LAND COMMISSIONER,
+  First Division St. Paul & Pacific R. R. Co.,
+  SAINT PAUL. MINN.=
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  LAKE SHORE AND MICHIGAN
+  Southern Railway.
+
+  THE GREAT SOUTH SHORE LINE BETWEEN
+  =BUFFALO AND CHICAGO.=
+
+All trains on the New York Central Hudson River Railroad, and all
+trains on the Erie Railway, form sure and reliable connections at
+Buffalo with the
+
+GREAT LAKE SHORE LINE
+
+All the great railways in the Northwest and Southwest connect at
+Chicago, Toledo, or Cleveland with this Line.
+
+Palace, Drawing-Room, Sleeping Coaches daily between New York and
+Chicago, through WITHOUT CHANGE.
+
+
+FAST FREIGHT LINES.
+
+The following lines transport freight between Boston, New York, and
+principal points in New England to Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, and
+principal points in the Southwest and Northwest, _without break of bulk
+or transfer_.
+
+  RED LINE,           WHITE LINE,
+  SOUTH SHORE LINE,   EMPIRE LINE,
+  COMMERCIAL LINE FROM BALTIMORE.
+
+Passengers or shippers of freight will find it to their interest to
+call on the Agents of these Lines.
+
+  F. E. MORSE,
+  _Gen'l Western Pass'r Ag't_,
+  Chicago, Ill.
+
+  CHS. F. HATCH,
+  _Gen'l Superintendent_,
+  Cleveland, O.
+
+  J. A. BURCH,
+  _Gen'l Eastern Pass'r Ag't_,
+  Buffalo, N. Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  VERMONT CENTRAL
+  R. R. Line.
+
+The =GREAT Northern line= and =most direct= route from =BOSTON= and
+=ALL POINTS= in =New England= to the =CANADAS, DETROIT, CHICAGO=,
+
+AND
+
+=All points West, Northwest, & Southwest=.
+
+
+NEW SLEEPING-CARS,
+
+the most elegant from =Boston=, and =SPLENDID DRAWING-ROOM CARS= run on
+every express train, connecting on the =Grand Trunk Railway= with
+
+=Pullman's Palace, Hotel, and Sleeping Cars=;
+
+this being the =only line= affording such comfort and luxury to the
+passenger between the East and West.
+
+
+  TIME FREIGHT
+  VIA
+  National Despatch Line.
+
+=Freight= taken for =Chicago=, =St. Louis=, and =all points West
+without breaking bulk or transfer=, in as =short time= as any other
+line.
+
+--> For full information relating to time contracts, Tickets, &c., &c.,
+please address or call at
+
+  =No. 65 Washington Street (Sears Building), Boston.
+  LANSING MILLIS, General Agent.=
+
+
+(=Montreal Office, No. 30 Great St. James St.=)
+
+(=New York Office, No. 9 Astor House.=)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad.
+
+The line of this road is from St. Paul, the head of navigation on the
+Mississippi River, to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of 140
+miles. It connects at St. Paul with each of the long lines of railroad
+traversing the vast and fertile regions of Minnesota in all directions,
+and converging at St. Paul.
+
+It connects the commerce and business of the Mississippi and Minnesota
+Rivers, the California Central Railroad, and the Northern Pacific
+Railroad, with Lake Superior and the commercial system of the great
+lakes, and makes the outlet or commercial track to the lakes, over
+which must pass the commerce of a region of country second to none on
+the American continent in capacity for production.
+
+The land grant made by the government of the United States and by the
+State of Minnesota, in aid of the construction of this road, is the
+largest in quantity and most valuable in kind ever made in aid of any
+railway in either of the American States.
+
+This grant amounts to seventeen square miles or sections [10,880
+acres] of land for each mile of the road, and in the aggregate to =One
+Million, Six Hundred and Thirty-two Thousand Acres of Land=.
+
+These lands are for the most part well timbered with pine, butternut,
+white oak, sugar maple, and other valuable timber, and are perhaps
+better adapted to the raising of stock, winter wheat, corn, oats, and
+most kinds of agricultural
+
+These lands are well watered with running streams and innumerable
+lakes, and within the limits of the land belonging to the Company there
+is an abundance of water-power for manufacturing purposes.
+
+A glance at the map, and an intelligent comprehension of the course of
+trade, and way to the markets of the Eastern cities and to Europe, for
+the products of this section of the Northwest, will at once satisfy
+any one who examines the question that the lands of this Company,
+by reason of the low freights at which their products reach market,
+have a value--independent of that which arises from their superior
+quality--which can hardly be over-estimated.
+
+Twenty cents saved in sending a bushel of wheat to market adds four
+dollars to the yearly product of an acre of wheat land, and what
+is true of this will apply to all other articles of farm produce
+transported to market, and demonstrates that the value of lands depends
+largely on the price at which their products can be carried to market.
+
+  =THE LANDS OF THIS COMPANY ARE
+  NOW OFFERED TO=
+  ~Immigrants and Settlers~
+  =at the most favorable rates, as to time and terms of payment=.
+
+  =W. L. BANNING,
+  President and Land Commissioner, Saint Paul, Minnesota.=
+
+
+
+
+"CARLETON'S" WORKS.
+
+
+[Illustration: OUR NAGPORE COACH.]
+
+  OUR NEW WAY ROUND THE WORLD;
+  OR,
+  =WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO SEE=.
+
+By CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN. Containing several full-page Maps, showing
+steamship lines and routes of travel, and profusely illustrated with
+more than 100 engravings, reproduced from photographs and original
+sketches. Crown octavo. Morocco Cloth, $3.00; Half Calf, $5.50; Library
+Edition, $3.50.
+
+    "In Mr. Charles C. Coffin we have a traveller after the latest
+    and best transatlantic pattern. He has thrown himself thoroughly
+    into the spirit of his age and race; yet, while loyal to the
+    backbone, and indorsing to the full his country's claims to
+    present grandeur and future pre-eminence, he has a corner in his
+    soul for the merits of other lands, and is open to the lessons
+    of Old-World wisdom. Rapid as was his flight, and superficial as
+    was his purview of the multitudinous objects that daily crowded
+    his path, his powers of observation are, we are bound to say,
+    keen and vigorous, and his judgments upon men and things both
+    shrewd and impartial. Be it the aspects of nature, the historical
+    monuments, the national traits, or the social idiosyncrasies that
+    come before him, we find him invariably alive to what is most
+    beautiful or august or original or piquant, as the case may be.
+    He is at all times happy in hitting off the salient features, or
+    picking out the weak spots, in local life and manners.... The
+    history of British rule in India, and the tokens of material and
+    social advancement everywhere beside his path, are themes after
+    the American's own heart. We have never seen a more graphic or
+    telling sketch of Anglo-Indian life and characteristics within
+    anything like the compass of Mr. Coffin's flying experiences....
+    Mr. Coffin's studies of life in China are eminently piquant and
+    original. Nothing is too old or too new to escape his notice....
+    The wood-cuts interspersed among his pages deserve a word of
+    commendation. They are drawn with vigor and truth, often showing
+    touches of quaint and quiet humor. Altogether, if there is nothing
+    new under the sun, Our New Way Round the World shows there may
+    be much novelty and freshness in the mode of telling even a
+    thrice-told tale."--_Saturday Review (London)._
+
+    "The author of this interesting and valuable tour of the globe
+    starts from New York, visits every city of note in Europe, sails
+    from Marseilles to Alexandria, thence to Cairo, and Suez Canal,
+    India, China, and Japan, returning by the way of California.
+    Through this wide field for observation and research, his keen
+    habits of characterization, and his vivid powers of description
+    make him an exceedingly agreeable travelling companion. Mr. Coffin
+    has the very happy faculty of giving to a really thrice-told
+    tale of travel a freshness that carries the reader to the end of
+    the volume with unabated interest. His tour in the interior of
+    the British possessions in India is full of interest,--and his
+    elaborate pictures of China at the present time are valuable,
+    showing the actual character of the people; the tenacity of their
+    prejudices, which appear to resist all innovation from 'outside
+    barbarians,' is most graphically depicted, and is worthy the
+    attention of our politicians and speculative philanthropists. The
+    book on the whole is a valuable addition to our native literature,
+    written as it is from a distinctive American stand-point view
+    of foreign nations. Numerous spirited designs, illustrative
+    of habits and manners, adorn the work, together with maps in
+    abundance."--_N. Y. Express._
+
+    "A model record of travel, over fields comparatively unknown.
+    It combines, in a remarkable degree, skill and judgment in the
+    selection of facts and points, with clearness, accuracy, and
+    proportion in their statement: a natural ease and grace of
+    expression, with a genial spirit, and a broad, true sympathy
+    with everything human. A very large amount of instructive and
+    attractive matter is compressed in its pages. The illustrations,
+    too, are numerous, and all in admirable keeping with the
+    narrative. In these, and in the clear, fair, readable type, the
+    publishers have well done their part.
+
+    "We confess to a deeper, and consciously healthier interest in the
+    perusal than in the reading of any similar volume. Very heartily,
+    therefore, do we commend the book to the winter-evening family
+    circle, sure that it will instruct and charm alike both young and
+    old."--_N. Y. Christian World._
+
+    "The book has many excellent illustrations, and is written with
+    all the loveliness and instructiveness for which 'Carleton' became
+    famous during the war, as a war correspondent of the Boston
+    Journal. The book is gossipy and entertaining in a high degree,
+    and will interest young and old."--_New York Evening Post._
+
+*** _For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, to any address,
+by the Publishers_,
+
+  =FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
+  124 Tremont Street, Boston.=
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOUR YEARS OF FIGHTING.
+
+A volume of Personal Observation with the Army and Navy, from the first
+Battle of Bull Run to the Fall of Richmond. 1 vol. 8vo. With Steel
+Portrait of the Author, and numerous Illustrations. Cloth, $3.50;
+Sheep, $4.50.
+
+
+=From Senator Yates, of Illinois.=
+
+    ...From the accuracy with which you relate those incidents which
+    fell under my personal observation, I am persuaded that the whole
+    volume forms a very valuable addition to the historic literature
+    of the heroic age of the Republic.
+
+    I am, sir, your obliged friend,
+    =RICH'D YATES=
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
+by the Publishers_,
+
+=FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.=
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+MY DAYS AND NIGHTS ON THE BATTLE-FIELD.
+
+A Book for Boys. By "CARLETON." 1 vol. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.50.
+
+    "It is written by one of the best of the war correspondents,
+    'Carleton,' of the _Boston Journal_, whose opportunities for
+    observing all the celebrated battles of the war were unsurpassed.
+    The book is really a history of the first year of the war, and
+    describes the principal battles of that period,--Bull Run, Fort
+    Henry, Fort Donelson, Pittsburg Landing, Columbus, New Madrid,
+    Island No. 10, and Memphis, in part of which the writer was, and
+    all of which he saw."--_Buffalo Express._
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
+by the Publishers_,
+
+=FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.=
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+FOLLOWING THE FLAG.
+
+From August, 1861, to November, 1862, with the Army of the Potomac. By
+"CARLETON." 1 vol. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.50.
+
+    "'Carleton' is by all odds the best writer for boys on the war.
+    His 'Days and Nights on the Battle-Field' made him famous among
+    the young folks. To read his books is equal in interest to a
+    bivouac or a battle, and is free from the hard couch and harder
+    bread of the one, and the jeopardizing bullets of the other. To
+    be entertained and informed, we would rather peruse 'Following
+    the Flag' than study a dozen octavo volumes written by a
+    world-renowned historian."--_Indianapolis Journal._
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
+by the Publishers_.
+
+=FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.=
+
+
+WINNING HIS WAY.
+
+BY "CARLETON."
+
+1 vol. 16mo. Illustrated. $1.25.
+
+    CLEMENT, CLINTON CO., ILLINOIS.
+
+    MR. CARLETON.
+
+    _Dear Sir,_--Is "Winning His Way" a true story?
+
+    Is the story published in book form?
+
+    Where does Paul live?
+
+    I am very much interested in the story, but my father thinks it is
+    all fiction as he calls it.
+
+    If you will answer this you will oblige a boy ten years old, who has
+    read it four times, and who means to read it again when I go over to
+    Aunt Leach's.
+
+    Paul's ardent admirer,
+
+    JOHN W. SCOTT.
+    April 16, 1870.
+
+
+    BOSTON, May 7, 1870.
+
+    JOHN W. SCOTT.
+
+    _My Dear Young Friend,_--I am very much gratified to hear that
+    you are so much interested in "Winning His Way," which has been
+    published in book form by Messrs. Fields, Osgood, & Co.
+
+    You ask if it is a true story. I will tell you about it: I knew a
+    brave boy who went into the army and fought just as Paul fought,
+    who was left on the field for dead, and who was taken to a rebel
+    prison, and I had him in mind all the time I was writing the story.
+
+    That is all true about painting the pigs, and shutting the
+    school-house door, and tying the hay in front of the old horse's
+    nose.
+
+    So you can tell your father that the things did not happen just in
+    the order they are given in the book, but that I tried to make the
+    story true to life.
+
+    Your friend,
+
+    CARLETON.
+
+
+    "A story of a poor Western boy who, with true American grit in
+    his composition, worked his way into a position of honorable
+    independence, and who was among the first to rally round the flag
+    when the day of his country's peril came. There is a sound, manly
+    tone about the book, a freedom from nam-by-pambyism, worthy of all
+    commendation."--_Sunday School Times._
+
+"One of the best of stories for boys."--_Hartford Courant._
+
+*** _For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price
+by the Publishers_,
+
+=FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., Boston.=
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Footnotes have been moved to the end of the paragraphs to which they
+refer. Illustrations have been moved near the relevant section of the
+text.
+
+"=" is used in the text to indicate bolded text, and "~" is used to
+indicate a fancy font.
+
+On Page 255, "-->" is used to denote a hand with the finger pointing
+right.
+
+In the advertisements at the end of the book, "***" is used to denote
+an inverted asterism. I have separated the ads by asterisks.
+
+Inconsistencies have been retained in spelling, hyphenation,
+punctuation, and grammar, except where indicated in the list below:
+
+  - Page number added to Table of Contents on Page v
+  - Dash added after "Mud-Wagon." on Page vi
+  - Dash added after "Railroad." on Page vii
+  - Period moved from before to after bracket on Page 96
+  - "timber" changed to "Timber" on Page 96
+  - "spot" changed to "sport" on Page 121
+  - "offer" changed to "offers" on Page 168
+  - Quotation mark added before "The" on Page 222
+  - Quotation mark added before "Compare" on Page 223
+  - "agricul tural" changed to "agricultural" on Page 237
+  - Single quote added after "Carleton" on Page 242
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seat of Empire, by Charles Carleton Coffin
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44072 ***