ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.
Ourhalting-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.
TOASTING PORK.
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 5A. 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 inhis 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 orMissouri. 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, achicken-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 estimatedat more than twenty million bushels!
I would not make the farmers of New Englanddiscontented. 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 knocksfor 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 teamstersare 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! Theteamster 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 laborsof 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.
A STRONG TEAM.
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! Butwedragged 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.
IN THE FOREST.
Inpreceding 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 eatenpork 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 LakeSuperior 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-grownmonuments, raised by the Chippewas when they were a powerful nation among the Red Men.
"But now the wheat is green and highOn clods that hid the warrior's breast,And scattered in the furrows lieThe weapons of his rest."
"But now the wheat is green and highOn clods that hid the warrior's breast,And scattered in the furrows lieThe 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 thesickle, 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 themoment 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 ahotel, 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 downkerchug, 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 negativeand 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 furnitureof 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 theiri-deas pretty well up though, on real estate, for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent of thei, 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 thetireand 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 engagein 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 saysnorous?—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, pickberries 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 ofus; 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, butNil Desperandumwould 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 ofpaniers, 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 becompelledto dosomething for themselves or those around them, that they would manfully andwomanfullyaccept 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.
DULUTH.
Embarkingat 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 nightwe 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.
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 theestimation 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 cominggreatness 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, atthree 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.