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_SPECIAL EDITION_
WITH THE WORLD'S
GREAT TRAVELLERS
EDITED BY CHARLES MORRIS
AND OLIVER H. G. LEIGH
VOL. II
CHICAGO
UNION BOOK COMPANY
1901
COPYRIGHT 1896 AND 1897
BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1901
E. R. DUMONT
[Illustration: BOSTON COMMON, BOSTON, MASS.]
CONTENTS.
SUBJECT. AUTHOR. PAGE
New York, Washington, Chicago OLIVER H. G. LEIGH 5
Winnipeg Lake and River W. F. BUTLER 21
A Fine Scenic Route HENRY T. FINCK 31
South Pass and Fremont's Park JOHN C. FREMONT 42
In the Yellowstone Park FERDINAND V. HAYDEN 49
The Country of the Cliff-Dwellers ALFRED TERRY BACON 58
Lake Tahoe and the Big Trees A. H. TEVIS 68
The Chinese Quarter in San Francisco HELEN HUNT JACKSON 78
Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley CHARLES LORING BRACE 88
A Sportsman's Experience in Mexico SIR ROSE LAMBERT PRICE 99
The Scenery of the Mexican Lowlands FELIX L. OSWALD 108
Among the Ruins of Yucatan JOHN L. STEPHENS 119
The Route of the Nicaragua Canal JULIUS FROEBEL 130
The Destruction of San Salvador CARL SCHERZER 137
Scenes in Trinidad and Jamaica JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 145
The High Woods of Trinidad CHARLES KINGSLEY 157
Animals of British Guiana C. BARRINGTON BROWN 169
Life and Scenery in Venezuela ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT 179
The Llaneros of Venezuela RAMON PAEZ 190
The Forests of the Amazon and Madeira
Rivers FRANZ KELLER 200
Canoe- and Camp-Life on the Madeira FRANZ KELLER 212
Besieged by Peccaries JAMES W. WELLS 219
The Perils of Travel IDA PFEIFFER 232
Brazilian Ants and Monkeys HENRY W. BATES 240
The Monarchs of the Andes JAMES ORTON 251
Inca High-Roads and Bridges E. GEORGE SQUIER 261
List of Illustrations
VOLUME II
BOSTON COMMON, BOSTON, MASS. _Frontispiece_
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON 14
MEMORIAL MONUMENT TO SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN, FOUNDER OF
QUEBEC 34
THE UPPER YELLOWSTONE FALLS 50
GRAND CANON, ARIZONA 66
RED WOOD TREE, CALIFORNIA 96
REGINA ANGELORUM (Queen of the Angels) 116
A WATERFALL IN THE TROPICS 146
LA GUAYRA, VENEZUELA 180
A SOUTH SEA ISLAND 214
THE MONARCHS OF THE ANDES 252
WITH THE WORLD'S
GREAT TRAVELLERS.
THE WORLD'S GREAT CAPITALS OF TO-DAY.
OLIVER H. G. LEIGH.
NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, CHICAGO.
The reflective voyager, on his first sight of New York, is baffled when
he attempts to catalogue his sensations. All is so completely in
contrast with the capitals of Europe. The gloriously bright sky, air
that drinks like champagne, the resultant springiness of life and
movement, that overdoes itself in excitement and premature exhaustion,
and the obtrusively visible defects of this surface enthusiasm,
monotonous streets, unfinished or unbegun city improvements, and the
conspicuous lack of play-spaces for children--this is the rough
portrait sketch New York draws of itself for the newcomer. It does not
disguise the fact that money-making was for many years the dominant
consideration. The city was laid out for business, and public comfort
had to look out for itself. The workers, the poor, and the helpless were
apparently overlooked.
But there are at least three New Yorks to explore. Old New York
stretches from the bay up to once aristocratic Madison Square, and this
is the section that first leaves its mark on the aforesaid visitor. Then
comes new New York, the splendid modern metropolis that spreads from
Central Park along the Hudson to the northern heights where the stately
mausoleum of Grant, the transplanted Columbia University, and the great
Cathedral-to-be add majestic dignity to the grandly picturesque panorama
by the river. The antiquated brownstone wilderness of fashionable houses
blossoms into white and gray and red clusters of mansions, richly varied
in form and treatment, with the welcome grassy settings so pitifully
missing in the older quarter. From a neglected span of prairie ground,
pimpled with bare rocks and goat-sheltering shanties also shared by dago
families, this section has in a few years qualified itself to rival the
famous features of old-world cities. A nobler prospect than Riverside
Drive alongside the mighty Hudson cannot be desired nor found. At
last the city has discovered and worthily utilized its splendid
opportunities. Then, thirdly, there is Greater New York. For the
simplification of local government it is doubtless excellent policy for
London and New York to lasso their humbler neighbor towns that the big
cities may pose as suddenly greater than ever. The thing is done with a
stroke of the pen and does not wound the pride of the newly scooped-in
citizens, because the individuality of the suburban districts remains
unchanged, but in our infantile capacity as mere sightseers the
side-shows do not affect the glories of the ring proper. If this fashion
of acquiring greatness continues, being inclusion rather than expansion,
there need be no limit to the ciphers periodically tacked on to the
population of the world's swarming hives. Now that New York is growing,
it might drop its insignificant borrowed name and assume its rightful
one of dignity and historic import, Manhattan. It fills the twenty-two
square miles between Harlem river, the Hudson, the East River, and the
bay, which area is Manhattan Island. North of the Harlem it includes
the district of the Bronx, a little stream which for half a mile or
so affords as exquisite a picture of nature's beauty as can be found
anywhere. The drift from town to country homes is a sign of the times
and an augury of great good to the coming generation, physical and
patriotic. After all, bricks and mortar are not the making of a city.
New York is at its best beyond the borders. Its rich citizens overflow
into these northern suburbs and lordly estates, and across the East
River into Brooklyn and Long Island's garden villages, and across the
Hudson into New Jersey's charming towns, and down the bay to Staten
Island. In no great metropolis this side of Constantinople is it so easy
and inexpensive to slip quickly from the office or home and enjoy the
bracing delights of a sail down the salt water (the upper bay has
fourteen square miles and the lower over eighty) or up a stately river
with all the charms of the Hudson. Everything is on the grand scale,
once the city's square blocks of barracky houses are left behind.
Old-world quietists are surprised to discover one cosy quarter, perhaps
two, in the grimy section of New York. Stuyvesant Square and its
immediate belongings around St. George's Church still survive as an
oasis of sweetness and light in a wilderness of dismal commonplace.
Washington Square carries somewhat of the old aristocratic flavor to
the borders of Bohemia, and the Theological College in Chelsea used
to give a solemnizing leaven to that changing district. The social
transformation is still in progress. It may, perhaps, be a token of the
rise to metropolitanism that the distinctively American hotels of the
old-fashioned type have virtually disappeared. European models have
the preference for the time being in the in- and outdoor life of New
Yorkers. English sports have apparently taken firm root, as seen in the
popularity of golf, football, horse-racing, rowing, and some less
desirable practices incident to one or two of these erstwhile sports
that have developed into business undertakings, to the regret of true
sportsmen. In this connection it is worth while to notice the striking
disparity in the sizes of the audiences and outdoor crowds of New York
and London. If fifteen thousand people pay to see the Harvard-Yale
football game, or other such sport, it is considered worthy of special
headlines in the papers. Madison Square Garden holds that number,
seated, but the occasions when it has been filled at meetings have been
few. Football crowds in England range from thirty up to seventy
thousand, by turnstile record. The Crystal Palace accommodates over one
hundred thousand holiday-makers without being crowded, in its central
nave, sixteen hundred feet by eighty, besides transepts, and its famous
grounds. The late Rev. C. H. Spurgeon had congregations of six thousand,
seated, twice each Sunday for twenty-eight years. Mr. Gladstone and
others have addressed twenty-five thousand in the Agricultural Hall,
which covers over three acres, and St. Paul's Cathedral has occasional
congregations of over twenty thousand. These facts are the more curious
as applying to a small country.
One explanation of this contrast lies in the fact that New York is not a
homogeneous community. In a more marked degree than other capitals it is
a congeries of towns and colonies, largely alien in sympathies. You can
wander in turn through Judea, China, Italy, Ireland, France, Russia,
Poland, Germany, Holland, and colored colonies. Local color is strong
in each. The English speech is not used, not known, by many of these
people. The picturesqueness of tenement life and its Babel sounds does
not atone for the want of the deep-rooted Americanism which must sooner
or later be the test of welcome immigration.
Broadway is one of the great streets of the world though really a
Narrow-way for so important a thoroughfare. Running north and south
and having no rival for its most used section it has more than its
natural share of traffic. From the historic Bowling Green and Trinity
Church--two fine monuments of pre-Revolution days--up to Fourteenth
Street, Broadway is mainly a wholesale market. Then it changes to a
retail bazaar, and its trading features disappear as it nears the park.
There used to be a well-defined sky-line in the lower city, but this has
been sadly damaged by the towering office Babels that make the older
quarter of the city a cave of the winds. If some day an earthquake were
to shake the lower end of Manhattan Island, mighty would be the fall of
these presumptuous files and woe betide their inhabitants. Fifth Avenue
up to Thirty-fourth Street has given up its fashionable prestige in
exchange for the profits of business. The Stock and Produce Exchanges
are far down-town, among the multitude of banks that crowd around the
spot made sacred ground to future generations of patriots as the scene
of Washington's inauguration as President. The city and its environs are
rich in historic sites and monuments of the Revolutionary struggle.
These, happily for the country's future, are every year being sought and
studied by the young, also by bands of teachers from states near and
far, and by visitors from abroad. The devotion of one or more societies
of private individuals has of late years conferred a boon upon the
public which can hardly be too highly appreciated, in causing durable
memorial tablets to be placed on buildings of historic interest. In this
and kindred ways New York is fast removing all justification for the
stale reproach that it cared not for shrines and took small interest in
its own history.
A mere suggestion, yet a very helpful one, toward realizing somewhat of
the enormous shipping business done for the country by New York can be
got by a tour of the main wharves. There is a water-front of twenty-five
miles around the island, without reckoning the shores of Brooklyn and
Hoboken. The bird's-eye view from the wonderful and graceful Suspension
Bridge enlarges one's conception of what such a metropolis is and can
do. Alpine grain elevators circle the city on the opposite shore of the
rivers and upper bay. Two thousand ships sail out each year laden with
the grain that feeds the nations on the other hemisphere. Three thousand
steamships enter these wharves yearly with human and commercial freight
from foreign ports. Nearly ten thousand steerage immigrants land each
week the year round, besides an immense passenger contingent. These are
the sights that fascinate the thoughtful: the comings and goings of the
peoples of the earth and its products. Old Castle Garden and the Battery
have greatly changed in recent years, but their memories linger. If it
had been possible to keep the triangle south of Fourteenth Street as the
select residential quarter, what an unrivalled site it would now be! A
water panorama worth crossing the Atlantic to see, for its immensity,
its picturesque bordering, and the magnificent view of the foreground of
an embowered city by the sea.
Human needs shaped these water avenues to other destinies. They draw
from the great ocean beyond the Narrows the sources of all that has gone
to the building of national greatness. In turn they have borne to other
lands the seeds of a larger liberty, patterned after and stimulated by
the unparalleled success that has so splendidly rewarded self-achieved
freedom to grow, to think, to speak out, and to speed the commerce of
the world.
The wealth thus created has of recent years done much to beautify the
city with palatial residences. In the northern districts detached
mansions in grass-plots supersede the monotonous brownstone rows. Many
of these vie with each other in the extent and delicacy of decorative
carvings outside. Others are fashioned after the castellated structures
of Europe. The general impression left by a town of the newer fashion
quarter is that Jeffersonian simplicity, in architecture at least, is no
longer to be understood as synonymous with severe plainness. Probably no
other city can point to an equally rapid transition from conventional
taste, excellent for its period, to the present enthusiasm for the best
in artistic construction, whatever its cost.
The bicycle proved a revolutionizer of dress as well as a stimulus
to outdoor exercise. Each nation learns from the others and so we
progress, though there is possible weakness in the tendency toward
rigid uniformity. The picturesque and the primitive are disappearing
in every land. National individuality should not lightly be allowed
to lapse, even in minor matters of costume and recreation.
Experienced travellers know that a country is not to be judged by its
metropolis. There is a sturdier back-bone of conservatism in the
provinces than in the great cities, so largely made up of aliens and
sojourners. A goodly proportion of the business men whose genius has
made New York what it is, and who are admittedly qualifying it soon to
become the financial centre of the world, are country-born and raised.
Great as New York is, and mightier as it will become by reason of its
situation, the true and abiding greatness of the nation is spread over
the thousand cities and towns that equally represent American pluck and
stability. In the farming districts and the scattered rural communities,
in vast agricultural areas of which city people take too little note,
and in the steady, plodding, smaller towns, there abides a calm but
potent force that throbs with high patriotism, and will prove an
all-sufficient strength in time of peril.
* * * * *
Washington! Its very name an inspiration, its every feature a
fascination to the lover of his country who makes his first pilgrimage
to the national shrine. Other great cities bear the glorious marks of
the tribulations and triumphs they suffered and enjoyed as they passed
through their historic experiences. Here is a capital created as the
consummation of a people's release from thralldom. A new city, invented
as the proclamation of a new nation's advent, the symbol and promise
of a mightier world-power than its proudest founders ever conceived
possible in their highest enthusiasms. The youngest of famous capitals,
it already holds its own with the best of its kind for grandeur and the
_rus in urbe_ charm. Its spacious avenues, one hundred and sixty feet
wide, are lined with trees and grassy walks. Their stately sweep gives
chances for fine landscape effects, which are finely used. The vistas of
the grand avenues are bounded by some piece of memorial statuary or an
imposing structure in the distance, as is Pennsylvania avenue by the
incomparable Capitol. No national monument is better known throughout
the world than this noble edifice. Its majestic stateliness is enhanced
by its snowy whiteness.
The Capitol is the greatest building for its purposes in the United
States. It covers three acres and a half, and has a frontage of seven
hundred and fifty feet. The great dome, with its figure of Liberty,
reaches a height of over three hundred and seven feet. Standing on the
rising ground among the rich foliage it has an aspect of quiet strength,
an impressive assurance of dignity and permanence peculiar to itself
among massive buildings in the great cities. Everyone goes, or should
go, to see Congress at work, and to explore the corridors trod by
generations of the nation's legislators, soldiers, jurists, orators, in
short, by all the great makers of the nation since Washington laid its
foundation stone. A singular instance of fate thwarting intention is
found in the situation of the Capitol. It was planned to face eastward,
the White House was to be in the rear, and the city was expected to
spread away from the river, eastwardly. But it perversely grew to the
northwest, with the result that the Capitol turns its back on the
capital. No one would suppose this is so unless told, so splendidly
balanced in architectural dignity are both fronts of the edifice.
Another peculiarity is that the head city of the republic is
monarchically governed, and governed better than any other city in the
Union. Three commissioners are appointed by the President, and the
citizens have no political franchise. The city was planned as a grand
example of what a capital should be. Impressed by the lessons of the
revolutions in Paris the designer dotted the area with circular
grass-plots or miniature parks, from which avenues and streets radiate
like wheel-spokes. In case of need a gun in each of the circles could
command an enemy approaching from any quarter. The peaceful use of these
charming sites is more befitting the spirit of the republic. Statues of
its soldier-heroes who saved the Union adorn each circle and give
historic interest to the vistas. There are two hundred miles of streets.
In summer-time they are groves of rich foliage. They and the park spaces
take up half the area of the city. It is wisely intended to re-name the
principal streets after famous American patriots instead of
alphabetically.
Washington is pre-eminently a city of "sights." The great government
buildings are distributed over the city with excellent effect. They are
noble edifices, worthy of the Capitol and the capital. The Treasury,
with its never-to-be-forgotten scenes inside, the Army and Navy offices,
the Smithsonian Institution, and the rest of the head-quarters of
national business need no further mention here. The Corcoran Art
Gallery, the Patent Office, and the new Library of Congress demand a
special word. The latter is one of the most exquisite buildings in the
world, with interior decorative treatment quite beyond anything hitherto
known in the country. Its brilliant dome does not suffer by proximity to
the Capitol. An inspection of the Patent Office is a revelation of
genius peculiarly American, and its display throws the clearest light
on the secret of the country's amazing material prosperity. A visit to
Washington ought to be the finishing touch to the schooling of every
girl and boy. Historic sites and shrines appeal to the mature mind, but
the show places of the capital peculiarly suit the youthful instinct for
the novel and striking in matters of fact.
[Illustration: PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON]
To see the Senate and House of Representatives in session is a high
privilege for any citizen, yet it is hampered by few, if any, such
restrictions as are imposed in other national legislatures. The chambers
are spacious and handsome, so are the classified galleries for
spectators, and the sessions are held in daylight. Equally impressive is
the Supreme Court of the United States--a temple of equity in all its
features, wherein the instinctive reverence for the highest embodiment
of justice and legal authority is encouraged by the surroundings. The
robes worn by the justices invest the bench and court with a dignity
which various state courts wisely emulate by adopting the same rule.
Isolated in striking grandeur, the lofty Washington obelisk lifts the
contemplative mind to heights above the level of material evidences of
prosperity. Like the Stuart portrait, this memorial of Washington leaves
the meaner measurements of a man's stature for other seasons and moods,
and by a touch of sublimity gives the nobler cue to patriotic devotion
and whole-hearted enthusiasm for him who, though human indeed, in his
life-work neared the divine.
Summer is not the best time to appreciate the social life of the
capital. It lies low, the Potomac's swampy margin is near and the street
forests of trees aid humidity. The White House snugly reposes in
beautiful grounds, with the great obelisk as a perpetual reminder of the
first President's example and reward. Another white portico gleams in
the distance, Arlington, the resting-place of the nation's hero-martyrs.
In the winter season Washington blooms into cosmopolitan grandeur. It
becomes the focus of the nation's lights in statesmanship, art,
literature, and social pleasures. The foreign embassies supply the grace
of brilliant color so lacking in the gatherings of men in the sombre
attire of the period. A continuous round of social festivities gladdens
the mild winter days and nights. Here, as in royal capitals, society has
its greater and lesser constellations. There are the senatorial,
judicial, diplomatic, military, and naval groups, too sharply divided,
to judge from audible criticisms in New York circles. Still literature,
art, and commerce have as free a welcome in Washington salons as
anywhere else, despite the plaints of overlooked suppliants. The White
House knows nothing of artificial shibboleths. It happily dispenses its
hospitalities--which are coveted honors--impartially upon all whom it
is an honor to honor, and so sustains the true American principle of
equal courtesy to citizens and sojourners of every degree. Washington is
an inexhaustible field for the student of men, manners and movements, a
theatre on whose stage the comedy of life plays itself, with all-potent
moulders of opinion and legislation as the actors, backed by a
supernumerary army of minor aids. Among its most eager auditors are
outsiders, reporting every byplay to profoundly interested critics
across the seas. The drama cannot be too deeply watched and pondered,
for it is fraught with issues vital to the well-being of coming
generations.
* * * * *
Chicago is usually figured as a conventionally insipid beauty, in
flowing garments which would obstruct her progress and could never be
kept white. This is a mistake. Most masculine of cities, most American
of America's great centres, its shield should portray a strong youth in
the flush of adolescence, conscious power in his proud curled lip, fire
in his eye, springing to the foreground in the first ray of dawn, in his
right hand the sceptre of genius and his left grasping the key of
destiny. The good people of Chicago are not conspicuously lacking in
civic self-appreciation. They are accustomed to being twitted by rivals
in the rear on their boundless faith in their city's future greatness.
They can afford to listen smilingly. If the child is father of the man,
full-grown Chicago must some day tower above the up-stretched heads of
its envious seniors like a giant among, say, a committee of venerable
municipal Solons. Ordinary cities develop as babies do, slow growth to
maturity, but this extraordinary late-comer into the family attained
mental and muscular precocity in shorter time than its sisters required
to cut their wisdom-teeth. Considered in relation to its geographical
position and its express-speed rate of progress, Chicago has the
promise and potency of an imperial greatness no easier to exaggerate
than to limit. It was tried by fire in the day of small things, but
quickly rose to a new life and it still carries the memorial glow in its
heart as an inspiration to great things.
The word Chicago is a simpler form of the Indian name, Chacaqua, given
to the river in honor of their deity, the Thunderer. The position of
Chicago makes it the greatest lake port in the world. It is already the
second city in the United States, though only born in 1830, and has
hopes of becoming the first, by growth, and not by annexation policy.
True, the newest city inherits the wealth and experience which the older
ones had to gain for themselves, yet Chicago has done some fine original
things. It hitched up an inland sea as its beast of burden and made a
vast lake its pleasure pond. Finding itself only seven feet above the
level of Lake Michigan it lifted itself bodily another seven feet,
churches, warehouses, dwellings and all, with jack-screws, and shovelled
a new foundation of dry earth beneath. Fifteen years later the great
fire laid it lower than ever. On Oct. 8, 1871, began the disaster that
made nearly a hundred thousand people homeless, destroyed seventeen
thousand buildings and two hundred lives, and caused the loss of two
hundred millions of dollars. Within a year or so the wooden town was
transformed into a city of massive palaces built of stone and brick. It
is now fast changing itself into a maze of towering Babels, whose tops
support the pall of smoke that tells of manufacturing activity. It drove
tunnels beneath its river for street-cars. Its thirty-five bridges were
not enough for the constant rush. On its lake first swam the novel
whale-back boats. One sin will rise up against the city on the day of
doom: the twenty-mile line of lake shore has been largely prostituted
to railway interests instead of being conserved as an unrivalled
pleasure park for the people and an adornment to the city. It can plead
in mitigation of sentence that its six public parks cover more than
three square miles, besides some sixty linear miles of park-like
boulevards of which Paris might be proud. Of these Michigan Avenue has a
well-won fame. No business traffic is permitted on its wide and
well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of
carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times
recalls the Queen's Drive in the London season. If the Chicago man of
affairs works hard at his calling, he takes his pleasure zestfully and
plenty of it. On the grand occasion of the American Derby (for Chicago
has its Epsom and Ascot in one) it is a revelation to see the gay
caravan _en route_ to the race-course, as impressive a display of
metropolitan luxury as any capital can present. And on this day the West
can match the big crowds of England with this sixty thousand throng,
each person paying two dollars for bare admission to the ground.
In a city primarily devoted to business it takes time for the
development of the beautiful. Chicago has its "sights" for seekers after
the merely outlandish, who often miss the real greatnesses that are less
catchy to the eye. One of its achievements which impresses both the
trained and untrained observer is the undertaking which has the
uninviting name of Drainage Canal. The pure water of Lake Michigan used
to be polluted by the inflow of the Chicago River. To prevent this the
city has made an immense waterway by which the lake water is carried to
the Illinois River and the tide of the Chicago River is diverted from
its former course. The new canal is navigable and opens a route between
the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The territory involved embraces
the city and forty-three square miles of Cook County. The main channel
is twenty-eight miles long and the cost was about thirty millions.
In their commercial aspect the famous Stock-yards have greater interest
than as a show place. They cover four hundred acres, the plant is valued
at four million dollars, and about twenty millions of animals are killed
and packed in a year. Similarly imposing are the statistics of most of
Chicago's enterprises. The Board of Trade is one of the most remarkable
sights in the country. Its public galleries are usually filled with
spectators of the feverish bidding of the grain operators, whose
slightest nod affects the markets of the world. The Stock Exchange is
yearly taking a more important share in the money market. The financial
institutions of Chicago and the West have more than once saved the East
from impending panic, and immense loans are constantly being renewed,
insuring the speedy recognition of the city as a force in the money
markets of the nations.
More interesting is the honor-roll of Chicago's intellectual enterprise.
The Columbian World's Fair of 1893 astonished the world with its beauty,
its perfection of artistic skill and taste. It gave an impetus to the
pursuit of the beautiful and refining which has borne substantial
results. Near the site of the Fair is a cluster of buildings
constituting the University of Chicago, dating from 1891, to which a
single donor has given nine million dollars, and loyal citizens are
continually adding to its possessions. The heads of the University count
on an endowment fund of fifty millions. Nowhere is Chicago enthusiasm
for progress more finely manifested than here. The great public
libraries of the city are envied by foreign visitors. The central Public
Library is a splendid triumph of architecture, next in interior
elegance to the Library of Congress. It is valued at three millions,
exclusive of its books. The Newberry and Crerar libraries form special
branches of the system. The city's churches and charities are doing
nobly in ameliorating the condition of the toilers and the handicapped
in life's race. The name and fame of Miss Jane Addams and the Hull House
settlement are world-wide. How difficult the task is may be conceived
from the fact that out of a million and seven hundred thousand people in
the city, nine hundred thousand are Americans, German, and Irish; the
remainder represent twenty-four nationalities, exclusive of negroes. A
report issued by an investigating committee of Hull House states that
"the density of population in the Polish quarter in Chicago is three
times that of the most crowded portions of Tokio, Calcutta, and many
other Asiatic cities."
As in New York there is a marked tendency among the richer people
to set up country homes. New suburban towns and villages of great
attractiveness are drawing an increasing number away from the smoky
city. On the other hand the far-famed hospitality of its people to
prophets of every school of thought, and the spirit of enterprise which
welcomes every new idea, attracts eccentrics and adventurers whose
trumpetings are loud enough to mislead superficial observers into the
notion that Chicago is the crank's paradise. If a fault at all, this
amiable toleration leans to virtue's side. Rightly to appreciate the
depth and breadth of Chicago's influence we must follow its trade to the
remotest corners of the earth. We must trace the influences of its seats
of learning and refinement. We must count, if we can, the tremendous
results of its world-renowned enterprises that have stimulated nations
to follow the successful lead. Be its faults what they may, Chicago has
the heart, the will, and the muscle to mend them, as the world will
see, and then will the true greatness of the Western metropolis be
discerned, and its full influence be felt.
WINNIPEG LAKE AND RIVER.
W. F. BUTLER.
[Colonel W. F. Butler, in "The Great Lone Land," gives us some
very interesting information about the life and scenery of the
great American Northwest, from which we select the following
description of a picturesque lake and river. His journey was
made during the Riel rebellion, and the traveller was on his
way to the Lake of the Woods, where he expected to meet an
expedition sent for the suppression of the rebellion. The Red
River Indians gave him a hearty send-off.]
The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading guns were held aloft,
and a hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the
salutes were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge
to see me off. Putting out to the middle of the river, I discharged my
fourteen-shooter into the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war-whoop
answered my salute, and, paddling their very best, for the eyes of the
finest canoers were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over
the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were
hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and
amidst a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks
the water of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of
the varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River
is, like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.
The wind sighs over it, bending the tall weeds with mournful rustle, and
the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes
which form his summer home.
Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters
of an immense lake,--a lake which stretched away into unseen spaces, and
over whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of
mirage and inverted shore-land.
This was Lake Winnipeg,--a great lake, even on a continent where lakes
are inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a tithe of what it
must have been in the earlier ages of the earth.
The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far
away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present
limits these great landmarks still look down on the ocean, but it is an
ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and
they are now mountain-ridges, rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom
of this by-gone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present
Lakes Winnepegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie islands of the Lower
Assiniboine,--one hundred thousand square miles of water. The water
has long since been drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels
leading to Hudson Bay, and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the
richest prairie-land in the world.
But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its
rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once
flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has
twice the volume of the Rhine. Four hundred thousand square miles of
continent shed their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as
the ocean, but, fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day.
Not a wave, not a ripple on its surface, not a breath of breeze to
aid the untiring paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and
provisions, had scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and
yet the steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving
behind the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.
A long low point stretching from the south shore of the lake was faintly
visible on the horizon. It was past mid-day when we reached it; so,
putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the shore, we lighted
our fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grand
Traverse was entered upon. Far away over the lake arose the point of the
Big Stone, a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high above
the water. The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a
breath rippled the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide
expanse, all was as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole
speck of life on the waters of the world. The red sun sank into the
lake, warning us that it was time to seek the shore and make our beds
for the night. A deep sandy bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks,
seemed to invite us to its solitudes. Steering in with great caution
among the rocks, we landed in this sheltered spot, and drew our boat
upon the sandy beach. The shore yielded large store of drift-wood, the
relics of many a northern gale. Behind us lay a trackless forest, in
front the golden glory of the western sky. As the night shades deepened
around us and the red glare of our drift-wood fire cast its light upon
the woods and rocks, the scene became one of rare beauty.
As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all
the charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little
marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loath
to quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as
I thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature
which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms.
They were Ojibbeways, who came to share our fire and our evening meal.
The land was still their own. When I lay down to rest that night on the
dry sandy shore, I long watched the stars above me. As children sleep
after a day of toil and play, so slept the dusky men who lay around me.
It was my first night with these poor wild sons of the lone spaces; it
was strange and weird, and the lapping of the mimic wave against the
rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes.
[The next day an early start was made]
We entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at mid-day and paddled up to
Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance.
Here I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg,
getting a fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five
o'clock in the evening started on my journey up the river. Eight miles
above the fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the
twilight. In the surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume
of the Winnipeg was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its
waters with the lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which
stood well out into the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.
The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us dark and
solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept
the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky
blackness; the rushing water, white with foam; above, the rifted
thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of
the thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made
me a rough shelter with cross poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling
themselves together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the
storm....
A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without
meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place
her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations.
To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it
descends three hundred and sixty feet in a distance of one hundred
and sixty miles, that it is full of eddies and whirlpools, of every
variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts, that it expands into
lonely pine-cliffed lakes and far-reaching island-studded bays, that
its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished rocks, that its vast
solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly active,--to say all
this is but to tell in bare items of fact the narrative of its
beauty. For the Winnipeg, by the multiplicity of its perils and the
ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the description of
civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized travel. It
seems part of the savage,--fitted alone for him and for his ways,
useless to carry the burdens of man's labor, but useful to shelter the
wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its
shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through
the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways!
To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one
would of a high-mettled charger which will do anything if he be rightly
handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To
shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of Barriere, to carry his canoe down
the whirling of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush of water at
the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the whirlpool below the
Chute-a-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a skilful Indian, for the
man who can do all this must possess a power in the sweep of his paddle,
a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness of skill, not to be
found except after generations of practice. For hundreds of years the
Indian has lived amidst these rapids, they have been the playthings of
his boyhood, the realities of his life, the instinctive habit of his old
age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the dog is to the Esquimaux,
what the camel is to those who journey across Arabian deserts, so is the
canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore yields him from first to
last the materials he requires for its construction: cedar for the
slender ribs, birch bark to cover them, juniper to stitch together the
separate pieces, red pine to give resin for the seams and crevices. By
the lake or river shore, close to his wigwam, the boat is built;
"And the forest life is in it,--
All its mystery and its magic,
All the tightness of the birch-tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the larch's supple sinews.
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily."
It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances
overland from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load
it down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters
him by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land
is unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in
it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice, or catches his fish or shoots
his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely running
torrent, or lie like a sea bird on the placid water.
For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees
are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends
its graceful head in the lake, and the wild duck dwells amidst the
rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When
the winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath
of the north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with
branches and with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the
wild swan and the wavey, passing northward to the polar seas, call it
again from its long icy sleep.
Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes
like an arrow.
The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with
moments of keenest enjoyment, everything was new and strange, and each
hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian
scenery.
The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays
when the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on
the water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns,
would be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while
one remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its
sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the
centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away
from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no
difficult matter: start at five o'clock A.M., halt for breakfast at
seven o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away
at two o'clock, paddle until sunset at seven-thirty; that was the work
of each day. But how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and
circumstance between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost
every hour of the long summer day the great Winnipeg revealed some new
phase of beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I
have already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the
Woods to Lake Winnipeg, one hundred and sixty miles, makes a descent of
three hundred and sixty feet.
This descent is effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of
terraces at various distances from each other; in other words, the river
forms innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by
rapids and perpendicular falls of varying altitude; thus when the
_voyageur_ has lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and
launched it again above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted
two-and-twenty feet of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages
will give him a total rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles.
(How cold does the bare narration of these facts appear beside their
actual realization in a small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we
can picture one of these many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of
falling water, and we see, upon rounding some pine-clad island or ledge
of rock, a tumbling mass of foam and spray studded with projecting rocks
and flanked by dark wooded shores; above we can see nothing, but below,
the waters, maddened by their wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap
in angry whirlpools. It is as wild a scene of crag and wood and water as
the eye can gaze upon, but we look upon it not for its beauty, because
there is no time for that, but because it is an enemy that must be
conquered.
Now mark how these Indians steal upon this enemy before he is aware of
it. The immense volume of water, escaping from the eddies and whirlpools
at the foot of the fall, rushes on in a majestic sweep into calmer
water; this rush produces along the shores of the river a counter- or
back-current which flows up sometimes close to the foot of the fall;
along this back-water the canoe is carefully steered, being often
not six feet from the opposing rush in the central river; but the
back-current in turn ends in a whirlpool, and the canoe, if it followed
this back-current, would inevitably end in the same place. For a minute
there is no paddling, the bow-paddle and the steersman alone keeping the
boat in her proper direction as she drifts rapidly up the current. Among
the crew not a word is spoken, but every man knows what he has to do,
and will be ready when the moment comes; and now the moment has come,
for on one side there foams along a mad surge of water, and on the other
the angry whirlpool twists and turns in smooth hollowing curves round an
axis of air, whirling round it with a strength that would snap our birch
bark into fragments, and suck us down into the great depths below. All
that can be gained by the back-current has been gained, and now it is
time to quit it; but where? for there is often only the choice of the
whirlpool or the central river. Just on the very edge of the eddy there
is one loud shout given by the bow-paddle, and the canoe shoots full
into the centre of the boiling flood, driven by the united strength of
the entire crew; the men work for their very lives, and the boat breasts
across the river, with her head turned full towards the falls; the
waters foam and dash about her, the waves leap high over the gunwale,
the Indians shout as they dip their paddles like lightning into the
foam, and the stranger to such a scene holds his breath amidst this war
of man against nature. Ha! the struggle is useless; they cannot force
her against such a torrent; we are close to the rocks and foam; but see,
she is driven down by the current, in spite of those wild fast strokes.
The dead strength of such a rushing flood must prevail. Yes, it is true,
the canoe has been driven back; but behold, almost in a second the whole
thing is done,--we float suddenly beneath a little rocky isle on the
foot of the cataract. We have crossed the river in the face of the
fall, and the portage landing is over this rock, while three yards out
on either side the torrent foams its headlong course.