ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.
St. Cloud was the rendezvous of the party, where a grand ovation
awaited us,--a band of music at the station, a dinner at the hotel, a
ride to Sauk Rapids, two miles above the town.
St. Cloud is eighty miles above St. Paul, situated on the west bank of
the river, and is reached by the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The
goods of the Hudson Bay Company pass through the town. Three hundred
tons per annum are shipped from Liverpool to Montreal, from Montreal
to Milwaukie, from Milwaukie by rail to this point, and from hence
are transported by oxen to the Red River, taken down that stream on a
small steamer to Lake Winnipeg, then sent in boats and canoes up the
Assinniboin, the Saskatchawan, and to all the numerous trading-posts
between Winnipeg and the Arctic Ocean.
We are getting towards the frontier. We come upon frontiersmen in
leggings, slouch hat, and fur coat,--carrying their rifles. Indians
are riding their ponies. Wigwams are seen in the groves. Carts are
here from Pembina and Fort Garry after supplies. And yet, in the
suburbs of the town we see a large Normal School building just
completed. A magnificent bridge costing $40,000 spans the Mississippi.
At Sauk Rapids the river rolls over a granite ledge, and a chartered
water-power company is erecting a dam, constructing a canal, and laying
the foundations for the second great manufacturing city upon the
Mississippi.
This section has been a favorite locality for German emigrants. Nearly
one half of the inhabitants of Stearns County, of which St. Cloud is
the county-seat, are Germans. Here we bid good by to the locomotive and
take the saddle instead, with light carriages for occasional change.
We leave hotels behind, and are to enjoy the pleasures of camp-life.
Our party as made up consists of the following persons:--
GOV. J. GREGORY SMITH, St. Albans, Vt.
W. C. SMITH, M. C. " "
W. H. LORD, D. D., Montpelier, Vt.
F. E. WOODBRIDGE, Vergennes, Vt.
S. W. THAYER, M. D., Burlington, Vt.
Hon. R. D. RICE, Augusta, Me.
P. COBURN, " "
E. F. JOHNSON, Middletown, Conn.
C. C. COFFIN, Boston.
P. W. HOLMES, New York City.
A. B. BAYLESS, Jr., New York City.
W. R. MARSHALL, St. Paul, Gov. of Minnesota.
E. M. WILSON, M. C., Minneapolis.
G. A. BRACKETT, "
The list is headed by Ex-Governor Smith, President of the Northern
Pacific Railroad and of the Vermont Central. It fell to his lot to be
Chief Magistrate of the Green Mountain State during the rebellion, and
among all the loyal governors there was no one that excelled him in
energy and executive force. He was here, there, and everywhere,--one
day in Vermont, the next in Washington, the third in the rear of the
army looking after the wounded. I remember seeing him at Fredericksburg
during those terrible weeks that followed the struggles at the
Wilderness and Spottsylvania,--directing his assistants, laboring with
his own hands,--hunting up the sick and wounded, giving up his own
cot, sleeping on the bare floor, or not sleeping at all,--cheering
the despondent, writing sympathetic letters to fathers and mothers
whose sons were in the hospital, or who had given their lives to their
country. He has taken hold of this great enterprise--the construction
of a railroad across the continent from the Lakes to the Pacific
Ocean--with like zeal and energy, and has organized this expedition to
explore the country between Lake Superior and the Missouri River.
Judge Rice is from Maine. He is President of the Portland and Kennebec
Railroad, and a director of the Northern Pacific. Before engaging in
the management of railroads he held, for sixteen years, the honorable
and responsible position of Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of
Maine. Well versed in law, and holding the scales of justice evenly,
his decisions have been regarded as wise and just.
Mr. Johnson is the Chief Engineer of the road, one of the ablest in his
profession in the country. As long ago as 1853, before the government
surveys were made, he published a pamphlet upon this future highway
to the Pacific, in which he discussed with great ability the physical
geography of the country, not only from Lake Superior to Puget Sound,
but the entire region between the Mississippi and the Pacific. The
explorations that have since been made correspond almost exactly with
his statements.
The President of the company has showed forethought for the health,
comfort, and pleasure of the party, by taking along two of the most
genial men in New England,--Dr. Thayer, of Burlington, to cure us of
all the ills that flesh is heir to, whose broad smiling face is itself
a most excellent medicine, whose stories are quite as good as his pills
and powders for keeping our digestion all right; and Rev. Dr. Lord,
from Montpelier, for many years pastor of one of the largest churches
in the State.
With a doctor to keep our bodies right, with a minister to point out
the narrow way that leads to a brighter world, and both of them as
warm-hearted and genial as sunshine, we surely ought to be in good
health.
Mr. Holmes, of New York, is an old campaigner. He had experienced the
rough and tumble of life on the Upper Missouri, with his rifle for a
companion, the earth his bed, the broad expanse of sky his tent.
Governor Marshall, Chief Magistrate of Minnesota, Mr. Wilson, member
of Congress from the same State, and Mr. Brackett, of Minneapolis,
were in Sibley's expedition against the Indians, and are accustomed to
all the pleasures and hardships of a campaign. They are to explore the
region lying between the Red River of the North and the Great Bend of
the Missouri. Mr. Bayless, of New York, accompanies the party to enjoy
the freedom and excitement of frontier life. Nor are we without other
company. Some of the clergymen of Minnesota, like their brethren in
other parts of the country, turn their backs on civilization during the
summer months, and spend a few weeks with Nature for a teacher. It is
related that the Rev. Dr. Bethune made it a point to visit Moosehead
Lake in Maine every season, to meditate in solitude and eat onions! He
not only loved them, but had great faith in their strengthening powers.
His ministry was a perpetual Lent so far as onions were concerned, and
it was only when he broke away from society and was lost to the world
in the forest that he could partake freely of his favorite vegetable.
Travelling the same road, and keeping us company, are Rev. Mr. and
Mrs. Fuller, of Rochester, and Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and Mr. and
Miss Wheaton, of Northfield, Minn. They have a prairie wagon with a
covered top, drawn by two horses, in which is packed a tent, with pots,
kettles, pans, dishes, flour, pork, beans, canned fruit, hams, butter,
bed and bedding. They have saddle-horses for excursions, and carry
rifles, shot-guns, and fishing-tackle. Pulpit, people and parsonage,
hoop-skirts, stove-pipe hats, work and care, are left behind. The women
can handle the fishing-rod or rifle. It may seem to ladies unaccustomed
to country life as a great letting down of dignity on the part of these
women of the West to enter upon such an expedition, but they are in
search of health. They are not aiming to be Amazons. A few weeks upon
the prairies, and they will return well browned, but healthful and
rugged, and as attractive and charming as the fair Maud who raked hay
and dreamed of what might have been.
Our first night is spent at "Camp Thunder," and why it is so named will
presently be apparent. It is nearly night when we leave St. Cloud for a
four-mile ride to our quarters.
We can see in the rays of the setting sun, as we ride over the
prairie, our village of white tents pitched by the roadside, and
our wagons parked near by. It is an exhilarating scene, bringing
to remembrance the many tented fields during the war, and those
soul-stirring days when the armies of the Republic marched under their
great leader to victory.
The sun goes down through a blood-colored haze, throwing its departing
beams upon a bank of leaden clouds that lie along the horizon. Old
salts say that such sunsets in the tropics are followed by storms.
Through the evening, while sitting in the doors of our tents and
talking of camp-life and its pleasant experiences, we can see faint
flashes of lightning along the horizon. The leaden clouds grow darker,
and rise slowly up the sky. Through the deepening haze we catch faint
glimpses of celestial architecture,--castles, towers, massive walls, and
"Looming bastions fringed with fire."
Far away rolls the heavy thunder,--so far that it seems the diapason
of a distant organ. We lose sight of the gorgeous palaces, temples,
and cathedrals of the upper air, or we see them only when the bright
flashes of lightning illume the sky.
It is past midnight,--we have been asleep, and are wakened by the
sudden bursting of the storm. The canvas roof and walls of our house
flap suddenly in the wind. The cords are drawn taut against the
tent-pins. The roof rises, settles, surges up and down, to and fro,
the walls belly in and then out against the swaying frame. The rain
comes in great drops, in small drops, in drifting spray, rattling upon
the canvas like a hundred thousand muskets,--just as they rattled and
rolled on that awful day at the Wilderness when the two greatest armies
ever gathered on this continent met in deadly conflict.
All the while the tent is as bright with lightning as with the sun at
noonday. By the side of my cot is a book which I have been reading;
taking it in my hand, I read the finest print, noted the hour, minute,
and position of the second-hand upon my watch.
Looking out through the opening of the fly, I behold the distant
woodland, the fences, the bearded grain laid prostrate by the blast,
the rain-drops falling aslant through the air, the farm-house a
half-mile distant,--all revealed by the red glare of the lightning. All
the landscape is revealed. For an instant I am in darkness, then all
appears again beneath the lurid light.
The storm grows wilder. The gale becomes a tempest, and increases to a
tornado. The thunder crashes around, above, so near that the crackling
follows in an instant the blinding flash. It rattles, rolls, roars, and
explodes like bursting bombs.
The tent is reeling. Knowing what will be the result, I hurry on my
clothing, and have just time to seize an india-rubber coat before the
pins are pulled from the ground. I spring to the pole, determined to
hold on to the last.
[Illustration: IN THE STORM.]
Though the lightning is so fearful, and the moment well calculated
to arouse solemn thoughts, we cannot restrain our laughter when two
occupants of an adjoining tent rush into mine in the condition of men
who have had a sousing in a pond. The wind pulled their tent up by the
roots, and slapped the wet canvas down upon them in a twinkling. They
crawled out like muskrats from their holes,--their night-shirts fit
for mops, their clothing ready for washing, their boots full of water,
their hats limp and damp and ready for moulding into corrugated tiles.
It is a ludicrous scene. I am the central figure inside the
tent,--holding to the pole with all my might, bareheaded, barefooted,
my body at an angle of forty-five degrees, my feet sinking into the
black mire,--the dripping canvas swinging and swaying, now lifted by
the wind and now flapping in my face, and drenching anew two members of
Congress, who sit upon my broken-down bed, shivering while wringing out
their shirts!
When the fury of the storm is over, I rush out to drive down the
pins, and find that my tent is the only one in the encampment that is
not wholly prostrated. The members of the party are standing like
_shirted_ ghosts in the storm. The rotund form of our M. D. is wrapped
in the oil-cloth table-cover. For the moment he is a hydropath, and
complacently surveys the wreck of tents. The rain falls on his bare
head, the water streams from his gray locks, and runs like a river down
his broad back; but he does not bow before the blast, he breasts it
bravely. I do not hear him, but I can see by his features that he is
silently singing the Sunday-school song,--
"I'll stand the storm,
It won't be long."
Tents, beds, bedding, clothing, all are soppy and moppy, and the ground
a quagmire. We go ankle deep into the mud. We might navigate the
prairies in a boat.
Our purveyor, Mr. Brackett, an old campaigner, knows just what to do
to make us comfortable. He has a dry tent in one of the wagons, which,
when the rain has ceased, is quickly set up. His cook soon has his
coffee-pot bubbling, and with hot coffee and a roaring fire we are none
the worse for the drenching.
The storm has spent its fury, and is passing away, but the heavens
are all aglow. Broad flashes sweep across the sky, flame up to the
zenith, or quiver along the horizon. Bolt after bolt falls earthward,
or flies from the north, south, east, and west,--from all points
of the compass,--branching into beautiful forms, spreading out into
threads and fibres of light, each tipped with golden balls or beads of
brightest hue, seen a moment, then gone forever.
Flash and flame, bolt and bar, bead, ball, and line, follow each other
in quick succession, or all appear at once in indescribable beauty and
fearful grandeur. We can only gaze in wonder and admiration, though
all but blinded by the vivid flashes, and though each bolt may be a
messenger of death,--though in the twinkling of an eye the spirit may
be stricken from its present tabernacle and sent upon its returnless
flight. The display, so magnificent and grand, has its only counterpart
in the picture which imagination paints of Sinai or the final judgment.
In an adjoining county the storm was attended by a whirlwind. Houses
were demolished and several persons killed. It was terrifying to
be in it, to hear the deafening thunder; but it was a sight worth
seeing,--that glorious lighting up of the arch of heaven.
It required half a day of bright sunshine to put things in trim after
the tornado, and then on Saturday afternoon the party pushed on to Cold
Spring and encamped on the bank of Sauk River for the Sabbath.
[Illustration: CAMP JAY COOKE.]
The camp was named "Jay Cooke," in honor of the energetic banker who
is the financial agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Sweet,
calm, and peaceful the hours. Religious services were held, conducted
by Rev. Dr. Lord, who had a flour-barrel and a candle-box before him
for a pulpit; a congregation of teamsters, with people from the little
village near by, and the gentlemen composing our party, some of us
seated on boxes, but most of us sitting upon the ground. Nor were we
without a choir. Everybody sung Old Hundred; and though some of us
could only sound one note, and that straight along from beginning to
end, like the drone of a bagpipe, it went gloriously. Old Hundred never
was sung with better spirit, though there was room for improvement
of the understanding, especially in the base. The teamsters, after
service, hunted turtle-eggs on the bank of the river, and one of them
brought in a hatful, which were cooked for supper.
Our course from Cold Spring was up the Sauk Valley to Sauk Centre, a
lively town with an excellent water-power. The town is about six years
old, but its population already numbers fifteen hundred. The country
around it is one of the most beautiful and fertile imaginable. The
Sauk River is the southern boundary of the timbered lands west of
the Mississippi. As we look southward, over the magnificent expanse,
we see farm-houses and grain-fields, but on the north bank are dense
forests. The prairie lands are already taken up by settlers, while
there are many thousand acres of the wooded portion of Stearns County
yet in the possession of the government. The emigrant can raise a crop
of wheat the second year after beginning a farm upon the prairies,
while if he goes into the woods there is the slow process of clearing
and digging out of stumps, and a great deal of hard labor before he has
any returns. Those prairie lands that lie in the immediate vicinity
of timber are most valuable. The valley of the Sauk, besides being
exceedingly fertile, has timber near at hand, and has had a rapid
development. It is an inviting section for the capitalist, trader,
mechanic, or farmer, and its growth promises to be as rapid in the
future as it has been since 1865.
A two days' ride over a magnificent prairie brings us to White Bear
Lake. If we had travelled due west from St. Cloud, along the township
lines, sixty miles, we should have found ourselves at its southern
shore instead of its northern. Our camp for the night was pitched on
the hills overlooking this sheet of water. The Vale of Tempe could not
have been fairer, and Arcadia had no lovelier scene, than that which we
gazed upon from the green slope around our tents, blooming with wild
roses, lilies, petunias, and phlox.
The lake stretches southward a distance of twelve miles, indented
here and there by a wooded promontory, with sandy beaches sweeping
in magnificent curves, with a patch of woodland on the eastern
shore, and a green fringe of stately oaks and elms around its entire
circumference. As far as the vision extends we behold limitless fields,
whose verdure changes in varying hues with every passing cloud,
and wanting only a background of highlands to make it as lovely as
Windermere, the most enchanting of all the lakes of Old England.
At our feet was the little town of Glenwood. We looked down upon
a hotel with the stars and stripes waving above it; upon a neat
school-house with children playing around its doors; upon a cluster of
twenty or thirty white houses surrounded by gardens and flower-beds.
Three years ago this was a solitude.
There is a sail-boat upon the lake, which some gentlemen of our party
chartered for a fishing-excursion. Thinking perhaps we should get more
fish by dividing our force, I took a skiff, and obtained a stalwart
Norwegian to row it. Almost as soon as my hook touched the water I
felt a tug at the other end of the line, and in came a pickerel,--a
three-pounder! The Norwegian rowed slowly along the head of the lake,
and one big fellow after another was pulled into the boat. There was
scarcely a breath of wind, and the sails were idly flapping against the
masts of the larger boat, where my friends were whiling away the time
as best they could, tantalized by seeing that I was having all the
fun. They could only crack their rifles at a loon, or at the flocks of
ducks swimming along the shore.
But there was rare sport at hand. I discovered an enormous turtle lying
upon the surface of the water as if asleep. "Approach gently," I said
to the Norwegian. He dipped his oars softly, and sent the skiff stern
foremost towards the turtle, who was puffing and blowing like a wheezy
old gentleman sound asleep.
One more push of the oar and he will be mine. Too late! We have lost
him. Down he goes. I can see him four feet beneath us, clawing off. No,
he is coming up. He rises to the surface. I grasp his tail with both
hands, and jerk with all my might. The boat dips, but a backward spring
saves it from going over, and his majesty of White Bear Lake, the
oldest inhabitant of its silver waters, weighing forty-six pounds,--so
venerable that he wears a garden-bed of grass and weeds upon his
back--is floundering in the half-filled skiff.
The boatman springs to his feet, stands on the seat with uplifted oar,
undecided whether to jump overboard or to fight the monster who is
making at his legs with open jaws.
By an adroit movement of an oar I whirl him upon his back, and hold him
down while the Norwegian paddles slowly to the beach.
The captive rides in a meal-bag the remainder of the day, hissing now
and then, and striving to regain his liberty.
Ah! isn't that a delicious supper which we sit down to out upon the
prairies on the shores of Lightning Lake,--beyond the borders of
civilization! It is not mock turtle, but the genuine article, such as
aldermen eat. True, we have tin cups and plates, and other primitive
table furniture, but hunger sharpens the appetite, and food is as
toothsome as if served on gold-bordered china. Besides turtle-soup we
have fresh fish and boiled duck. Who is there that would not like to
find such fare inside the borders of civilization?
Beyond Pope we entered Grant County, containing 268,000 acres of land,
nearly all open to settlement, and through which the main line of the
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad will be constructed the present year. The
population of the entire county probably does not exceed five hundred,
who are mostly Swedes and Norwegians. It is on the ridge, or, rather,
the gentle undulating prairie, between the waters of the Red River of
the North and the Chippewa River, an affluent of the Minnesota. We
passed between two small lakes; the waters of one find their way to the
Gulf of Mexico, the other to the Arctic Sea.
Our second Sabbath camp was upon the bank of the Red River of the
North,--a beautiful stream, winding its peaceful way through a country
as fertile as the Delta of the Nile.
For two days we had journeyed over rolling prairie, seeing no
inhabitant; but on Saturday afternoon we reached the great thoroughfare
leading from the Mississippi to the Red River,--travelled by the
Fort Abercrombie stage, and by the Pembina and Fort Garry carts, by
government trains and the ox-teams that transport the supplies of the
Hudson Bay Company.
Sitting there upon the bank of the Red River amid the tall, rank
grasses, and watching the flowing stream, my thoughts went with its
tide towards the Northern Sea. It has its rise a hundred miles or more
north of us, near Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi, flows
southward to this point turns westward here, is joined below by a
stream issuing from Lake Traverse, its most southern source, and then
flows due north to Lake Winnipeg, a distance altogether of about five
hundred miles.
It is the great southern artery of a water-system that lies almost
wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the United States.
The Assinniboine joins it just before reaching Lake Winnipeg, and up
that stream we may steam due west two hundred and thirty miles to
Fort Ellis. From Winnipeg we may pass eastward to the intricate Rainy
Lake system towards Superior, or westward into Lakes Manitoba and
Winnipegosis, which together contain as much water as Lake Erie.
Sailing along the western shore of Lake Winnipeg two hundred miles, we
reach the mouth of the Saskatchawan, large enough to be classed as one
of the great rivers of the continent.
Professor Hind, of Toronto, who conducted a government exploring-party
through the country northwest of Lake Superior, says: "The
Saskatchawan, which gathers the waters from a country greater in
extent than the vast region drained by the St. Lawrence and all its
tributaries, from Lake Superior to the Gulf, is navigable for more than
a thousand miles of its course, with the single exception of a few
rapids near its confluence with Lake Winnipeg."
Professor Hind travelled from Fort Garry northwest over the prairies
towards the Rocky Mountains, and gives the following description of his
first view of the stream. He says:--
"The first view, six hundred miles from the lake, filled me with
astonishment and admiration,--nearly half a mile broad, flowing with a
swift current, and still I was three hundred and fifty miles from the
mountains."
The small steamer now plying on the Red River might, during the season
of high water, make its way from Fort Abercrombie down this river,
then through Lake Winnipeg, and up the Saskatchawan westward to the
base of the Rocky Mountains,--a distance altogether of sixteen hundred
miles.
We are in the latitude of the continental water-system. If we travel
along the parallel eastward, one hundred miles will bring us to
the Mississippi at Crow Wing, another hundred will take us to Lake
Superior, where we may embark on a propeller of five hundred tons and
make our way down through the lakes and the St. Lawrence to Liverpool,
or any other foreign port; or travelling west three hundred miles will
bring us to the Missouri, where we may take one of the steamers plying
on that stream and go up to Fort Benton under the shadow of the Rocky
Mountains.
Two hundred and fifty miles farther by land, through the mining region
of Montana, will bring us to the navigable waters of the Columbia, down
which we may glide to the Pacific.
Nowhere in the Eastern hemisphere is there such a succession of lakes
and navigable rivers, and no other country exhibits such an area of
arable land so intersected by fresh-water streams.
It would be an easy matter by canals to connect the Red River, the
Saskatchawan, and Lake Winnipeg with the Mississippi. We can take a
canoe from this point and paddle up to Otter-Tail Lake, and there, by
carrying it a mile or so over a sand-ridge, launch it on Leaf River, an
affluent of the Crow-Wing, and so reach the Father of Waters. We may
do even better than that. Instead of paddling up stream we may float
down with the current a few miles to the outlet of Lake Traverse, row
across the lake, and from that into Big Stone Lake, which is the source
of the Minnesota River, and by this route reach the Mississippi below
Minneapolis. Boats carrying two tons have frequently passed from one
river to the other during the season of high water. It would not be
difficult to construct a canal by which steamers might pass from the
Mississippi to the base of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia.
Railroads are superseding canals, and it is not likely that any such
improvement of the water-way will be attempted during the present
generation.
But a glance at the river and lake systems enables us to obtain a view
of the physical features of the country. We see that the northwestern
portion of the continent is an extended plain. The Red River here by
our encampment is about nine hundred and sixty feet above the sea. If
we were to float down to Lake Winnipeg, we should find that sheet of
water three hundred feet lower.
Our camp is pitched to-day about ten miles west of the 96th meridian.
If we were to travel south from this point 350 miles, we should reach
Omaha, which is 946 feet above the sea, so that if we were sitting
on the bank of the Missouri at that point, we should be just about
as high above tide-water as we are while lolling here in the tall
rank grass. By going from Omaha to San Francisco over the Pacific
Railroad, we see the elevations of the country; then by striking
westward from this point to the head-waters of the Missouri, and then
down the Columbia, we shall see at once the physical features of the
two sections. The engineers of the Pacific Railroad, after gaining the
top of the bluff behind Omaha, have a long and apparently level sweep
before them. Yet there is a gradually ascending grade. Four hundred
and eighty-five miles west of Omaha we come to the 104th meridian,
at an elevation of 4,861 feet. If we go west from this point to that
meridian, we shall strike it at the mouth of the Yellowstone, 1,970
feet above tide-water. Near the 105th meridian is the highest point
on the Union Pacific, at Sherman, which is 8,235 feet above the sea.
Three hundred miles beyond Sherman, at Green River, is the lowest point
between Omaha and the descent into Salt Lake Valley, 6,112 feet above
the ocean level. At that point we are about twenty-six miles west of
the 110th meridian. Now going northward to the valley of the Missouri
once more, we find that Fort Benton is about the same number of miles
west of the same meridian, but the fort is only 2,747 feet above the
sea.
Just beyond Fort Benton we come to the Rocky Mountains,--the only
range to be crossed between Lake Superior and the Columbia. We enter
the Deer Lodge Pass near the 112th meridian, where our barometer will
show us that we are about five thousand feet above the sea. We find
that the miners at work on the western slope have cut a canal through
the pass, and have turned the waters of the Missouri into the Columbia.
The pass is so level that the traveller can hardly tell when he has
reached the dividing line.
Going south now along the meridian, we shall find that between Green
River and Salt Lake lies the Wasatch Range, which the Union Pacific
crosses at an elevation of 7,463 feet at Aspen Station, 940 miles
west of Omaha. From that point the line descends to Salt Lake, which
is 4,220 feet above the sea. Westward of this, on the 115th meridian,
1,240 miles from Omaha, we reach the top of Humboldt Mountains, 6,169
feet above tide-water, while the elevation is only 1,500 feet on the
same meridian in the valley of the Columbia.
At Humboldt Lake, 1,493 miles west of Omaha, the rails are at the
lowest level of the mountain region, 4,047 feet above the sea. This is
a little west of the 119th meridian, about the same longitude as Walla
Walla on the great plain of the Columbia, which is less than 400 feet
above the sea.
Westward of Humboldt Lake the Central Line rises to the summit of
the Sierra Nevadas, crossing them 7,042 feet above the sea, then
descending at the rate of 116 feet to the mile into the valley of the
Sacramento.
Now going back to the plains, to the town of Sidney, which is 410 miles
west of Omaha, we find the altitude there the same as at Humboldt Lake.
This level does not show itself again till we are well down on the
western slope of the Sierra Nevada Range. The entire country between
Omaha and Sacramento, with the exception of about 510 miles, is above
the level of 4,000 feet, while on the line westward from the point
where I am indulging in this topographical revery there are not thirty
miles reaching that altitude.
With this glance at the configuration of the continent I might make an
isometric map in the sand with my fingers, heaping it up to represent
the Black Hills at Sherman, a lower ridge to indicate the Wasatch
Range, a depression to show the Salt Lake Valley, and then another high
ridge to represent the Sierra Nevadas. I might trace the channel of the
Missouri and the Columbia, and show that most of this territory is a
great plain sloping northward,--that it is lower at Winnipeg than it is
here, as low here as it is at Omaha.
[Illustration: CONFIGURATION OF THE COUNTRY.
The upper line represents the elevations between Omaha and Sacramento,
and the lower line between the Red River and Portland, Oregon.]
Taking this glance at the physical features of the northern and central
portions of the continent, I can see that nature has adapted all
this vast area drained by the Missouri and Yellowstone and their
tributaries, by the Mississippi, by the Red River, the Assinniboine,
the Saskatchawan, and the Columbia, to be the abode, in the future, of
uncounted millions of the human race.
It is a solitude now, but the vanguard of the approaching multitude is
near at hand. The farmer who lives up the stream and tends the ferry
where we crossed yesterday has one neighbor within twelve miles; but
a twelvemonth hence these acres will have many farm-houses. To-day we
have listened to a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Lord, who preached beneath a
canvas roof. We were called together by the blowing of a tin trumpet,
but a year hence the sweet and solemn tones of church-bells will in all
probability echo over these verdant meadows.
The locomotive--that great civilizer of this century--will be here
before the flowers bloom in the spring of 1871. It will bring towns,
villages, churches, school-houses, printing-presses, and millions of
free people. I sit as in a dream. I can hear, in imagination, the
voices of the advancing multitude,--of light-hearted maidens and sober
matrons, of bright-eyed boys and strong-armed men. The wild roses are
blooming here to-day, the sod is as yet unturned, and the lilies of the
field hold up their cups to catch the falling dew; but another year
will bring the beginning of the change. Civilization, which has crossed
the Mississippi, will soon flow down this stream, and sweep on to the
valley of the Upper Missouri.
Think of it, young men of the East, you who are measuring off tape for
young ladies through the long and wearisome hours, barely earning your
living! Throw down the yardstick and come out here if you would be
men. Let the fresh breeze fan your brow, take hold of the plough, bend
down for a few years to hard work with determination to win nobility,
and success will attend your efforts. Is this too enthusiastic? Will
those who read it say, "He has lost his head and gone daft out there
on the prairies"? Not quite. I am an observer here, as I have been in
other lands. I have ridden many times over the great States of the
Northwest; have seen the riches of Santa Clara and Napa west of the
Sierra Nevadas; have looked out over the meadows of the Yangtse and the
Nile, and can say, with honest conviction, that I have seen nowhere so
inviting a field as that of Minnesota, none with greater undeveloped
wealth, or with such prospect of quick development.