IN THE FOREST.
In preceding chapters the characteristics of the country west of the
Mississippi have been set forth; but many a man seeking a new home
would be lonely upon the prairies. The lumberman of Maine, who was born
in the forest, who in childhood listened to the sweet but mournful
music of the ever-sighing pines, would be home-sick away from the grand
old woods. The trees are his friends. The open country would be a
solitude, but in the depths of the forest he would ever find congenial
company. There the oaks, the elms, and maples reach out their arms
lovingly above him, sheltering him alike from winter's blasts and
summer's heats. Even though he may have no poetry in his soul, the
woods will have a charm for him, for there he finds a harvest already
grown and waiting to be gathered, as truly as if it were so many acres
of ripened wheat.
It is not difficult to pick out the "Down-Easters" in Minnesota. When I
hear a man talk about "stumpage" and "thousands of feet," I know that
he is from the Moosehead region, or has been in a lumber camp on the
Chesuncook. He has eaten pork and beans, and slept on hemlock boughs
on the banks of the Madawaska. When he cocks his head on one side and
squints up a pine-tree, I know that he has Blodget's Table in his
brain, and can tell the exact amount of clear and merchantable lumber
which the tree will yield. His paradise is in the forest, and there
alone.
The region east of the Mississippi and around its head-waters is the
Eden of lumbermen.
The traveller who starts from St. Paul and travels westward will find a
prairie country; but if he travels eastward, or toward the northeast,
he will find himself in the woods, where tall pines and spruces and
oaks and maples rear their gigantic trunks. It is not all forest, for
here and there we see "openings" where the sunlight falls on pleasant
meadows; but speaking in general terms, the entire country east of the
Mississippi, in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and in that portion
of Michigan lying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, is the place
for the lumberman.
The soil is sandy, and the geologist will see satisfactory traces of
the drift period, when a great flood of waters set southward, bringing
granite bowlders, pebbles, and stones from the country lying between
Hudson Bay and Lake Superior.
The forest growth affects the climate. There is more snow and rain
east of the Mississippi than west of it. The temperature in winter on
Lake Superior is milder than at St. Paul, but there is more moisture
in the air. The climate at Duluth or Superior City during the winter
does not vary much from that of Chicago. Notwithstanding the difference
of latitude, the isothermal line of mean temperature for the year
runs from the lower end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake
Superior. Probably more snow falls in Minnesota than around Chicago,
for in all forest regions in northern latitudes there is usually a
heavier rain and snow fall than in open countries. The time will
probably come when the rain-fall of eastern Minnesota and northern
Michigan will be less than it is now. When the lumbermen have swept
away the forests, the sun will dry up the moisture, there will be
less rain east of the Mississippi, while the probabilities are that
it will be increased westward over all the prairie region. Orchards,
groves, corn-fields, wheat-fields, clover-lands,--all will appear with
the advance of civilization. They will receive more moisture from
the surrounding air than the prairie grasses do at the present time.
Everybody knows that the hand of man is powerful enough to change
climate,--to increase the rain-fall here, to diminish it there; to
lower the temperature, or to raise it.
The Ohio River is dwindling in size because the forests of Ohio and
Pennsylvania are disappearing. Palestine, Syria, and Greece, although
they have supported dense populations, are barren to-day because
the trees have been cut down. If this were an essay on the power of
man over nature, instead of the writing out of a few notes on the
Northwest, I might go on and give abundant data; but I allude to it
incidentally in connection with the climate, which fifty years hence
will not in all probability be the same that it is to-day.
Having in preceding pages taken a survey of the magnificent farming
region beyond the Mississippi, it remains for us to take a look at the
country between the Mississippi and Lake Superior.
Leaving our camp equipage and the horses that had borne us over the
prairies, bidding good by to our many friends in Minneapolis and St.
Paul, we started from the last-named city for a trip of a hundred and
fifty miles through the woods. The first fifty miles was accomplished
by rail, through a country partially settled. Upon the train were
several ladies and gentlemen on their way to White Bear Lake, not the
White Bear of the West, but a lovely sheet of water ten miles north of
St. Paul. It is but a few years since Wabashaw and his dusky ancestors
trolled their lines by day and speared pickerel and pike by torchlight
at night upon its placid bosom, but now it is the favorite resort of
picnic-parties from St. Paul. Here and there along the shores are
low grass-grown monuments, raised by the Chippewas when they were a
powerful nation among the Red Men.
"But now the wheat is green and high
On clods that hid the warrior's breast,
And scattered in the furrows lie
The weapons of his rest."
The lake is six miles long and dotted with islands. It was a general
gathering-place of the Indians, as it is now of the people of the
surrounding country. Its curving shores and pebbly beaches, bordered by
a magnificent forest, present a charming and peaceful picture.
We are accompanied on our trip by the President of the Lake Superior
and Mississippi Railroad, and other gentlemen connected with the
railroads of the Northwest. At Wyoming we leave our friends, bid good
by to the locomotive, and say how do you do to a bright new mud-wagon!
It is set on thorough-braces, with a canvas top. There are seats for
nine inside and one with the driver outside. Carpet-bags and valises
are stowed under the seats. We have no extra luggage, but are in light
staging order.
We are bound for Superior and Duluth.
"You will have a sweet time getting there," is the remark of a
mud-bespattered man sitting on a pile of lumber by the roadside. He has
just come through on foot with a dozen men, who have thrown down the
shovel to take up the sickle, or rather to follow the reaper during
harvest.
What he means by our having a sweet time we do not quite comprehend.
"You will find the road baddish in spots," says another.
A German, with bushy beard and uncombed hair, barefooted, and carrying
his boots in his hands, exclaims, "It ish von tam tirty travel all the
time!"
We understand him. With a crack of the whip we roll away, our horses on
the trot, passing cleared fields, where cattle are up to their knees in
clover, past wheat-fields ready for the reaper, reaching at noon our
halting-place for dinner.
Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out West where there are
delicious apple-pies, or anything especially nice in the pastry line,
on the table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess came from Maine;
at least, such has been my experience. I remember calling at a house in
central Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the standard
dish of the Southwest "hog and hominy," obtaining a luxurious dinner,
finishing off with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands that
were trained to housework on the banks of the Penobscot. Last year
I found a lady from Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confident
that she was from the Pine-Tree State the moment I saw her pies; for
somehow the daughters of Down East have the knack of making pastry
that would delight an epicure. And now in Minnesota we sit down to a
substantial dinner topped off, rounded, and made complete by a piece of
Maine apple-pie.
The daughters of New Hampshire and of Vermont may possibly make just
as good cooks, but it has so happened that we have fallen in with
housewives from Maine when our appetite was sharpened for something
good.
Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who came to Minnesota from
the Kennebec. He knew how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples
have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough and harrow and
stump-puller have been at work, and now we look out upon wheat-fields
and acres of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white clover, and
hear the humming of the bees. We see at a glance the capabilities of
the forest region of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as if
we were to read all the works extant on soil, climatology, natural
productions, etc. Here, as well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat,
corn, potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully and profitably
cultivated.
"I raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre last year, and I
guess I shall have that this year," said the owner of the farm.
This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here without capital, or
rather with capital arms and strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it
is: a neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the floor, a sofa,
a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls; a large barn; granary well
filled,--a comfortable home with a bright future before them.
When the timber has disappeared from eastern Minnesota, the land
will produce luxuriantly. The country will not be settled quite as
rapidly here as west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever a
wilderness. The time will come when along every stream there will be
heard the buzzing of saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click
and clatter of machinery. This vast area of timber will invite every
kind of manufacturing, and the same elements which have contributed
so largely to build up the Eastern States--the manufacturing and
industrial--will here aid in building up one of the strongest
communities of our future republic.
Clearings here and there, cabins by the roadside, bark wigwams which
have sheltered wandering Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest,
are the features of the country through which we ride this glorious
afternoon, with the sunlight glimmering among the trees, till suddenly
we come upon Chengwatona.
It is a small village on Snake River, with a hotel, half a dozen
houses, and a saw-mill where pine logs are going up an incline from the
pond at one end, and coming out in the shape of bright new lumber at
the other.
The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an immense area, and looking toward
the descending sun we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless,
and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed of all their beauty,
present an indescribable scene of desolation when contrasted with the
luxuriance of the living forest through which we have passed.
With a fresh team we move on, finding mud "spots" now and then. We
remember the remarks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into
holes, the forward wheels going down _kerchug_, sending bucketsful
of muddy water upward to the roof of the wagon and forward upon the
horses; jounce over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering;
then come upon a series of hollows through which we ride as in a
jolly-boat on the waves of the sea. The wagon is ballasted by two
members of Congress on the back seat, and by our rotund physician and
the Vice-President of the Northern Pacific on the middle seat. The
President is outside with the driver, on the lookout for breakers,
while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard, stowed beneath the
hatches, must take whatever comes. The members of Congress bob up and
down like electric pith-balls between the negative and positive poles
of a galvanic battery,--only that the positive is the prevailing force!
When the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go up; and then, as
they descend, the seat, by some unaccountable process, comes up, meets
them half-way,--and with such a bump!
Then we who are shaking our sides with laughter on the front seat,
congratulating ourselves, like the Pharisees, that we are not as they
are, suddenly find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we regain
our places, the M. D. and Vice-President come forward with a rush
and embrace us fraternally. We get our legs so mixed up with our
neighbors' that we can hardly tell whether our feet belong to ourselves
or to somebody else! The light weights of the party are knocked about
like shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those ridiculous,
round-bottomed, grinning images that we see in the toy-shops! I find
myself going up and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when tossed
in a blanket.
Our dinners are well settled when we reach Grindstone,--our
stopping-place for the night. The town is located on Grindstone Creek,
and consists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by burnt timber.
Half a dozen men who have footed it from Duluth are nursing their sore
feet in one of the three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture of
the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in the centre and three
rough benches against the walls, which are papered with pictorial
newspapers.
The occupants are discussing the future prospects of Duluth.
"It is a right smart chance of a place," says a tall, thin-faced,
long-nosed man stretched in one corner. We know by the utterance of
that one sentence that he is from southern Illinois.
"They have got their _i_-deas pretty well up though, on real estate,
for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent
of the _i_, has shown that he too is a Western man.
An Amazon in stature, with a round red face, hurries up a supper of
pork and fried eggs; and then we who are going northward, and they
who are travelling southward,--sixteen of us, all told,--creep up the
narrow stairway to the unfinished garret, and go to bed, with our noses
close to the rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of which
we look out and behold the stars marching in grand procession across
the midnight sky.
It is glorious to lie there and feel the _tire_ and weariness go out
of us; to look into the "eternities of space," as Carlyle says of
the vault of heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the measureless
empyrean are brought down to sublunary things by four of the sleepers
who engage in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck and neck,
or rather nose and nose, that it is impossible to decide whether the
deep sonorous--not to say _snorous_?--bass of the big fellow by the
window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts of the thin-faced,
lantern-jawed, long-nosed man from southern Illinois, is entitled to
the trumpet or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to signalize such
championship. Either of them would have been a power in the grand
chorus of the Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be equal to the
big organ!
We are off early in the morning, feeling a little sore in spots. The
first thump extorts a sudden oh! from a member of Congress, but we
are philosophic, and accommodate ourselves to circumstances, tell
stories between the bumpings, and make the grand old forest ring with
our laughter. It is glorious to get away from the town, and out into
the woods, where you can shout and sing and let yourself out without
regard to what folks will say! The fountain of perennial youth is in
the forest,--never in the city. Its healing, beautifying, and restoring
waters do not run through aqueducts; they are never pumped up; but you
must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old trees and drink from the
crystal stream to obtain them.
We quench our thirst from gurgling brooks, pick berries by the
roadside, walk ahead of the lumbering stage, and enjoy the solitude of
the interminable forest.
Eighteen miles of travel brings us to Kettle River Crossing, where we
sit down to a dinner of blackberries and milk, bread and butter, and
blackberry-pie, in a clean little cottage, with pictures on the walls,
books on a shelf, a snow-white cloth on the table, and a trim little
woman waiting upon us.
"May I ask where you are from?"
"Manchester, New Hampshire."
It was Lord Morpeth or the Duke of Argyle, I have forgotten which, who
said that New England looked as if it had just been taken out of a
bandbox; so with this one-storied log-house and everything around it.
We had sour-krout at Grindstone, but have blackberries here; and that
is just the difference between Dutchland and New England, whether you
seek for them on the Atlantic slope or in the heart of the continent.
Space is wanting to tell of all the incidents of a three days' forest
ride,--how we trolled for pickerel on a little lake, seated in a
birch-bark canoe, and hauled them in hand over hand,--bouncing fellows
that furnished us a delicious breakfast; how we laughed and told
stories, never minding the bumping and thumping of the wagon, and came
out strong, like Mark Tapley, every one of us; how we gazed upon the
towering pines and sturdy oaks, and beheld the gloom settling over
nature when the great eclipse occurred; and how, just as night was
coming on, we entered Superior, and saw a horned owl sitting on the
ridge-pole of a deserted house in the outskirts of the town, surveying
the desolate scene in the twilight,--looking out upon the cemetery, the
tenantless houses, and the blinking lights in the windows.
Superior has been, and still is, a city of the Future, rather than of
the Present. It was laid out before the war on a magnificent scale by a
party of Southerners, among whom was John C. Breckenridge, who is still
a large owner in corner lots.
It has a fine situation at the southwestern corner of the lake, on a
broad, level plateau, with a densely timbered country behind it. The
St. Louis River, which rises in northern Minnesota, and which comes
tumbling over a series of cascades formed by the high land between Lake
Superior and the Mississippi, spreads itself out into a shallow bay in
front of the town, and reaches the lake over a sand-bar.
Government has been erecting breakwaters to control the current of the
river, with the expectation of deepening the channel, which has about
nine feet of water; but thus far the improvements have not accomplished
the desired end. The bar is a great impediment to navigation, and its
existence has had a blighting effect on the once fair prospects of
Superior City. Dredges are employed to deepen the channel, but those
thus far used are small, and not much has been accomplished. The
citizens of Superior are confident that with a liberal appropriation
from government the channel can be deepened, and that, when once
cleared out, it can be kept clear at a small expense.
Superior has suffered severely from the reaction which followed
the flush times in 1857. A large amount of money was expended in
improvements,--grading streets, opening roads, building piers, and
erecting houses. Then the war came on, and all industry was paralyzed.
The Southern proprietors were in rebellion. The growth of the place,
which had been considerable, came to a sudden stand-still.
The situation of the town, while it is fortunate in some respects,
is unfortunate in others. It is in Wisconsin, while the point which
reaches across the head of the lake is in Minnesota. The last-named
State wanted a port on the lake in its own dominion, and so Duluth has
sprung into existence as the rival of its older neighbor.
The St. Paul and Superior Railroad, having its terminus at Duluth, lies
wholly within the State of Minnesota, and comes just near enough to
Superior to tantalize and vex the good people of that place.
But the citizens of that town have good pluck. I do not know what motto
they have adopted for their great corporate seal, but _Nil Desperandum_
would best set forth their hopefulness and determination. They are
confident that Superior is yet to be the queen city of the lake, and
are determined to have railway communication with the Mississippi by
building a branch line to the St. Paul and Superior Road.
Our party is kindly and hospitably entertained by the people of the
place, and to those who think of the town as being so far northwest
that it is beyond civilization, I have only to say that there are few
drawing-rooms in the East where more agreeable company can be found
than that which we find in one of the parlors of Superior; few places
where the sonatas of Beethoven and Mendelssohn can be more exquisitely
rendered upon the pianoforte, by a lady who bakes her own bread and
cares for her family without the aid of a servant.
It is the glory of our civilization that it adapts itself to all the
circumstances of life. I have no doubt that if Minnie, or Winnie, or
Georgiana, or almost any of the pale, attenuated young ladies who are
now frittering away their time in studying the last style of _paniers_,
or thrumming the piano, or reading the last vapid novel, were to have
their lot cast in the West,--on the frontiers of civilization,--where
they would be _compelled_ to do something for themselves or those
around them, that they would manfully and _womanfully_ accept the
situation, be far happier than they now are, and worth more to
themselves and to the world.
I dare say that nine out of every ten young men selling dry-goods in
retail stores in Boston and elsewhere have high hopes for the future.
They are going to do something by and by. When they get on a little
farther they will show us what they can accomplish. But the chances are
that they will never get that little farther on. The tide is against
them. One thing we are liable to forget; we measure ourselves by what
we are going to do, whereas the world estimates us by what we have
already done. How any young man of spirit can settle himself down to
earning a bare existence, when all this vast region of the Northwest,
with its boundless undeveloped resources before him, is inviting him
on, is one of the unexplained mysteries of life. They will be Nobodies
where they are; they can be Somebodies in building up a new society.
The young man who has measured off ribbon several years, as thousands
have who are doing no better to-day than they did five years ago, in
all probability will be no farther along, except in years, five years
hence than he is now.