Читать книгу The Seat of Empire - Charles Carleton Coffin - Страница 3

Table of Contents

FROM CHICAGO TO MINNEAPOLIS.

Last summer I cut loose from all care, and enjoyed a few weeks of freedom and recreation with a party of gentlemen on the frontier between Lake Superior and the Missouri River. I was charmed by the beauty of the country, amazed at its resources, and favorably impressed by its probable future. Its attractions were set forth in a series of letters contributed to the Boston Journal.

People from every Eastern State, as well as from New York and the British Provinces, have called upon me since my return, for the purpose of "having a talk about the Northwest," while others have applied by letter for additional or specific information, and others still have requested a republication of the letters. In response to these calls this small volume has been prepared, setting forth the physical features of the vast reach of country lying between the Lakes and the Pacific, not only in the United States, but in British America as well.

The most trustworthy accounts of persons who have lived there, as well as of engineers who have been sent out by the United States, British, and Canadian governments, have been collated, that those seeking a home in Minnesota or Dakota may know what sort of a country lies beyond, and what will be its probable future.

The map accompanying the volume has been prepared for the most part by the Bureau of the United States Topographical Engineers. It gives me pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to Major-General Humphreys, in charge of the Bureau, and to Colonel Woodruffe, in charge of the map department, for permission to use the same.

Through their courtesy I am enabled to place before the public the most complete map ever published of the country between the 36th and 55th parallel, extending across the continent, and showing not only the entire railway system of the Eastern and Middle States, but also the Union Pacific Railroad and the Northern Pacific, now under construction. The figures followed by the letter T have reference to the elevation of the locality above tide-water, thus enabling the reader to obtain at a glance a comprehensive idea of the topographical as well as the geographical features of the country.

"All aboard for the Northwest!"

So shouted the stalwart porter of the Sherman House, Chicago, on the morning of the 5th of July, 1869.

Giving heed to the call, we descended the steps of the hotel and entered an omnibus waiting at the door, that quickly whirled us to the depot of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

There were about a dozen gentlemen in the party, all bound for the Northwest, to explore a portion of the vast reach of country lying between Lake Superior and the great northern bend of the Missouri River.

It was a pleasant, sunny, joyful morning. The anniversary of the nation's independence having fallen on the Sabbath, the celebration was observed on Monday, and the streets resounded with the explosion of fire-crackers. Americans, Germans, Norwegians, Irish, people of all nationalities, were celebrating the birthday of their adopted country. Not only in Chicago, but throughout the cosmopolitan State of Wisconsin, as we sped over its fertile prairies and through its towns and villages during the day, there was a repetition of the scene.

Settlers from New England and the Middle States were having Sabbath-School, temperance, or civic celebrations; Irish societies were marching in procession, bearing green banners emblazoned with the shamrock, thistle, and harp of Erin; Germans were drinking lager beer, singing songs, and smoking their meerschaums. All work was laid aside, and all hands—farmers with their wives and daughters, young men with their sweethearts, children in crowds—were observing in their various ways the return of the holiday.

Our route was by way of La Crosse, which we reached late in the evening. We were to go up the Mississippi on a steamer that lay moored to the bank. Its cabin was aglow with lights. Entering it, we found a party of ladies and gentlemen formed for a quadrille. They were the officers of the boat and their friends from the town. A negro with a bass-viol, and two Germans with violins, were tuning their instruments and rosining their bows.

We were met upon the threshold by a rosy-cheeked damsel, who gleefully exclaimed,—

"O, yeau have arrived at the right moment! We are having a right good time, and we only want one more gentleman to make it go real good. Yeau'll dance neaw, won't ye? I want a partner. O, ye will neaw. I know ye will, and ye'll call off the changes tew, won't ye? Neaw dew."

Not having a "light fantastic toe" on either foot, we were forced to say no to this lively La Crosse maiden; besides, we were tired and covered with dust, and in sad plight for the ball-room. A member of Congress was next appealed to, then a grave and dignified Doctor of Divinity.

A more ungallant party than ours never stood on a Western steamboat. Governor, judge, parson, members of Congress, all shook their heads and resisted the enthusiastic lady. In vain she urged them, and the poor girl, with downcast countenance, turned from the obdurate Yankees, and sailed in gloriously with a youth who fortunately entered the cabin at the moment.

It was a rare sight to see, for they danced with a will. They made the steamer shake from stem to stern. The glass lamps tinkled in their brass settings, and the doors of staterooms rattled on their hinges, especially when the largest gentleman of the party came to a shuffle.

He is the Daniel Lambert of the Mississippi,—immense and gigantic, and having great development round the equator.

Quadrille, cotillon, and waltz, and genuine western break-downs followed one after the other. There was plenty to eat and drink in the pantry. The first thing we heard in the evening was the tuning of the instruments; the last thing, as we dropped off to sleep, was the scraping of the violins and the shuffling of feet.

We are awake in the morning in season to take a look at the place before the boat casts off from its mooring for a trip to Winona.

A company of Norwegian emigrants that came with us on the train from Chicago are cooking their breakfast in and around the station. They sailed from Christiania for Quebec, and have been six weeks on the way. All ages are represented. It is a party made up of families. There are many light-haired maidens among them with deep blue eyes and blonde complexions; and robust young men with honest faces, who have bidden farewell forever to their old homes upon the fiords of Norway, and who henceforth are to be citizens of the United States.

They will find immediate employment on the railroads of Minnesota, in the construction of new lines. They are not hired by the day, but small sections are let out to individuals, who receive a specified sum for every square yard of earth thrown up.

There is no discussion of the eight-hour question among them. They work sixteen hours of their own accord, instead of haggling over eight. They have no time to engage in rows, nor do they find occasion. They have had a bare existence in their old home; life there was ever a struggle, the mere keeping together of soul and body, but here Hope leads them on. They are poor now, but a few years hence they will be well off in the world. They will have farms, nice houses, money in banks, government bonds, and railway stocks. They will obtain land at government price, will raise wheat, wool, or stock, and will soon find their land quadrupled in value. They will make excellent citizens. Their hearts are on the right side,—not physiologically, but morally, politically, and religiously speaking. They are ardent lovers of liberty; they cannot be trammelled by any shackles, political or ecclesiastical. They are frugal, industrious, and honest. Already there are several daily papers published in the Scandinavian language.

The steamer is ploughing the Mississippi against the current northward. Wisconsin is on our right, Minnesota on our left; and while we are moving on toward the region of country which we are to visit, we may while away the time by thinking over the general characteristics of the State of Minnesota, in which our explorations are to commence.

The southern boundary strikes the river twenty-two miles below La Crosse. If I were to go down there and turn my steps due west, I might walk two hundred and sixty-four miles along the Iowa line before reaching the southwestern corner of the State. The western side is the longest, and if I were to start from the southwestern corner and travel due north, I should have a journey of three hundred and sixty miles to accomplish before reaching the northern boundary,—the line between the United States and British America.

Starting from Pembina, at the northwest corner of the State, on the Red River of the North, and travelling due east eighty miles, I should reach the Lake of the Woods; sailing across it sixty miles, then entering the river leading to Rainy Lake, I might pass through the wonderful water-way of lakes and rivers reaching to Lake Superior,—a distance of about four hundred miles.

The eastern boundary formed by the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Lake Superior is more irregular. Its general outline, as we look at it upon the map, is that of a crescent, cutting into Minnesota, the horns turned eastward. The area within the boundaries thus described is estimated at 84,000 square miles, or 54,760,000 acres. It is a territory larger than Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined.

Here, upon the Mississippi, I gaze upon bluffs of gray limestone wrought into fantastic shape by the winds and storms of centuries and by the slow wearing of the river; but were I to climb them, and gain the general level of the country, I should behold rolling prairies dotted with lakes and ponds of pure water, and groves of oak and hickory. All of Minnesota east of the Mississippi is a timbered region. Here and there are openings; but, speaking in general terms, the entire country east of the river is a forest, which through the coming years will resound with the axe of the lumberman.

When we go up the Mississippi eighty miles above St. Paul to St. Cloud, we shall find the Sauk River coming in from the west; and there the Mississippi is no longer the boundary of the timbered lands, but the forest reaches across the stream westward to Otter-Tail River, a distance of more than one hundred miles. The Sauk River is its southern boundary.

All the region north of the Sauk, at the head-waters of the Mississippi and north of Lake Superior, is well supplied with timber. A belt of woods forty miles wide, starting from the Crow-Wing River, extends south nearly to the Iowa boundary. It is broken here and there by prairie openings and fertile meadows. The tract is known throughout the Northwest as the region of the "Big Woods."

There are fringes of timber along the streams, so that the settler, wherever he may wish to make a home, will generally find material for building purposes within easy reach. In this respect Minnesota is one of the most favored States of the Union.

The formations of the bluffs now and then remind us of old castles upon the Rhine. They are, upon an average, three hundred and fifty feet above the summer level of the river. We are far from the Gulf of Mexico, yet the river at St. Paul is only six hundred and seventy-six feet above tide-water.

Northward of Minneapolis the bluffs disappear, and the surface of the river is but a few feet below the general level of the country, which is about one thousand feet above the sea.

It is one of the remarkable topographical features of the continent, that from St. Paul to the Peace River, which empties into the Athabasca, the elevation is about the same, though the distance is more than one thousand miles. Throughout this great extent of territory, especially in Minnesota, are innumerable lakes and ponds of pure fresh water, some of them having no visible outlet or inlet, with pebbly shores and beaches of white sand, bordered by groves and parks of oak, ash, and maple, lending an indescribable charm to the beauty of the landscape.

While we are making these observations the steamer is nearing Winona, a pleasant town, delightfully situated on a low prairie, elevated but a few feet above the river. The bluffs at this point recede, giving ample room for a town site with a ravine behind it.

Nature has done a great deal for the place,—scooping out the ravine as if the sole purpose had been to make the construction of a railroad an easy matter. The Winona and St. Peter's Railway strikes out from the town over the prairie, winds through the ravine, and by easy grades gains the rolling country beyond. The road is nearly completed to the Minnesota River, one hundred and forty miles. It will eventually be extended to the western boundary of the State, and onward into Dakota. It is now owned by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company, and runs through the centre of the second tier of counties in the State. The Southern Minnesota Railroad starts from La Crosse, and runs west through the first tier of counties. It is already constructed half-way across the State, and will be pushed on, as civilization advances, to the Missouri. That is the objective point of all the lines of railway leading west from the Mississippi, and they will soon be there.

This city of Winona fifteen years ago had about one hundred inhabitants. It was a place where steamers stopped to take wood and discharge a few packages of freight, but to-day it has a population of nine thousand. Looking out upon it from the promenade deck of the steamer, we see new buildings going up, and can hear the hammers and saws of the carpenters. It already contains thirteen churches and a Normal School with three hundred scholars, who are preparing to teach the children of the State, though the probabilities are that most of them will soon teach their own offspring instead of their neighbors'; for in the West young men are plenty, maidens scarce. Out here—

"There is no goose so gray but soon or late

Will find some honest gander for her mate."

Not so in the East, for the young men there are pushing west, and women are in the majority. It is a certainty that some of them will know more of single blessedness than of married life. If they would only come out here, the certainty would be the other way.

Not stopping at Winona, but hastening on board the train, we fly over the prairie, up the ravine, and out through one of the most fertile sections of the great grain-field of the Northwest.

The superintendent of the road, Mr. Stewart, accompanies our party, and we receive pleasure and profit by having a gentleman with us who is so thoroughly informed as he to point out the objects of interest along the way. By a winding road, now running under a high bluff where the limestone ledges overhang the track, now gliding over a high trestle-bridge from the northern to the southern side of the deep ravine, we gain at length the general table-land, and behold, reaching as far as the eye can see, fields of wheat. Fences are visible here and there, showing the division of farms; but there is scarcely a break in the sea of grain, in flower now, rippling and waving in the passing breeze. Farm-houses dot the landscape, and white cottages are embowered in surrounding groves, and here and there we detect a small patch of corn or an acre of potatoes,—small islands these in the great ocean of wheat reaching westward, northward, and southward.

We are astonished when the train nears St. Charles, a town of two thousand inhabitants, looking marvellously like a New England village, to see a school-house just completed at a cost of $15,000! and still wider open we our eyes at Rochester, with a population of six thousand, where we behold a school-building that has cost $60,000! Upon inquiry we ascertain that the bulk of the population of these towns is from New England.

A ride of about ninety miles brings us to Owatona, a town of about three thousand inhabitants.

We are in Steele County. The little rivulets here meandering through the prairie and flowing southward reach the Mississippi only after crossing the State of Iowa, while those running northward join the Mississippi through the Minnesota River.

Here, as at Rochester, we behold charming landscapes, immense fields of grain, groves of trees, snug cottages and farm-houses, and a thrifty town. Owatona has a school-house that cost the citizens $20,000; yet nine years ago the population of the entire county was only 2,862! The census of 1870 will probably make it 15,000. So civilization advances, not only here, but all through the Northwest, especially where there are railroad facilities.

From Owatona we turn north and pass through Rice County, containing eighteen townships. It is one of the best-timbered counties west of the Mississippi; there are large tracts of oak, maple, butternut, walnut, poplar, elm, and boxwood. We glide through belts of timber where choppers are felling the trees for railroad ties, past fields where the industrious husbandman has turned the natural grasses of the prairie into blooming clover.

At Faribault a company of Norwegians, recently arrived from their homes beyond the sea, and not having reached their journey's end, are cooking their supper near the station. To-morrow they will be pushing on westward to the grounds already purchased by the agent who has brought them out.

In 1850 this entire county had only one hundred inhabitants; the census of next year will probably show a population of twenty-five thousand,—one half Americans, one sixth Germans, one ninth Irish, besides Norwegians, Swedes, and Canadians. Faribault has about four thousand inhabitants, who have laid excellent foundations for future growth. They have an Episcopal College, a High School for ladies, a Theological Seminary, a Deaf and Dumb Asylum, two Congregational churches, also one Baptist, one Methodist, and one Episcopal. They have excellent water-power on the Cannon River. Five flouring-mills have already been erected.

Fourteen miles beyond this place we find Northfield with three thousand inhabitants, three fourths of them New-Englanders. Five churches and a college, two flouring-mills capable of turning out one hundred thousand barrels per annum, excellent schools, a go-ahead population, are the characteristics of this thoroughly wide-awake town.

A mile or two beyond Northfield we enter Dakota County,—one of the most fertile in the State. It was one of the first settled, and in 1860 contained 9,058 inhabitants. Its present population is estimated at 20,000,—one third of them Irish, one third Americans, one quarter Germans, and the remainder of all nationalities. The largest town is Hastings, on the Mississippi, containing about four thousand inhabitants. The Hastings and Dakota Railroad, extending west, crosses the Milwaukie and St. Paul at Farmington, a pleasant little town located on a green and fertile prairie. Thirty miles of this Hastings and Dakota road are in operation, and it is pushing on westward, like all the others, to reach the territory of Dakota and the Missouri River.

On over the prairies we fly, reaching the oldest town in the State, Mendota, which was a trading-post of the American Fur Company as long ago as 1828. It was livelier then than now, for in those years Indians by the thousand made it their rendezvous, coming in their bark canoes down the Minnesota from the borders of Dakota, down the St. Croix, which joins the Mississippi opposite Hastings, down the Mississippi from all the region above the Falls of St. Anthony; but now it is a seedy place. The houses have a forlorn look, and the three hundred Irish and Germans that make up the bulk of the population are not of the class that lay the foundations of empires, or make the wilderness bud and blossom with roses; they take life easy, and let to-day wait on to-morrow.

Fort Snelling, admirably located, looms grandly above the high steep bluff of the northern bank of the Minnesota River. It was one of the strongest posts on the frontier, but it is as useless now as a last year's swallow's-nest. The frontier is three hundred miles farther on.

Upon the early maps of Minnesota I find a magnificent city occupying the surrounding ground. It was surveyed and plotted, but St. Paul and Minneapolis got ahead, and the city of Snelling has no place in history.

We approach St. Paul from the south. Stepping from the cars we find ourselves on the lowlands of the Mississippi, with a high bluff south of us, and another on the north bank, both rising perpendicularly from the river. We ride over a long wooden bridge, one end of which rests on the low land by the railroad station, and the other on the high northern bluff, so that the structure is inclined at an angle of about twenty degrees, like the driveway to a New England barn where the floor is nearly up to the high beams. We are in a city which in 1849, twenty years ago, had a population of eight hundred and forty, but which now has an estimated population of twenty-five thousand. Here that powerful tribe of Northern Indians, the Dakotas, had their capital,—a cave in the sandstone bluffs, which was the council-chamber of the tribe. Upon the bluff now stands the capital of the State, and the sanguine citizens believe that the city is to be the commercial metropolis of the Northwest. A few months ago I was on the other side of the globe, where civilization is at a stand-still; where communities exist, but scarcely change; where decay is quite as probable as growth; where advancement is the exception, and not the rule. To ride through the streets of St. Paul; to behold its spacious warehouses, its elegant edifices, stores piled with the goods of all lands, the products of all climes,—furs from Hudson Bay, oranges from Messina, teas from China, coffee from Brazil, silks from Paris, and all the products of industry from our own land; to behold the streets alive with people, crowded with farmers' wagons laden with wheat and flour; to read the signs, "Young Men's Christian Association," "St. Paul Library Association"; to see elegant school-edifices and churches, beautiful private residences surrounded by lawns and adorned with works of art,—to see this in contrast with what we have so lately witnessed, and to think that this is the development of American civilization, going on now as never before, and destined to continue till all this wide region is to be thus dotted over with centres of influence and power, sends an indescribable thrill through our veins. It is not merely that we are Americans, but because in this land Christian civilization is attaining the highest development of all time. The people of St. Paul may justly take pride in what they have already accomplished, and they also have reason to look forward with confidence to the future.

The county is quite small, containing only four and a half townships. The soil is poor, a sandy loam, of not much account for farming purposes, but being at the head of steamboat navigation a good start was obtained; and now that railroads are superseding steamboats, St. Paul reaches out her iron arms in every direction,—up the Mississippi to St. Cloud, westward through Minneapolis to the Red River of the North, southwest to touch the Missouri at Sioux City, due south over the line by which we reached the city, down the river towards Chicago, and northeast to Lake Superior. As a spider extends its threads, so St. Paul, or perhaps, more properly speaking, St. Paul and Minneapolis together, are throwing out their lines of communication, making themselves the centre of the great Northwest systems of railways. The interests of St. Paul are mercantile, those of Minneapolis manufacturing. They are nearly five hundred miles distant from Chicago,—far enough to be an independent commercial, manufacturing, and distributing centre. That such is to be their destiny cannot be doubted.

The outfit of our party had been prepared at Minneapolis; and a large number of gentlemen from that city made their appearance at St. Paul, to convey us to the town in their own private carriages.

It is a charming ride that we have along the eastern bank of the Mississippi, which pours its mighty flood,—mighty even here, though so far away from the sea,—rolling and thundering far below us in the chasm which it has worn in the solid rock.

On our right hand are fields of waving grain, and white cottages half hidden in groves of oak and maple. We see New England thrift and enterprise, for the six States east of the Hudson have been sending their wide-awake sons and daughters to this section for the last twenty years. The gentleman with whom we are riding came here from the woods of Maine, a lumberman from the Penobscot, and has been the architect of his own fortune. He knows all about the Upper Mississippi, its tributaries, and the chain of lakes lying northwest of Lake Superior. He is Mayor of Minneapolis, a substantial citizen, his hand ready for every good work,—for the building of schools and churches, for charity and benevolence; but on the Upper Mississippi he wears a red shirt, eats pork and beans, and sleeps on pine boughs. He directs the labor of hundreds of wood-choppers and raftsmen.

How different this from what we see in other lands! I find my pen runs on contrasts. How can one help it after seeing that gorgeous and lumbering old carriage in which the Lord Mayor of London rides from Guildhall to Westminster? The Lord Mayor himself appears in a scarlet cloak not half so becoming as a red shirt. He wears a massive gold chain, and a hat which would be most in place on the stage of a theatre, and which would make him a guy in any American town. Not so do the Lord Mayors of the Northwest appear in public. They understand practical life. It is one of the characteristics of our democratic government that it makes people practical in all things.

In 1865 the town of Minneapolis contained only 4,607 inhabitants, but the population by the census of the present year is 13,080.

The fall in the river at this point is sixty-four feet, furnishing 120,000 horse-power,—more than sufficient to drive every mill-wheel and factory in New England, and, according to Wheelock's Report, greater than the whole motive-power—steam and water—employed in textile manufactures in England in 1850. Thirteen flouring-mills, fourteen saw-mills, two woollen-mills, and two paper-mills, are already erected. Six million dollars have been invested in manufacturing at this point. The only difficulty to be encountered is the preservation of the falls in their present position. Beneath the slate rock over which the torrent pours is a strata of soft sandstone, which rapidly wears away. Measures have been taken, however, to preserve the cataract in its present condition, by constructing an apron to carry the water some distance beyond the verge of the fall and thus prevent the breaking away of the rock.

No one can behold the natural advantages at Minneapolis without coming to the conclusion that it is to be one of the great manufacturing cities of the world if the fall can be kept in its present position. Cotton can be loaded upon steamers at Memphis, and discharged at St. Paul. The climate here is exceedingly favorable for the manufacturing of cotton goods. The lumber-mills by and by will give place to other manufactures, and Minneapolis will rank with Lowell or Fall River.

Our ride brings us to St. Anthony on the east bank of the river, where we behold the Mississippi roaring and tumbling over the slate-stone ledges, and hear the buzzing and humming of the machinery in the saw-mills.

St. Anthony was one of the earliest-settled towns in the State. Its projectors were Southern men. Streets were laid out, stores erected, a great hotel built, and extravagant prices asked for land, but the owners of Minneapolis offered lots at cheaper rates, and found purchasers. The war came on, and the proprietors of St. Anthony being largely from the South, the place ceased to grow, while its rival on the western shore moved steadily onward in a prosperous career. But St. Anthony is again advancing, for many gentlemen doing business in Minneapolis reside there. The interests of the two places are identical, and will advance together.

How can one describe what is indescribable? I can only speak of this city as situated on a beautiful plain, with the Mississippi thundering over a cataract with a power sufficient to build up half a dozen Lowells; with a country behind it where every acre of land as far as the eye can see, and a hundred or a thousand times farther, is capable of cultivation and of supporting a population as dense as that of Belgium or China. Wide streets, costly school-houses, church spires, a community in which the New England element largely predominates,—a city where every other door does not open to a lager-beer saloon, as in some Western towns; where the sound of the saw and the hammer, and the click of the mason's trowel and sledge, are heard from morning till night; where the streets are filled with wagons from the country, bringing in grain and carrying back lumber, with the farmer, his wife and buxom daughter, and tow-headed, bright-faced little boys perched on top—such are the characteristics of Minneapolis.

There was a time when Pegasus was put in harness, and the ancients, according to fable, tried to put Hercules to work. If those days of classic story have gone by, better ones have come, for the people of Minneapolis have got the Father of Waters in harness. He is cutting out one hundred million feet of lumber per annum here. I can hear him spinning his saws. He is turning a score of mill-stones, and setting a million or two of spindles in motion, and pretty soon some of the citizens intend to set him to weaving bags and cloth by the hundred thousand yards! Only a tithe of his strength is yet laid out. These men, reared in the East, and developed in the West, will make the old Father work for them henceforth. He will not be allowed to idle away his time by leaping and laughing year in and year out over yonder cataract. He must work for the good of the human race. They will use him for the building of a great mart of industry,—for the erection of houses and homes, the abodes of comfort and happiness and of joyful and peaceful life.