Read Ebook: The Seat of Empire by Coffin Charles Carleton

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 791 lines and 61750 words, and 16 pages

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.

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 ,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 ,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 ,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.

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 ,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:--

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.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet