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Island Possessed

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.
against the injustice of an increased power in the Lower House and
in the Electoral College based upon a vote which is not represented.
It is a valid protest in law; there is no answer to it. What is the reply
to it? The substance of hundreds of replies to it is that “we dare not
let go so long as the negroes all vote together, regardless of local
considerations or any economic problems whatever; we are in
danger of a return to a rule of ignorance that was intolerable, and as
long as you wave the bloody shirt at the North, which means to us a
return to that rule, the South will be solid.” The remark made by one
man of political prominence was perhaps typical: “The waving of the
bloody shirt suits me exactly as a political game; we should have
hard work to keep our State Democratic if you did not wave it.” So
the case stands. The Republican party will always insist on freedom,
not only of political opinion, but of action, in every part of the Union;
and the South will keep “solid” so long as it fears, or so long as
politicians can persuade it to fear, the return of the late disastrous
domination. And recognizing this fact, and speaking in the interest of
no party, but only in that of better understanding and of the
prosperity of the whole country, I cannot doubt that the way out of
most of our complications is in letting the past drop absolutely, and
addressing ourselves with sympathy and good-will all around to the
great economical problems and national issues. And I believe that in
this way also lies the speediest and most permanent good to the
colored as well as the white population of the South.
There has been a great change in the aspect of the South and in
its sentiment within two years; or perhaps it would be more correct
to say that the change maturing for fifteen years is more apparent in
a period of comparative rest from race or sectional agitation. The
educational development is not more marvellous than the industrial,
and both are unparalleled in history. Let us begin by an illustration.
I stood one day before an assembly of four hundred pupils of a
colored college—called a college, but with a necessary preparatory
department—children and well-grown young women and men. The
buildings are fine, spacious, not inferior to the best modern
educational buildings either in architectural appearance or in interior
furnishing, with scientific apparatus, a library, the appliances
approved by recent experience in teaching, with admirable methods
and discipline, and an accomplished corps of instructors. The
scholars were neat, orderly, intelligent in appearance. As I stood for
a moment or two looking at their bright expectant faces the
profound significance of the spectacle and the situation came over
me, and I said: “I wonder if you know what you are doing, if you
realize what this means. Here you are in a school the equal of any of
its grade in the land, with better methods of instruction than
prevailed anywhere when I was a boy, with the gates of all
knowledge opened as freely to you as to any youth in the land—
here, in this State, where only about twenty years ago it was a
misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to teach a
colored person to read and write. And I am brought here to see this
fine school, as one of the best things he can show me in the city, by
a Confederate colonel. Not in all history is there any instance of a
change like this in a quarter of a century: no, not in one nor in two
hundred years. It seems incredible.”
This is one of the schools instituted and sustained by Northern
friends of the South; but while it exhibits the capacity of the colored
people for education, it is not so significant in the view we are now
taking of the New South as the public schools. Indeed, next to the
amazing industrial change in the South, nothing is so striking as the
interest and progress in the matter of public schools. In all the cities
we visited the people were enthusiastic about their common schools.
It was a common remark, “I suppose we have one of the best school
systems in the country.” There is a wholesome rivalry to have the
best. We found everywhere the graded system and the newest
methods of teaching in vogue. In many of the primary rooms in both
white and colored schools, when I asked if these little children knew
the alphabet when they came to school, the reply was, “Not
generally we prefer they should not; we use the new method of
teaching words.” In many schools the youngest pupils were taught
to read music by sight, and to understand its notation by exercises
on the blackboard. In the higher classes generally, the instruction in
arithmetic, in reading, In geography, in history, and in literature was
wholly in the modern method. In some of the geography classes and
in the language classes I was reminded of the drill in the German
schools. In all the cities, as far as I could learn, the public money
was equally distributed to the colored and to the white schools, and
the number of schools bore a just proportion to the number of the
two races. When the town was equally divided in population, the
number of pupils in the colored schools was about the same as the
number in the white schools. There was this exception: though
provision was made for a high-school to terminate the graded for
both colors, the number in the colored high-school department was
usually very small; and the reason given by colored and white
teachers was that the colored children had not yet worked up to it.
The colored people prefer teachers of their own race, and they are
quite generally employed; but many of the colored schools have
white teachers, and generally, I think, with better results, although I
saw many thoroughly good colored teachers, and one or two colored
classes under them that compared favorably with any white classes
of the same grade.
The great fact, however, is that the common-school system has
become a part of Southern life, is everywhere accepted as a
necessity, and usually money is freely voted to sustain it. But
practically, as an efficient factor in civilization, the system is yet
undeveloped in the country districts. I can only speak from personal
observation of the cities, but the universal testimony was that the
common schools in the country for both whites and blacks are poor.
Three months’ schooling in the year is about the rule, and that of a
slack and inferior sort, under incompetent teachers. In some places
the colored people complain that ignorant teachers are put over
them, who are chosen simply on political considerations. More than
one respectable colored man told me that he would not send his
children to such schools, but combined with a few others to get
them private instruction. The colored people are more dependent on
public schools than the whites, for while there are vast masses of
colored people in city and country who have neither the money nor
the disposition to sustain schools, in all the large places the whites
are able to have excellent private schools, and do have them.
Scarcely anywhere can the colored people as yet have a private
school without white aid from somewhere. At the present rate of
progress, and even of the increase of tax-paying ability, it must be a
long time before the ignorant masses, white and black, in the
country districts, scattered over a wide area, can have public schools
at all efficient. The necessity is great. The danger to the State of
ignorance is more and more apprehended; and it is upon this that
many of the best men of the South base their urgent appeal for
temporary aid from the Federal Government for public schools. It is
seen that a State cannot soundly prosper unless its laborers are to
some degree intelligent. This opinion is shown in little things. One of
the great planters of the Yazoo Delta told me that he used to have
no end of trouble in settling with his hands. But now that numbers
of them can read and cipher, and explain the accounts to the others,
lie never has the least trouble.
One cannot speak too highly of the private schools in the South,
especially of those for young women. I do not know what they were
before the war, probably mainly devoted to “accomplishments,” as
most of girls’ schools in the North were. Now most of them are wider
in range, thorough in discipline, excellent in all the modern methods.
Some of them, under accomplished women, are entirely in line with
the best in the country. Before leaving this general subject of
education, it is necessary to say that the advisability of industrial
training, as supplementary to book-learning, is growing in favor, and
that in some colored schools it is tried with good results.
When we come to the New Industrial South the change is
marvellous, and so vast and various that I scarcely know where to
begin in a short paper that cannot go much into details. Instead of a
South devoted to agriculture and politics, we find a South wide
awake to business, excited and even astonished at the development
of its own immense resources in metals, marbles, coal, timber,
fertilizers, eagerly laying lines of communication, rapidly opening
mines, building furnaces, founderies, and all sorts of shops for
utilizing the native riches. It is like the discovery of a new world.
When the Northerner finds great founderies in Virginia using only
(with slight exceptions) the products of Virginia iron and coal mines;
when he finds Alabama and Tennessee making iron so good and so
cheap that it finds ready market in Pennsylvania, and founderies
multiplying near the great furnaces for supplying Northern markets;
when he finds cotton-mills running to full capacity on grades of
cheap cottons universally in demand throughout the South and
South-west; when he finds small industries, such as paper-box
factories and wooden bucket and tub factories, sending all they can
make into the North and widely over the West; when he sees the
loads of most beautiful marbles shipped North; when he learns that
some of the largest and most important engines and mill machinery
were made in Southern shops; when he finds in Richmond a “pole
locomotive,” made to run on logs laid end to end, and drag out from
Michigan forests and Southern swamps lumber hitherto inaccessible;
when he sees worn-out highlands in Georgia and Carolina bear more
cotton than ever before by help of a fertilizer the base of which is
the cotton-seed itself (worth more as a fertilizer than it was before
the oil was extracted from it); when he sees a multitude of small
shops giving employment to men, women, and children who never
had any work of that sort to do before; and when he sees Roanoke
iron cast in Richmond into car-irons, and returned to a car-factory in
Roanoke which last year sold three hundred cars to the New York
and New England Railroad—he begins to open his eyes. The South is
manufacturing a great variety of things needed in the house, on the
farm, and in the shops, for home consumption, and already sends to
the North and West several manufactured products. With iron, coal,
timber contiguous and easily obtained, the amount sent out is
certain to increase as the labor becomes more skilful. The most
striking industrial development today is in iron, coal, lumber, and
marbles; the more encouraging for the self-sustaining life of the
Southern people is the multiplication of small industries in nearly
every city I visited.
 When I have been asked what impressed me most in this hasty
tour, I have always said that the most notable thing was that
everybody was at work. In many cities this was literally true: every
man, woman, and child was actively employed, and in most there
were fewer idlers than in many Northern towns. There are, of
course, slow places, antiquated methods, easy-going ways, a-
hundred-years-behind-the-time makeshifts, but the spirit in all the
centres, and leavening the whole country, is work. Perhaps the
greatest revolution of all in Southern sentiment is in regard to the
dignity of labor. Labor is honorable, made so by the example of the
best in the land. There are, no doubt, fossils or Bourbons, sitting in
the midst of the ruins of their estates, martyrs to an ancient pride;
but usually the leaders in business and enterprise bear names well
known in politics and society. The nonsense that it is beneath the
dignity of any man or woman to work for a living is pretty much
eliminated from the Southern mind. It still remains true that the
Anglo-Saxon type is prevalent in the South; but in all the cities the
business sign-boards show that the enterprising Hebrew is
increasingly prominent as merchant and trader, and he is becoming
a plantation owner as well.
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the public mind that the
South, to use a comprehensible phrase, “has joined the procession.”
Its mind is turned to the development of its resources, to business,
to enterprise, to education, to economic problems; it is marching
with the North in the same purpose of wealth by industry. It is true
that the railways, mines, and furnaces could not have been without
enormous investments of Northern capital, but I was continually
surprised to find so many and important local industries the result
solely of home capital, made and saved since the war.
In this industrial change, in the growth of manufactures, the
Southern people are necessarily divided on the national economic
problems. Speaking of it purely from the side of political economy
and not of politics, great sections of the South—whole States, in fact
—are becoming more in favor of “protection” every day. All theories
aside, whenever a man begins to work up the raw material at hand
into manufactured articles for the market, he thinks that the revenue
should be so adjusted as to help and not to hinder him.
Underlying everything else is the negro problem. It is the most
difficult ever given to a people to solve.
It must, under our Constitution, be left to the States concerned,
and there is a general hopefulness that time and patience will solve
it to the advantage of both races. The negro is generally regarded as
the best laborer in the world, and there is generally goodwill towards
him, desire that he shall be educated and become thrifty. The negro
has more confidence now than formerly in the white man, and he
will go to him for aid and advice in everything except politics. Again
and again colored men said to me, “If anybody tells you that any
considerable number of colored men are Democrats, don’t you
believe him; it is not so.” The philanthropist who goes South will find
many things to encourage him, but if he knows the colored people
thoroughly, he will lose many illusions. But to speak of things
hopeful, the progress in education, in industry, in ability to earn
money, is extraordinary—much greater than ought to have been
expected in twenty years even by their most sanguine friends, and it
is greater now than at any other period. They are generally well
paid, according to the class of work they do. Usually I found the
same wages for the same class of work as whites received. I cannot
say how this is in remote country districts. The treatment of laborers
depends, I have no doubt, as elsewhere, upon the nature of the
employer. In some districts I heard that the negroes never got out of
debt, never could lay up anything, and were in a very bad condition.
But on some plantations certainly, and generally in the cities, there is
an improvement in thrift shown in the ownership of bits of land and
houses, and in the possession of neat and pretty homes. As to
morals, the gain is slower, but it is discernible, and exhibited in a
growing public opinion against immorality and lax family relations.
He is no friend to the colored people who blinks this subject, and
does not plainly say to them that their position as citizens in the
enjoyment of all civil rights depends quite as much upon their
personal virtue and their acquiring habits of thrift as it does upon
school privileges.
I had many interesting talks with representative colored men in
different sections. While it is undoubtedly true that more are
indifferent to politics than formerly, owing to causes already named
and to the unfulfilled promises of wheedling politicians, it would be
untrue to say that there is not great soreness over the present
situation. At Nashville I had an interview with eight or ten of the
best colored citizens, men of all shades of color. One of them was a
trusted clerk in the post-office; another was a mail agent, who had
saved money, and made more by an investment in Birmingham;
another was a lawyer of good practice in the courts, a man of
decided refinement and cultivation; another was at the head of one
of the leading transportation lines in the city, and another had the
largest provision establishment in town, and both were men of
considerable property; and another, a slave when the war ended,
was a large furniture dealer, and reputed worth a hundred thousand
dollars. They were all solid, sensible business men, and all respected
as citizens. They talked most intelligently of politics, and freely about
social conditions. In regard to voting in Tennessee there was little to
complain of; but in regard to Mississippi, as an illustration, it was an
outrage that the dominant party had increased power in Congress
and in the election of President, while the colored Republican vote
did not count. What could they do? Some said that probably nothing
could be done; time must be left to cure the wrong. Others wanted
the Federal Government to interfere, at least to the extent of making
a test case on some member of Congress that his election was
illegal. They did not think that need excite anew any race prejudice.
As to exciting race and sectional agitation, we discussed this
question: whether the present marvellous improvement of the
colored people, with general good-will, or at least a truce
everywhere, would not be hindered by anything like a race or class
agitation; that is to say, whether under the present conditions of
education and thrift the colored people (whatever injustice they felt)
were not going on faster towards the realization of all they wanted
than would be possible under any circumstances of adverse
agitation. As a matter of policy most of them assented to this. I put
this question: “In the first reconstruction days, how many colored
men were there in the State of Mississippi fitted either by knowledge
of letters, law, political economy, history, or politics to make laws for
the State?” Very few. Well then, it was unfortunate that they should
have attempted it. There are more to-day, and with education and
the accumulation of property the number will constantly increase. In
a republic, power usually goes with intelligence and property.
Finally I asked this intelligent company, every man of which stood
upon his own ability in perfect self-respect, “What do you want here
in the way of civil rights that you have not?” The reply from one was
that he got the respect of the whites just as he was able to
command it by his ability and by making money, and, with a touch of
a sense of injustice, he said he had ceased to expect that the
colored race would get it in any other way. Another reply was—and
this was evidently the deep feeling of all: “We want to be treated like
men, like anybody else, regardless of color. We don’t mean by this
social equality at all; that is a matter that regulates itself among
whites and colored people everywhere. We want the public
conveyances open to us according to the fare we pay; we want
privilege to go to hotels and to theatres, operas and places of
amusement. We wish you could see our families and the way we
live; you would then understand that we cannot go to the places
assigned us in concerts and theatres without loss of self-respect.” I
might have said, but I did not, that the question raised by this last
observation is not a local one, but as wide as the world.
If I tried to put in a single sentence the most widespread and
active sentiment in the South to-day, it would be this: The past is
put behind us; we are one with the North in business and national
ambition: we want a sympathetic recognition of this fact.
 VII.—A FAR AND FAIR COUNTRY.

L
ewis and Clarke, sent out by Mr. Jefferson in 1804 to discover
the North-west by the route of the Missouri River, left the town
of St. Charles early in the spring, sailed and poled and dragged
their boats up the swift, turbulent, and treacherous stream all
summer, wintered with the Mandan Indians, and reached the Great
Falls of the Missouri in about a year and a quarter from the
beginning of their voyage. Now, when we wish to rediscover this
interesting country, which is still virgin land, we lay down a railway-
track in the spring and summer, and go over there in the autumn in
a palace-car—a much more expeditious and comfortable mode of
exploration.
In beginning a series of observations and comments upon Western
life it is proper to say that the reader is not to expect exhaustive
statistical statements of growth or development, nor descriptions,
except such as will illustrate the point of view taken of the making of
the Great West. Materialism is the most obtrusive feature of a
cursory observation, but it does not interest one so much as the
forces that underlie it, the enterprise and the joyousness of conquest
and achievement that it stands for, or the finer processes evolved in
the marvellous building up of new societies. What is the spirit, what
is the civilization of the West? I have not the presumption to expect
to answer these large questions to any one’s satisfaction—least of all
to my own—but if I may be permitted to talk about them familiarly,
in the manner that one speaks to his friends of what interested him
most in a journey, and with flexibility in passing from one topic to
another, I shall hope to contribute something to a better
understanding between the territories of a vast empire. How vast
this republic is, no one can at all appreciate who does not actually
travel over its wide areas. To many of us the West is still the West of
the geographies of thirty years ago; it is the simple truth to say that
comparatively few Eastern people have any adequate conception of
what lies west of Chicago and St. Louis: perhaps a hazy geographical
notion of it, but not the faintest idea of its civilization and society.
Now, a good understanding of each other between the great
sections of the republic is politically of the first importance. We shall
hang together as a nation; blood, relationship, steel rails, navigable
waters, trade, absence of natural boundaries, settle that. We shall
pull and push and grumble, we shall vituperate each other, parties
will continue to make capital out of sectional prejudice, and
wantonly inflame it (what a pitiful sort of “politics” that is!), but we
shall stick together like wax. Still, anything like smooth working of
our political machine depends upon good understanding between
sections. And the remark applies to East and West as well as to
North and South. It is a common remark at the West that “Eastern
people know nothing about us; they think us half civilized and there
is mingled with slight irritability at this ignorance a waxing feeling of
superiority over the East in force and power.” One would not say that
repose as yet goes along with this sense of great capacity and great
achievement; indeed, it is inevitable that in a condition of
development and of quick growth unparalleled in the history of the
world there should be abundant self-assertion and even monumental
boastfulness.
When the Western man goes East he carries the consciousness of
playing a great part in the making of an empire; his horizon is large;
but he finds himself surrounded by an atmosphere of indifference or
non-comprehension of the prodigiousness of his country, of
incredulity as to the refinement and luxury of his civilization; and
self-assertion is his natural defence. This longitudinal incredulity and
swagger is a curious phenomenon. London thinks New York puts on
airs, New York complains of Chicago’s want of modesty, Chicago can
see that Kansas City and Omaha are aggressively boastful, and these
cities acknowledge the expansive self-appreciation of Denver and
Helena.
Does going West work a radical difference in a man’s character?
Hardly. We are all cut out of the same piece of cloth. The Western
man is the Eastern or the Southern man let loose, with his leading-
strings cut. But the change of situation creates immense diversity in
interests and in spirit. One has but to take up any of the great
newspapers, say in St. Paul or Minneapolis, to be aware that he is in
another world of ideas, of news, of interests. The topics that most
interest the East he does not find there, nor much of its news.
Persons of whom he reads daily in the East drop out of sight, and
other persons, magnates in politics, packing, railways, loom up. It
takes columns to tell the daily history of places which have
heretofore only caught the attention of the Eastern reader for freaks
of the thermometer, and he has an opportunity to read daily pages
about Dakota, concerning which a weekly paragraph has formerly
satisfied his curiosity. Before he can be absorbed in these lively and
intelligent newspapers he must change the whole current of his
thoughts, and take up other subjects, persons, and places than
those that have occupied his mind. He is in a new world.
One of the most striking facts in the West is State pride,
attachment to the State, the profound belief of every citizen that his
State is the best. Engendered perhaps at first by a permanent
investment and the spur of self-interest, it speedily becomes a
passion, as strong in the newest State as it is in any one of the
original thirteen. Rivalry between cities is sharp, and civic pride is
excessive, but both are outdone by the larger devotion to the
commonwealth. And this pride is developed in the inhabitants of a
Territory as soon as it is organized. Montana has condensed the
ordinary achievements of a century into twenty years, and loyalty to
its present and expectation of its future are as strong in its citizens
as is the attachment of men of Massachusetts to the State of nearly
three centuries of growth. In Nebraska I was pleased with the talk of
a clergyman who had just returned from three months’ travel in
Europe. He was full of his novel experiences; he had greatly enjoyed
the trip; but he was glad to get back to Nebraska and its full,
vigorous life. In England and on the Continent he had seen much to
interest him; but he could not help comparing Europe with
Nebraska; and as for him, this was the substance of it: give him
Nebraska every time. What astonished him most, and wounded his
feelings (and there was a note of pathos in his statement of it), was
the general foreign ignorance abroad about Nebraska—the utter
failure in the European mind to take it in. I felt guilty, for to me it
had been little more than a geographical expression, and I presume
the Continent did not know whether Nebraska was a new kind of
patent medicine or a new sort of religion. To the clergymen this
ignorance of the central, richest, about-to-be-the-most-important of
States, was simply incredible.
This feeling is not only admirable in itself, but it has an
incalculable political value, especially in the West, where there is a
little haze as to the limitations of Federal power, and a notion that
the Constitution was swaddling-clothes for an infant, which manly
limbs may need to kick off. Healthy and even assertive State pride is
the only possible counterbalance in our system against that
centralization which tends to corruption in the centre and weakness
and discontent in the individual members.
It should be added that the West, speaking of it generally, is
defiantly “American.” It wants a more vigorous and assertive foreign
policy. Conscious of its power, the growing pains in the limbs of the
young giant will not let it rest. That this is the most magnificent
country, that we have the only government beyond criticism, that
our civilization is far and away the best, does not admit of doubt. It
is refreshing to see men who believe in something heartily and with-
out reserve, even if it is only in themselves. There is a tonic in this
challenge of all time and history. A certain attitude of American
assertion towards other powers is desired. For want of this our late
representatives to Great Britain are said to be un-American; “political
dudes” is what the Governor of Iowa calls them. It is his indictment
against the present Minister to St. James that “he is numerous in his
visits to the castles of English noblemen, and profuse in his
obsequiousness to British aristocrats.” And perhaps the Governor
speaks for a majority of Western voters and fighters when he says
that “timidity has characterized our State Department for the last
twenty years.”
 By chance I begin these Western studies with the North-west.
Passing by for the present the intelligent and progressive State of
Wisconsin, we will consider Minnesota and the vast region at present
more or less tributary to it. It is necessary to remember that the
State was admitted to the Union in 1858, and that its extraordinary
industrial development dates from the building of the first railway in
its limits—ten miles from St. Paul to St. Anthony—in 1862. For this
road the first stake was driven and the first shovelful of earth lifted
by a citizen of St. Paul who has lived to see his State gridironed with
railways, and whose firm constructed in 1887 over eleven hundred
miles of railroad.
It is unnecessary to dwell upon the familiar facts that Minnesota is
a great wheat State, and that it is intersected by railways that
stimulate the enormous yield and market it with facility. The
discovery that the State, especially the Red River Valley, and Dakota
and the country beyond, were peculiarly adapted to the production
of hard spring-wheat, which is the most desirable for flour, probably
gave this vast region its first immense advantage. Minnesota, a
prairie country, rolling, but with no important hills, well watered, well
grassed, with a repellent reputation for severe winters, not well
adapted to corn, nor friendly to most fruits, attracted nevertheless
hardy and adventurous people, and proved specially inviting to the
Scandinavians, who are tough and industrious. It would grow wheat
without end. And wheat is the easiest crop to raise, and returns the
greatest income for the least labor. In good seasons and with good
prices it is a mine of wealth. But Minnesota had to learn that one
industry does not suffice to make a State, and that wheat-raising
alone is not only unreliable, but exhaustive. The grasshopper
scourge was no doubt a blessing in disguise. It helped to turn the
attention of farmers to cattle and sheep, and to more varied
agriculture. I shall have more to say about this in connection with
certain most interesting movements in Wisconsin.
The notion has prevailed that the North-west was being absorbed
by owners of immense tracts of land, great capitalists who by the aid
of machinery were monopolizing the production of wheat, and
crowding out small farmers. There are still vast wheat farms under
one control, but I am happy to believe that the danger of this great
land monopoly has reached its height, and the tendency is the other
way. Small farms are on the increase, practising a more varied
agriculture. The reason is this: A plantation of 5000 or 15,000 acres,
with a good season, freedom from blight and insects, will enrich the
owner if prices are good; but one poor crop, with low prices, will
bankrupt him. Whereas the small farmer can get a living under the
most adverse circumstances, and taking one year with another,
accumulate something, especially if he varies his products and feeds
them to stock, thus returning the richness of his farm to itself. The
skinning of the land by sending away its substance in hard wheat is
an improvidence of natural resources, which belongs, like cattle-
ranging, to a half-civilized era, and like cattle-ranging has probably
seen its best days. One incident illustrates what can be done. Mr.
James J. Hill, the president of the Manitoba railway system, an
importer and breeder of fine cattle on his Minnesota country place,
recently gave and loaned a number of blooded bulls to farmers over
a wide area in Minnesota and Dakota. The result of this benefaction
has been surprising in adding to the wealth of those regions and the
prosperity of the farmers. It is the beginning of a varied farming and
of cattle production, which will be of incalculable benefit to the
North-west.
It is in the memory of men still in active life when the Territory of
Minnesota was supposed to be beyond the pale of desirable
settlement. The State, except in the north-east portion, is now well
settled, and well sprinkled with thriving villages and cities. Of the
latter, St. Paul and Minneapolis are still a wonder to themselves, as
they are to the world. I knew that they were big cities, having each
a population nearly approaching 175,000, but I was not prepared to
find them so handsome and substantial, and exhibiting such vigor
and activity of movement. One of the most impressive things to an
Eastern man in both of them is their public spirit, and the harmony
with which business men work together for anything which will build
up and beautify the city. I believe that the ruling force in Minneapolis
is of New England stock, while St. Paul has a larger proportion of
New York people, with a mixture of Southern; and I have a fancy
that there is a social shading that shows this distinction. It is worth
noting, however, that the Southerner, transplanted to Minnesota or
Montana, loses the laisser faire with which he is credited at home,
and becomes as active and pushing as anybody. Both cities have a
very large Scandinavian population. The laborers and the domestic
servants are mostly Swedes. In forecasting what sort of a State
Minnesota is to be, the Scandinavian is a largely determining force.
It is a virile element. The traveller is impressed with the idea that
the women whom he sees at the stations in the country and in the
city streets are sturdy, ruddy, and better able to endure the
protracted season of cold and the highly stimulating atmosphere
than the American-born women, who tend to become nervous in
these climatic conditions. The Swedes are thrifty, taking eagerly to
polities, and as ready to profit by them as anybody; unreservedly
American in intention, and on the whole, good citizens.
The physical difference of the two cities is mainly one of situation.
Minneapolis spreads out on both sides of the Mississippi over a plain,
from the gigantic flouring-mills and the canal and the Falls of St.
Anthony as a centre (the falls being, by-the-way, planked over with a
wooden apron to prevent the total wearing away of the shaly rock)
to rolling land and beautiful building sites on moderate elevations.
Nature has surrounded the city with a lovely country, diversified by
lakes and forests, and enterprise has developed it into one of the
most inviting of summer regions. Twelve miles west of it, Lake
Minnetonka, naturally surpassingly lovely, has become, by an
immense expenditure of money, perhaps the most attractive summer
resort in the North-west. Each city has a hotel (the West in
Minneapolis, the Ryan in St. Paul) which would be distinguished
monuments of cost and elegance in any city in the world, and each
city has blocks of business houses, shops, and offices of solidity and
architectural beauty, and each has many private residences which
are palaces in size, in solidity, and interior embellishment, but they
are scattered over the city in Minneapolis, which can boast of no
single street equal to Summit avenue in St. Paul. The most
conspicuous of the private houses is the stone mansion of Governor
Washburn, pleasing in color, harmonious in design, but so gigantic
that the visitor (who may have seen palaces abroad) expects to find
a somewhat vacant interior. He is therefore surprised that the
predominating note is homelikeness and comfort, and he does not
see how a family of moderate size could well get along with less
than the seventy rooms (most of them large) which they have at
their disposal.
St. Paul has the advantage of picturesqueness of situation. The
business part of the town lies on a spacious uneven elevation above
the river, surrounded by a semicircle of bluffs averaging something
like two hundred feet high. Up the sides of these the city climbs,
beautifying every vantage-ground with handsome and stately
residences. On the north the bluffs maintain their elevation in a
splendid plateau, and over this dry and healthful plain the two cities
advance to meet each other, and already meet in suburbs, colleges,
and various public buildings. Summit avenue curves along the line of
the northern bluff, and then turns northward, two hundred feet
broad, graded a distance of over two miles, and with a magnificent
asphalt road-way for more than a mile. It is almost literally a street
of palaces, for although wooden structures alternate with the varied
and architecturally interesting mansions of stone and brick on both
sides, each house is isolated, with a handsome lawn and ornamental
trees, and the total effect is spacious and noble. This avenue
commands an almost unequalled view of the sweep of bluffs round
to the Indian Mounds, of the city, the winding river, and the town
and heights of West St. Paul. It is not easy to recall a street and
view anywhere finer than this, and this is only one of the streets on
this plateau conspicuous for handsome houses. I see no reason why
St. Paul should not become, within a few years, one of the notably
most beautiful cities in the world. And it is now wonderfully well
advanced in that direction. Of course the reader understands that
both these rapidly growing cities are in the process of “making,” and
that means cutting and digging and slashing, torn-up streets, shabby
structures alternating with gigantic and solid buildings, and the usual
unsightliness of transition and growth.
Minneapolis has the State University, St. Paul the Capitol, an
ordinary building of brick, which will not long, it is safe to say, suit
the needs of the pride of the State. I do not set out to describe the
city, the churches, big newspaper buildings, great wholesale and
ware houses, handsome club-house (the Minnesota Club), stately
City Hall, banks, Chamber of Commerce, and so on. I was impressed
with the size of the buildings needed to house the great railway
offices. Nothing can give one a livelier idea of the growth and grasp
of Western business than one of these plain structures, five or six
stories high, devoted to the several departments of one road or
system of roads, crowded with busy officials and clerks, offices of
the president, vice-president, assistant of the president, secretary,
treasurer, engineer, general manager, general superintendent,
general freight, general traffic, general passenger, perhaps a land
officer, and so on—affairs as complicated and vast in organization
and extensive in detail as those of a State government.
There are sixteen railways which run in Minnesota, having a total
mileage of 5024 miles in the State. Those which have over two
hundred miles of road in the State are the Chicago and North-
western, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, Chicago, St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Omaha, Minneapolis and St. Louis, Northern
Pacific, St. Paul and Duluth, and the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and
Manitoba. The names of these roads give little indication of their
location, as the reader knows, for many of them run all over the
North-west like spider-webs.
It goes without saying that the management of these great
interests—imperial, almost continental in scope—requires brains,
sobriety, integrity; and one is not surprised to find that the railways
command and pay liberally for the highest talent and skill. It is not
merely a matter of laying rails and running trains, but of developing
the resources—one might almost say creating the industries—of vast
territories. These are gigantic interests, concerning which there is
such sharp rivalry and competition, and as a rule it is the generous,
large-minded policy that wins. Somebody has said that the railway
managers and magnates (I do not mean those who deal in railways
for the sake of gambling) are the élite of Western life. I am not
drawing distinctions of this sort, but I will say, and it might as well
be said here and simply, that next to the impression I got of the
powerful hand of the railways in the making of the West, was that of
the high character, the moral stamina, the ability, the devotion to
something outside themselves, of the railway men I met in the
North-west. Specialists many of them are, and absorbed in special
work, but I doubt if any other profession or occupation can show a
proportionally larger number of broad-minded, fair-minded men, of
higher integrity and less pettiness, or more inclined to the liberalizing
culture in art and social life. Either dealing with large concerns has
lifted up the men, or the large opportunities have attracted men of
high talent and character; and I sincerely believe that we should
have no occasion for anxiety if the average community did not go
below the standard of railway morality and honorable dealing.
What is the raison d’etre of these two phenomenal, cities? why do
they grow? why are they likely to continue to grow? I confess that
this was an enigma to me until I had looked beyond to see what
country was tributary to them, what a territory they have to supply.
Of course, the railways, the flouring-mills, the vast wholesale dry
goods and grocery houses speak for themselves. But I had thought
of these cities as on the confines of civilization. They are, however,
the two posts of the gate-way to an empire. In order to comprehend
their future, I made some little trips north-east and north-west.
Duluth, though as yet with only about twenty-five to thirty
thousand inhabitants, feels itself, by its position, a rival of the cities
on the Mississippi. A few figures show the basis of this feeling. In
1880 the population was 3740; in 1886, 25,000. In 1880 the receipts
of wheat were 1,347,679 bushels; in 1886, 22,425,730 bushels; in
1860 the shipments of wheat 1,453,647 bushels; in 1886,17,981,965
bushels. In 1880 the shipments of flour were 551,800 bushels; in
1886, 1,500,000 bushels. In 1886 there were grain elevators with a
capacity of 18,000,000 bushels. The tax valuation had increased
from 8669,012 in 1880 to 811,773,729 in 1886. The following
comparisons are made: The receipt of wheat in Chicago in 1885 was
19,266,000 bushels; in Duluth, 14,880,000 bushels. The receipt of
wheat in 1886 was at Duluth 22,425,730 bushels; at Minneapolis,
33,394,450; at Chicago, 15,982,524; at Milwaukee, 7,930,102. This
shows that an increasing amount of the great volume of wheat
raised in north Dakota and north-west Minnesota (that is, largely in
the Red River Valley) is seeking market by way of Duluth and water
transportation. In 1869 Minnesota raised about 18,000,000 bushels
of wheat; in 1886, about 50,000,000. In 1869 Dakota grew no grain
at all; in 1886 it produced about 50,000,000 bushels of wheat. To
understand the amount of transportation the reader has only to look
on the map and see the railway lines—the Northern Pacific, the
Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Omaha, the St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Manitoba, and other lines, running to Duluth, and
sending out spurs, like the roots of an elm-tree, into the wheat lands
of the North-west.
Most of the route from St. Paul to Duluth is uninteresting; there is
nothing picturesque except the Dalles of the St. Louis River, and a
good deal of the country passed through seems agriculturally of no
value. The approaches to Duluth, both from the Wisconsin and the
Minnesota side, are rough and vexatious by reason of broken, low,
hummocky, and swamp land. Duluth itself, with good harbor
facilities, has only a strip of level ground for a street, and inadequate
room for railway tracks and transfers. The town itself climbs up the
hill, whence there is a good view of the lake and the Wisconsin
shore, and a fair chance for both summer and winter breezes. The
residence portion of the town, mainly small wooden houses, has
many highly ornamental dwellings, and the long street below,
following the shore, has many noble buildings of stone and brick,
which would be a credit to any city. Grading and sewer-making
render a large number of the streets impassable, and add to the
signs of push, growth, and business excitement.
For the purposes of trade, Duluth, and the towns of Superior and
West Superior, in Wisconsin, may be considered one port; and while
Duluth may continue to be the money and business centre, the
expansion for railway terminal facilities, elevators, and manufactures
is likely to be in the Wisconsin towns on the south side of the harbor.
From the Great Northern Elevator in West Superior the view of the
other elevators, of the immense dock room, of the harbor and lake,
of a net-work of miles and miles of terminal tracks of the various
roads, gives one an idea of gigantic commerce; and the long freight
trains laden with wheat, glutting all the roads and sidings
approaching Duluth, speak of the bursting abundance of the
tributary country. This Great Northern Elevator, belonging to the
Manitoba system, is the largest In the world; its dimensions are 360
feet long, 95 in width, 115 in height, with a capacity of 1,800,000
bushels, and with facilities for handling 40 car-loads an hour, or 400
cars in a day of 10 hours. As I am merely illustrating the amount of
the present great staple of the North-west, I say nothing here of the
mineral, stone, and lumber business of this region. Duluth has a
cool, salubrious summer and a snug winter climate. I ought to add
that the enterprising inhabitants attend to education as well as the
elevation of grain; the city has eight commodious school buildings.
To return to the Mississippi. To understand what feeds Minneapolis
and St. Paul, and what country their great wholesale houses supply,
one must take the rail and penetrate the vast North-west. The
famous Park or Lake district, between St. Cloud (75 miles north-west
of St. Paul) and Fergus Falls, is too well known to need description.
A rolling prairie, with hundreds of small lakes, tree fringed, it is a
region of surpassing loveliness, and already dotted, as at Alexandria,
with summer resorts. The whole region, up as far as Moorhead (240
miles from St. Paul), on the Red River, opposite Fargo, Dakota, is
well settled, and full of prosperous towns. At Fargo, crossing the
Northern Pacific, we ran parallel with the Red River, through a line of
bursting elevators and wheat farms, clown to Grand Forks, where we
turned westward, and passed out of the Red River Valley, rising to
the plateau at Larimore, some three hundred feet above it.
The Red River, a narrow but deep and navigable stream, has from
its source to Lake Winnipeg a tortuous course of about 600 miles,
while the valley itself is about 285 miles long, of which 180 miles Is
in the United States. This valley, which has astonished the world by
its wheat production, is about 160 miles in breadth, and level as a
floor, except that it has a northward slope of, I believe, about five
feet to the mile. The river forms the boundary between Minnesota
and Dakota; the width of valley on the Dakota side varies from 50 to
100 miles. The rich soil is from two to three feet deep, underlaid
with clay. Fargo, the centre of this valley, is 940 feet above the sea.
The climate is one of extremes between winter and summer, but of
much constancy of cold or heat according to the season. Although it
is undeniable that one does not feel the severe cold there as much
as in more humid atmospheres, it cannot be doubted that the long
continuance of extreme cold is trying to the system. And it may be
said of all the North-west, including Minnesota, that while it is more
favorable to the lungs than many regions where the thermometer
has less sinking power, it is not free from catarrh (the curse of New
England), nor from rheumatism. The climate seems to me specially
stimulating, and I should say there is less excuse here for the use of
stimulants (on account of “lowness” or lassitude) than in almost any
other portion of the United States with which I am acquainted.
But whatever attractions or drawbacks this territory has as a place
of residence, its grain and stock growing capacity is inexhaustible,
and having seen it, we begin to comprehend the vigorous activity
and growth of the twin cities. And yet this is the beginning of
resources; there lies Dakota, with its 149,100 square miles
(96,596,480 acres of land), larger than all the New England States
and New York combined, and Montana beyond, together making a
belt of hard spring-wheat land sufficient, one would think, to feed
the world. When one travels over 1200 miles of it, doubt ceases.
I cannot better illustrate the resources and enterprise of the
North-west than by speaking in some detail of the St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway (known as the Manitoba system),
and by telling briefly the story of one season’s work, not because
this system is bigger or more enterprising or of more importance in
the West than some others I might name, but because it has lately
pierced a comparatively unknown region, and opened to settlement
a fertile empire.
The Manitoba system gridirons north Minnesota, runs to Duluth,
puts two tracks down the Red River Valley (one on each side of the
river) to the Canada line, sends out various spurs into Dakota, and
operates a main line from Grand Forks westward through the whole
of Dakota, and through Montana as far as the Great Falls of the
Missouri, and thence through the canon of the Missouri and the
canon of the Prickly-Pear to Helena—in all about 3000 miles of track.
Its president is Mr. James J. Hill, a Canadian by birth, whose rapid
career from that of a clerk on the St. Paul levee to his present
position of influence, opportunity, and wealth is a romance in itself,
and whose character, integrity, tastes, and accomplishments, and
domestic life, were it proper to speak of them, would satisfactorily
answer many of the questions that are asked about the materialistic
West.
The Manitoba line west had reached Minot, 530 miles from St.
Paul, in 1886. I shall speak of its extension in 1887, which was
intrusted to Mr. D. C. Shepard, a veteran engineer and railway
builder of St. Paul, and his firm, Messrs. Shepard, Winston & Co.
Credit should be given by name to the men who conducted this
Napoleonic enterprise; for it required not only the advance of
millions of money, but the foresight, energy, vigilance, and capacity
that insure success in a distant military campaign.
It needs to be noted that the continuation of the St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Manitoba road from Great Falls to Helena, 98 miles,
is called the Montana Central. The work to be accomplished in 1887
was to grade 500 miles of railroad to reach Great Falls, to put in the
bridging and mechanical structures (by hauling all material brought
up by rail ahead of the track by teams, so as not to delay the
progress of the track) on 530 miles of continuous railway, and to lay
and put in good running condition 643 miles of rails continuously
and from one end only.
In the winter of 1886-87 the road was completed to a point five
miles west of Minot, and work was done beyond which if
consolidated would amount to about fifty miles of completed
grading, and the mechanical structures were done for twenty miles
west from Minot. On the Montana Central the grading and
mechanical structures were made from Helena as a base, and
completed before the track reached Great Falls. St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and Duluth were the primary bases of operations, and
generally speaking all materials, labor, fuel, and supplies originated
at these three points; Minot was the secondary base, and here in the
winter of 1886-87 large depots of supplies and materials for
construction were formed.
Track-laying began April 2,1887, but was greatly retarded by snow
and ice in the completed cuts, and by the grading, which was heavy.
The cuts were frozen more or less up to May 15th. The forwarding
of grading forces to Minot began April 6th, but it was a labor of
considerable magnitude to outfit them at Minot and get them
forward to the work; so that it was as late as May 10th before the
entire force was under employment.
The average force on the grading was 3300 teams and about 8000
men. Upon the track-laving, surfacing, piling, and timber-work there
were 225 teams and about 650 men. The heaviest work was
encountered on the eastern end, so that the track was close upon
the grading up to the 10th of June. Some of the cuttings and
embankments were heavy. After the 10th of June progress upon the
grading was very rapid. From the mouth of Milk River to Great Falls
(a distance of 200 miles) grading was done at an average rate of
seven miles a day. Those who saw this army of men and teams
stretching over the prairie and casting up this continental highway
think they beheld one of the most striking achievements of
civilization.
I may mention that the track is all cast up (even where the
grading is easy) to such a height as to relieve it of drifting snow; and
to give some idea of the character of the work, it is noted that in
preparing it there were moved 9,700,000 cubic yards of earth,
15,000 cubic yards of loose rock, and 17,500 cubic yards of solid
rock, and that there were hauled ahead of the track and put in the
work to such distance as would not obstruct the track-laying (in
some instances 30 miles), 9,000,000 feet (board measure) of timber
and 390,000 lineal feet of piling.
On the 5th of August the grading of the entire line to Great Falls
was either finished or properly manned for its completion the first
day of September, and on the 10th of August it became necessary to
remove outfits to the east as they completed their work, and about
2500 teams and their quota of men were withdrawn between the
10th and 20th of August, and placed upon work elsewhere.
The record of track laid is as follows: April 2d to 30th, 30 miles;
May, 82 miles; June, 79.8 miles; July, 100.8 miles; August, 115.4
miles; September, 102.4 miles; up to October 15th to Great Falls,
34.0 miles—a total to Great Falls of 545 miles. October 10th being
Sunday, no track was laid. The track started from Great Falls
Monday, October 17th, and reached Helena on Friday, November
18th, a distance of 98 miles, making a grand total of 043 miles, and
an average rate for every working-day of three and one-quarter
miles. It will thus be seen that laying a good road was a much more
expeditious method of reaching the Great Falls of the Missouri than
that adopted by Lewis and Clarke.
Some of the details of this construction and tracklaying will
interest railroad men. On the 16th of July 7 miles and 1040 feet of
track were laid, and on the 8th of August 8 miles and 60 feet were
laid, in each instance by daylight, and by the regular gang of track-
layers, without any increase of their numbers whatever. The entire
work was done by handling the iron on low iron cars, and depositing
it on the track from the car at the front end. The method pursued
was the same as when one mile of track is laid per day in the
ordinary manner. The force of track-layers was maintained at the
proper number for the ordinary daily work, and was never increased
to obtain any special result. The result on the 11th of August was
probably decreased by a quarter to a half mile by the breaking of an
axle of an iron car while going to the front with its load at about 4
p.m. From six to eight iron cars were employed in doing this day’s
work. The number ordinarily used was four to five.
 Sidings were graded at intervals of seven to eight miles, and spur
tracks, laid on the natural surface, put in at convenient points,
sixteen miles apart, for storage of materials and supplies at or near
the front. As the work went on, the spur tracks in the rear were
taken up. The construction train contained box cars two and three
stories high, in which workmen were boarded and lodged. Supplies,
as a rule, were taken by wagon-trains from the spur tracks near the
front to their destination, an average distance of one hundred miles
and an extreme one of two hundred miles. Steamboats were
employed to a limited extent on the Missouri River in supplying such
remote points as Fort Benton and the Coal Banks, but not more than
fifteen per cent, of the transportation was done by steamers. A
single item illustrating the magnitude of the supply transportation is
that there were shipped to Minot and forwarded and consumed on
the work 590,000 bushels of oats.
It is believed that the work of grading 500 miles of railroad in five
months, and the transportation into the country of everything
consumed, grass and water excepted, and of every rail, tie, bit of
timber, pile, tool, machine, man, or team employed, and laying 643
miles of track in seven and a half months, from one end, far exceeds
in magnitude and rapidity of execution any similar undertaking in
this or any other country. It reflects also the greatest credit on the
managers of the railway transportation (it is not invidious to mention
the names of Mr. A. Manvel, general manager, and Mr. J. M. Egan,
general superintendent, upon whom the working details devolved)
when it is stated that the delays for material or supplies on the
entire work did not retard it in the aggregate one hour. And every
hour counted in this masterly campaign.
The Western people apparently think no more of throwing down a
railroad, if they want to go anywhere, than a conservative Easterner
does of taking an unaccustomed walk across country; and the
railway constructors and managers are a little amused at the Eastern
slowness and want of facility in construction and management. One
hears that the East is antiquated, and does not know anything about
railroad building. Shovels, carts, and wheelbarrows are of a past
age; the big wheel-scraper does the business. It is a common
remark that a contractor accustomed to Eastern work is not desired
on a Western job.
On Friday afternoon, November 18th, the news was flashed that
the last rail was laid, and at 6 p.m. a special train was on the way
from St. Paul with a double complement of engineers and train-men.
For the first 500 miles there was more or less delay in avoiding the
long and frequent freight trains, but after that not much except the
necessary stops for cleaning the engine. Great Falls, about 1100
miles, was reached Sunday noon, in thirty-six hours, an average of
over thirty miles an hour. A part of the time the speed was as much
as fifty miles an hour. The track was solid, evenly graded, heavily
tied, well aligned, and the cars ran over it with no more swing and
bounce than on an old road. The only exception to this is the piece
from Great Falls to Helena, which had not been surfaced all the way.
It is excellent railway construction, and it is necessary to emphasize
this when we consider the rapidity with which it was built.
The company has built this road without land grant or subsidy of
any kind. The Montana extension, from Minot, Dakota, to Great Falls,
runs mostly through Indian and military reservations, permission to
pass through being given by special Act of Congress, and the
company buying 200 feet road-way. Little of it, therefore, is open to
settlement.
These reservations, naming them in order westward, are as
follows: The Fort Berthold Indian reservation, Dakota, the eastern
boundary of which is twenty-seven miles west of Minot, has an area
of 4550 square miles (about as large as Connecticut), or 2,912,000
acres. The Fort Buford military reservation, lying in Dakota and
Montana, has an area of 900 square miles, or 576,000 acres. The
Blackfeet Indian reserve has an area of 34,000 square miles (the
State of New York has 46,000), or 21,760,000 acres. The Fort
Assiniboin military reserve has an area of 869.82 square miles, or
556,684 acres.
It is a liberal estimate that there are 6000 Indians on the Blackfeet
and Fort Berth old reservations. As nearly as I could ascertain, there
are not over 3500 Indians (some of those I saw were Créés on a
long visit from Canada) on the Blackfeet reservation of about
22,000,000 acres. Some judges put the number as low as 2500 to all
this territory, and estimate that there was about one Indian to ten
square miles, or one Indian family to fifty square miles. We rode
through 300 miles of this territory along the Milk River, nearly every
acre of it good soil, with thick, abundant grass, splendid wheat land.
I have no space to take up the Indian problem. But the present
condition of affairs is neither fair to white settlers nor just or humane
to the Indians. These big reservations are of no use to them, nor
they to the reservations. The buffaloes have disappeared; they do
not live by hunting; they cultivate very little ground; they use little
even to pasture their ponies. They are fed and clothed by the
Government, and they camp about the agencies in idleness, under
conditions that pauperize them, destroy their manhood, degrade
them into dependent, vicious lives. The reservations ought to be
sold, and the proceeds devoted to educating the Indians and setting
them up in a self-sustaining existence. They should be allotted an
abundance of good land, in the region to which they are acclimated,
in severalty, and under such restrictions that they cannot alienate it
at least for a generation or two. As the Indian is now, he will neither
work, nor keep clean, nor live decently. Close to, the Indian is not a
romantic object, and certainly no better now morally than Lewis and
Clarke depicted him in 1804. But he is a man; he has been
barbarously treated; and it is certainly not beyond honest
administration and Christian effort to better his condition. And his
condition will not be improved simply by keeping from settlement
and civilization the magnificent agricultural territory that is reserved
to him.
Of this almost unknown country, pierced by the road west from
Larimore, I can only make the briefest notes. I need not say that this
open, unobstructed highway of arable land and habitable country,
from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains, was an astonishment to
me; but it is more to the purpose to say that the fertile region was a
surprise to railway men who are perfectly familiar with the West.
 We had passed some snow in the night, which had been very cold,
but there was very little at Larimore, a considerable town; there was
a high, raw wind during the day, and a temperature of about 10°
above, which heavily frosted the car windows. At Devil’s Lake (a
body of brackish water twenty-eight miles long) is a settlement three
years old, and from this and two insignificant stations beyond were
shipped, in 1887, 1,500,000 bushels of wheat. The country beyond is
slightly rolling, fine land, has much wheat, little houses scattered
about, some stock, very promising altogether. Minot, where we
crossed the Mouse River the second time, is a village of 700 people,
with several brick houses and plenty of saloons. Thence we ran up
to a plateau some three hundred feet higher than the Mouse River
Valley, and found a land more broken, and interspersed with rocky
land and bowlders—the only touch of “bad lands” I recall on the
route. We crossed several small streams, White Earth, Sandy, Little
Muddy, and Muddy, and before reaching Williston descended into the
valley of the Missouri, reached Fort Buford, where the Yellowstone
comes in, entered what is called Paradise Valley, and continued
parallel with the Missouri as far as the mouth of Milk River. Before
reaching this we crossed the Big Muddy and the Poplar rivers, both
rising in Canada. At Poplar Station is a large Indian agency, and
hundreds of Teton Sioux Indians (I was told 1800) camped there in
their conical tepees. I climbed the plateau above the station where
the Indians bury their dead, wrapping the bodies in blankets and
buffalo-robes, and suspending them aloft on crossbars supported by
stakes, to keep them from the wolves. Beyond Assiniboin I saw a
platform in a cottonwood-tree on which reposed the remains of a
chief and his family. This country is all good, so far as I could see
and learn.
It gave me a sense of geographical deficiency in my education to
travel three hundred miles on a river I had never heard of before.
But it happened on the Milk River, a considerable but not navigable
stream, although some six hundred miles long. The broad Milk River
Valley is in itself an empire of excellent land, ready for the plough
and the wheat-sower. Judging by the grass (which cures into the
most nutritious feed as it stands), there had been no lack of rain
during the summer; but if there is lack of water, all the land can be
irrigated by the Milk River, and it may also be said of the country
beyond to Great Falls that frequent streams make irrigation easy, if
there is scant rainfall. I should say that this would be the only
question about water.
Leaving the Milk River Valley, we began to curve southward,
passing Fort Assiniboin on our right. In this region and beyond at
Fort Benton great herds of cattle are grazed by Government
contractors, who supply the posts with beef. At the Big Sandy
Station they were shipping cattle eastward. We crossed the Marias
River (originally named Maria’s River), a stream that had the
respectful attention of Lewis and Clarke, and the Teton, a wilfully
erratic watercourse in a narrow valley, which caused the railway
constructors a good deal of trouble. We looked down, in passing, on
Fort Benton, nestled in a bend of the Missouri; a smart town, with a
daily newspaper, an old trading station. Shortly after leaving
Assiniboin we saw on our left the Bear Paw Mountains and the noble
Highwood Mountains, fine peaks, snow-dusted, about thirty miles
from us, and adjoining them the Belt Mountains. Between them is a
shapely little pyramid called the Wolf Butte. Far to our right were the
Sweet Grass Hills, on the Canada line, where gold-miners are at
work. I have noted of all this country that it is agriculturally fine.
After Fort Benton we had glimpses of the Rockies, off to the right
(we had seen before the Little Rockies in the south, towards
Yellowstone Park); then the Bird-tail Divide came in sight, and the
mathematically Square Butte, sometimes called Fort Montana.
At noon, November 20th, we reached Great Falls, where the Sun
River, coming in from the west, joins the Missouri. The railway
crosses the Sun River, and runs on up the left bank of the Missouri.
Great Falls, which lies in a bend of the Missouri on the cast side, was
not then, but soon will be, connected with the line by a railway
bridge. I wish I could convey to the reader some idea of the beauty
of the view as we came out upon the Sun River Valley, or the feeling
of exhilaration and elevation we experienced. I had come to no place
before that did not seem remote, far from home, lonesome. Here
the aspect was friendly, livable, almost home-like. We seemed to
have come out, after a long journey, to a place where one might be
content to stay for some time—to a far but fair country, on top of
the world, as it were. Not that the elevation is great—only about
3000 feet above the sea—nor the horizon illimitable, as on the great
plains; its spaciousness is brought within human sympathy by
guardian hills and distant mountain ranges.
A more sweet, smiling picture than the Sun River Valley the
traveller may go far to see. With an average breadth of not over two
and a half to five miles, level, richly grassed, flanked by elevations
that swell up to plateaus, through the valley the Sun River, clear, full
to the grassy banks, comes down like a ribbon of silver, perhaps 800
feet broad before its junction. Across the far end of it, seventy-five
miles distant, but seemingly not more than twenty, run the silver
serrated peaks of the Rocky Mountains, snow-clad and sparkling in
the sun. At distances of twelve and fifty miles up the valley have
been for years prosperous settlements, with school-houses and
churches, hitherto cut off from the world.
The whole rolling, arable, though treeless country in view is
beautiful, and the far prospects are magnificent. I suppose that
something of the homelikeness of the region is due to the presence
of the great Missouri River (a connection with the world we know),
which is here a rapid, clear stream, in permanent rock-laid banks. At
the town a dam has been thrown across it, and the width above the
dam, where we crossed it, is about 1800 feet. The day was fair and
not cold, but a gale of wind from the south-west blew with such
violence that the ferry-boat was unmanageable, and we went over in
little skiffs, much tossed about by the white-capped waves.
In June, 1886, there was not a house within twelve miles of this
place. The country is now taken up and dotted with claim shanties,
and Great Falls is a town of over 1000 inhabitants, regularly laid out,
with streets indeed extending far on to the prairie, a handsome and
commodious hotel, several brick buildings, and new houses going up
in all directions. Central lots, fifty feet by two hundred and fifty, are
said to sell for $5000, and I was offered a corner lot on Tenth Street,
away out on the prairie, for $1500, including the corner stake.
It is difficult to write of this country without seeming exaggeration,
and the habitual frontier boastfulness makes the acquisition of
bottom facts difficult. It is plain to be seen that it is a good grazing
country, and the experimental fields of wheat near the town show
that it is equally well adapted to wheatraising. The vegetables grown
there are enormous and solid, especially potatoes and turnips; I
have the outline of a turnip which measured seventeen inches
across, seven inches deep, and weighed twenty-four pounds. The
region is underlaid by bituminous coal, good coking quality, and
extensive mines are opening in the neighborhood. I have no doubt
from what I saw and heard that iron of good quality (hematite) is
abundant. It goes without saying that the Montana mountains are
full of other minerals. The present advantage of Great Falls is in the
possession of unlimited water-power in the Missouri River.
As to rainfall and climate? The grass shows no lack of rain, and
the wheat was raised in 1887 without irrigation. But irrigation from
the Missouri and Sun rivers is easy, if needed. The thermometer
shows a more temperate and less rigorous climate than Minnesota
and north Dakota. Unless everybody fibs, the winters are less
severe, and stock ranges and fattens all winter. Less snow falls here
than farther east and south, and that which falls does not usually
remain long. The truth seems to be that the mercury occasionally
goes very low, but that every few days a warm Pacific wind from the
south-west, the “Chinook,” blows a gale, which instantly raises the
temperature, and sweeps off the snow in twenty-four hours. I was
told that ice rarely gets more than ten inches thick, and that
ploughing can be done as late as the 20th of December, and
recommenced from the 1st to the 15th of March. I did not stay long
enough to verify these statements. There had been a slight fall of
snow in October, which speedily disappeared. November 20th was
pleasant, with a strong Chinook wind. November 21st there was a
driving snow-storm.
 The region is attractive to the sight-seer. I can speak of only two
things, the Springs and the Falls.
There is a series of rapids and falls, for twelve miles below the
town; and the river drops down rapidly into a canyon which is in
some places nearly 200 feet deep. The first fall is twenty-six feet
high. The most beautiful is the Rainbow Fall, six miles from town.
This cataract, in a wild, deep gorge, has a width of 1400 feet, nearly
as straight across as an artificial dam, with a perpendicular plunge of
fifty feet. What makes it impressive is the immense volume of water.
Dashed upon the rocks below, it sends up clouds of spray, which the
sun tinges with prismatic colors the whole breadth of the
magnificent fall. Standing half-way down the precipice another
considerable and regular fall is seen above, while below are rapids
and falls again at the bend, and beyond, great reaches of
tumultuous river in the canon. It is altogether a wild and splendid
spectacle. Six miles below, the river takes a continuous though not
perpendicular plunge of ninety-six feet.
One of the most exquisitely beautiful natural objects I know is the
Spring, a mile above Rainbow Fall. Out of a rocky ledge, sloping up
some ten feet above the river, burst several springs of absolutely
crystal water, powerfully bubbling up like small geysers, and together
forming instantly a splendid stream, which falls into the Missouri. So
perfectly transparent is the water that the springs seem to have a
depth of only fifteen inches; they are fifteen feet deep. In them
grow flat-leaved plants of vivid green, shades from lightest to
deepest emerald, and when the sunlight strikes into their depths the
effect is exquisitely beautiful. Mingled with the emerald are maroon
colors that heighten the effect. The vigor of the outburst, the volume
of water, the transparency, the play of sunlight on the lovely colors,
give one a positively new sensation.
I have left no room to speak of the road of ninety-eight miles
through the canon of the Missouri and the canon of the Prickly-Pear
to Helena—about 1400 feet higher than Great Falls. It is a
marvellously picturesque road, following the mighty river, winding
through crags and precipices of trap-rock set on end in fantastic