From Pennsylvania Hills to Minnesota Prairies

DURING the midsummer heats of last July I received the following breezy communication from certain of my recent carpet-bagging acquaintances in Pennsylvania: —

“ We are about making an excursion through the region tributary to the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, now constructing between St. Paul and Duluth. Our party will consist of some thirty-five ladies and gentlemen, and we shall run through from Philadelphia to St. Paul in special cars. We shall spend several days in visiting the Falls of St. Anthony, and of Minnehaha, and other interesting places in that vicinity ; make two or three extensive trips out into the valleys of Minnesota ; make an overland journey of one hundred miles in wagons through the woods to Lake Superior ; spend a few days at and about Duluth, that future Chicago of the Northwest” (which I had never heard of before) ; “then, taking a Lake steamer, return home by way of the copper and iron districts of the south shore.” Then came the interesting point of the letter, — would I accompany the party?

Such an invitation, at such a season, was not to be slighted ; and accordingly I found myself once more in Pennsylvania with my carpet-bag, on the morning of Monday, August 2d, walking to and fro on the platform of the West Philadelphia Depot, waiting for the said “ special cars ” to start.

The party of “ thirty-five ladies and gentlemen ” were fast arriving in carriages, together with many who were to accompany us only a part of the way. The weather was cloudy and cool; and I noticed a certain freshness and animation in every face. We seemed to be setting out on a grand picnic excursion. Along with the baggage imposing boxes of refreshments were going into one of the cars.

“Who is Médoc ?” some one inquires : “ he seems to have more baggage than anybody else ! ” “It will grow less and less if he travels with us ! ” is the reply. Other equally suggestive remarks ensue concerning the said Médoc, — that he is a gentleman who often sets out on a journey, but seldom returns ; that we shall meet him at dinner, though he never dines ; that he never drinks, either, yet is often drunk.

Two colored attendants are industriously loading up the boxes belonging to this paradoxical personage. One of them, called John, — a short and jaunty “boy,” with a shining face, and a mouth that seems made for holding cigars by the smaller end, — deserves particular mention. His tastes are expensive and aristocratic. He discharged his last employer for the good and sufficient reason that he (John) was n’t “brought up to living in a family that used plated silver.” He had given his previous employer, a hotel-keeper, notice to quit, because it was n’t his (John’s) “station” to wait at a public table. So much he said of the last places where he had lived, when he came to engage himself to our party.

“ What is your station ? ” L—asked. “ I am a gentlemen’s private waiter, sir,” said John, with modest self-satisfaction ; “ and I know all about these yer excursions.”

“ Then you are the man we want. Now, John, with your experienced eye, look over our stores, and see what else is needed for the journey.”

The experienced eve dived into the store-room, and presently came out again, shining. “ I don't see no tin cups, sir.”

“ What do you want of tin cups, John?”

John made a solemn motion as of pouring an invisible liquor into one half-closed hand from the other raised high above it, and said sententiously, “ Mixing drinks, sir.”

The tin cups (without which he seemed to think no excursion was possible) having been carefully selected and purchased by himself, John made another quite astounding discovery. There were no straws provided ! His notion with regard to the indispensableness of straws having been indulged, he settled down into a contented state, like one who, his whole duty done, awaits with calm trust the dispensations of fortune. In this frame of mind he continued, congratulating himself, no doubt, on his forethought, and firmly believing that, with tin cups and straws, all the necessaries of life for a four weeks’ journey were laid in ; when, almost at the last moment, he came rushing to L—with a look of consternation. Still one thing had been neglected, — a lemon-squeezer!

Not our cars only, but our train, too, that day was to be special ; such is the splendid courtesy of railroad kings to each other. We were to travel under the auspices of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad Company, composed chiefly of Eastern capitalists ; men whom, as I afterwards found, all the railroad officials on our route, from Philadelphia to St. Paul, delighted to honor. The train was composed of our own two cars (loaned for the excursion by the Pennsylvania Railroad), and a third, appropriated to the use of Professor Morton’s party, sent out by the government to make observations and take photographs of the sun, in the path of the forthcoming total eclipse.

Ten minutes in advance of the regular train we were all on board, and running out swiftly among the picturesque hills and valleys that border the Pennsylvania Road. We spent the morning in making acquaintances (many of our party meeting then for the first time), and in enjoying our novel and luxurious mode of travelling. Our cars were furnished with sofas and easychairs and centre-tables, and a broad rear platform, safely railed in, forming a sort of piazza to our flying abode, and affording charming views of the country. Almost before we were aware we had run through the rich agricultural counties of Chester and Lancaster, and struck the banks of the Susquehanna at Columbia ; we then ran up to Baldwin, a suburb of Harrisburg, where our first halt was made, and where, as we were then an hour ahead of the regular train, it was proposed to spend the time we had gained in visiting the Pennsylvania Steel Works.

Our entire party thronged the building, some passing directly to the floor of the casting-house, while others mounted the high platform of the cupola furnaces, to see the beginning of the famous “ Bessemer process,” used in the manufacture of steel at this establishment. For me, who knew nothing of steel-making except by the old-fashioned, roundabout methods, this new “short-cut,” as it is fitly termed, possessed a surprising interest. Laborers were casting into one of the furnaces barrow-loads of coal and pig, each fragment of which had been carefully examined, — for not every quality of iron and anthracite can be used in this process. The molten metal was run off into a huge bucket, weighed (for precision as to proportions is also necessary), and finally poured like some terrible, fiery beverage, a soup of liquid iron, into the Stomach of a monster with an egg-shaped body, and a short, curved, open neck, resembling some gigantic plucked and decapitated bird. In place of wings a pair of stout iron trunnions projected from its sides. Upon these it was so hung that it could be set upright or turned down on its belly. It was down, receiving its pottage, when we first saw it. Presently it was fullfed,— five tons of molten iron having been complacently swallowed. Then, moved by an invisible power, the creature, slowly turning on its wings, sat, or rather hung, upright. “ Now they are going to blow,” said our guide.

In the casting-room below, immediately beneath the monster, was a semicircular pit, round the side of which was ranged a row of smaller iron vessels, reminding me of Ali Baba’s oiljars, each capable of containing a bandit. Or, if we regard the large bird as a goose, these may be called goslings. They were all sitting on the bottom of the pit, with expectant mouths in the air, waiting to be fed. But the mother’s food was to undergo a remarkable change before it could become fit nutriment for them. Iron ore, besides containing silicium, sulphur, and other earthy impurities, is combined with a large proportion of oxygen. The smelting-furnace burns out the oxygen, and removes a portion of the impurities, but only to replace them with another interloper, — carbon, absorbed from the coal. Cast-iron contains from four to five per centum of carbon ; steel, only about one quarter as much, or even less, according to its quality. To refine the crude cast-iron, eliminating the excess of carbon, and yet retaining enough to make steel,—or to reduce it first to wrought-iron (or iron containing no carbon), and then to add the proportion required for the tougher and harder metal,—seems simple enough ; yet the various processes by which civilized men, from the time of Tubal Cain, have aimed to produce this result, have hitherto been slow, laborious, and expensive. Bessemer’s method of doing this very thing on a simple and grand scale was what we were now to witness.

The moment the monster was turned upright he began to roar terribly, and to spout flame in a dazzling volcanic jet, which even by daylight cast its glare upon the upturned faces of the spectators grouped about the floor of the casting-house. As we had seen only molten metal enter the “converter,” — so the huge iron bird is called, — the appearance of such furious combustion was not a little astonishing.

“ In the bottom of the converter,” said our guide, shouting to make himself heard above the roar, “ there are tuyères which admit a cold blast of sufficient force to blow the molten iron all into spray. This brings the oxygen of the air into contact with every minute drop of the metal, and what took place in the smelting-furnace is reversed; there the carbon helped to burn out the oxygen of the ore, now the oxygen comes to burn out the carbon.”

“ But what,” we shouted back, “prevents the oxygen from playing the same trick the carbon played before?”

“That is just what it will do if the blast is continued too long, — the iron will oxidize again. But the oxygen has a stronger affinity for the carbon and other impurities than it has for the iron, and does n’t begin on that till those are burned out.”

“ I see : you shut off the blast at a moment when just enough carbon remains to make steel.”

“Not exactly; though that is what Bessemer spent a great deal of time and money trying to do. But he found it impossible always to determine the time when the blast should be stopped, and often too much or too little carbon left in would spoil the product. So he changed his tactics. You will notice that we first burn out all the carbon ; that is done in about fifteen minutes. You see that man in green glasses, on the little platform over in the corner, watching the flame from the converter ? The instant he sees it lose its dazzling colors and become pale, and decrease, he knows the last of the carbon is burning, and the blast is shut off.”

Meanwhile it seemed very wonderful that molten metal should contain fuel enough to make so furious a fire; nor was our astonishment diminished when we were told that the cold-air blast actually raised the temperature of the mass from 3,000° to 5,000° Fahrenheit during the brief process.

The blast shut off, the converter was turned down on its belly again, in order to prevent the metal from running into the tuyères, now that the pressure was removed. “ The iron,” said our guide, “is left by the blast decarbonized, and in a slight degree reoxidized. It also contains a little sulphur, after all its doctoring. Now we add a certain quantity of pig-iron of a peculiar quality,— either Franklinite or Spiegeleisen will do, — containing a known percentum of carbon and manganese.” The dose was poured into the monster’s throat, and a violent commotion in his stomach ensued, accompanied by a copious outpouring of smoke and flame. After a minute or two all was quiet. The new ingredients had burned out the oxygen and sulphur from the mass, — just enough of the freshly introduced carbon remaining unconsumed to take up its permanent lodging in the metal and make steel.

The contents of the converter were now poured into a huge ladle swung up under it by the long arm of a crane worked by invisible power, and afterwards discharged into the open mouths of the smaller monsters in the pit. These were, of course, merely moulds ; and into each was cast an ingot of steel weighing some six hundred pounds. The metal was discharged from the bottom of the ladle, and thus kept separate from the slag, which floated on its surface and was retained until the last. In twenty-five minutes from the time we entered the building we had seen five tons of pig-iron “ converted,” and cast into six-hundred-pound ingots of steel.

Having given one glance at Bessemer’s method of lining his ladles and converters, to enable them to resist the intense heat of the charge, and another at the hydraulic machinery by means of which a lad on the little platform in the corner could rotate the converter, and lift ladles and ingots, doing the work of fifty men, we passed on to the rolling-mill, where each ingot is heated and hammered (the enormous steamhammer coming down upon it with a resounding thump), then reheated, and rolled out into a rail, to be sawed off red-hot at the right length (twenty-five feet) by a pair of shrill circular saws that do their work neatly and swiftly, as if the steel were soft pine, and the pyrotechnic spark-showers thrown out mere sawdust. Lastly we saw the strength of a rail tested under repeated blows from a V-shaped ton-weight of iron dropped upon it from a height of eighteen feet; and came away inspired with high respect for Bessemer, both as an inventor and a public benefactor.¹

At a signal from the locomotive whistle we returned to the train, and found that a feat of magic had been performed in our absence. Tables had been set in the cars, and a banquet spread. By the time we were seated the train was once more in motion ; and never did panorama of lovelier scenery move before the delighted eyes of banqueters. While we sat leisurely enjoying our chicken and champagne and ice-cream, the green islands and solemnfronted bluffs of the shallow-flowing

Susquehanna gave place to the valley of the Juniata, checkered with farms, and these again disappeared before the precipitous crags which confine the river within that scene of fearful spring freshets, the Narrows.

We were entering the pillared vestibule of the blue-green Alleghanies. All this portion of Pennsylvania appears a vast amphitheatre of grand and beautiful hills. Higher and higher still they rise, blue chain beyond blue chain, with charming valleys between. We ascended continually, winding along their bases, keeping the natural grade of the streams, and shifting often from bank to bank, as the broken crags, crowding the railroad-track from one side, receded as if to make room for it on the other.

From Altoona, our destined stopping-place for the night, we ran up as far as Cresson, to view the mountain scenery at the hour of sunset. Here, for something more than eleven miles, the railroad makes an ascent of one hundred feet to the mile, sweeping in tremendous curves about deep ravines, and winding up wild mountain-sides. It was easy to imagine that we were no longer travelling by the prosaic steam and rail of modern days, but that some fabulous winged creature was flying away with us, up and in among the purple peaks and crests. Vista after vista of valleys, and farther and still farther horizons, opened around us, the soft sunset hues on golden summits contrasting wonderfully with the cool, translucent shadows brooding on solitary slopes and deepening down, enormous, thick-wooded gorges. Occasionally a yellow farm appeared, embosomed in the shaggy immensity of surrounding wildernesses ; and here and there, amid the rugged sublimity of forest-bearing crags, a sentiment of indescribable tenderness was suggested by some lonesome little brook trickling down through their cool, rocky depths.

At Cresson, on the culminating ridge of the Alleghanies, — beyond which the streams, no longer flowing eastward, turn towards the Mississippi and the Gulf, — we lingered so long in the twilight and green solitude of that charming summer resort, that when we returned down the mountains the stars had come out in the sky, and flickering coke-fires on the dark hillsides, while banks of daisies in the shelter of railroad cord-wood flitted past us like snow-drifts.

Altoona, August 3d.— Lodged last night in the midst of a menagerie of locomotives, that kept up an incessant hissing and howling under the hotel windows. I am told that frequently fifteen hundred freight cars pass here in a single night, besides passenger trains. The place, built up by the machine-shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad, has a right, one would say, to be noisy ; but it is quiet now compared with what it was when engineers used to run out their locomotives here, and blow terrific whistles for sleepy firemen all the morning. Stringent rules having abolished that diabolical practice, real estate in the neighborhood rose at once twenty per cent in value.

Our cars are this morning attached to the regular train, a long one, which labors slowly up the steep grade of the mountain. As we creep about the immense “horseshoe curve,” we at the rear end of the train look over the chasm and see with astonishment the forward end coming back towards us, like the head of a snake. It is so near that we readily appreciate the humor of the story related of an engineer who, passing this bend once with a long train, reached across and demanded a “ light ” of the rear brakeman.

The mountain scenery is no less beautiful in the effulgence of early morning than it appeared by last evening’s sunset light; and yet how wonderfully changed ! —reminding one of the often unwelcome truth, that never anything in this world, not even the character of our nearest friend, appears to us exactly as it is, but that a large part of what we call reality is made up of just such lights and shades and mists of illusion.

This is the high, rocky rim of the great Atlantic slope, passing which we are soon aware that we have commenced the descent into the vast Mississippi Valley. Between Cresson and Pittsburg the scenery continues mountainous and grand. On a day of broken clouds like this the mountains appear spotted like leopards, with sun and shadow chasing each other along their sides. At length, far off over the tumbled hills, Pittsburg is dimly discerned, first a city of cloud with pillars and bastions, then a city of solid roofs and chimneys, of whose everascending smoke the baseless fabric is built.

Rapid railroad travelling has its disadvantages for one who would gain something more than a superficial knowledge of the scenes through which he is passing. Yet it affords compensation in the sort of bird’s-eye view it gives of large tracts of country within a brief space of time. Now we were running down the river from Pittsburg, through a land steeped in haze. Then we were crossing monotonous Northern Ohio, then the still more dreary flat prairies of Indiana, with their little groves rising here and there like green islets from a green sea, — all in striking contrast with hilly and picturesque Pennsylvania. Now we are approaching Chicago, at evening, watching the trains coming in from every direction, their fiery eyes glowing through the darkness of the wide, level plain. Then come the rolling prairies of Northern Illinois, and, farther on, those of Wisconsin, with their beautiful lakes and groves, where, at many a way station, our party are off, gathering wildflowers, till the engine whistle calls. Then the bluffs of the Mississippi, with their thin soil, and poor grass growing on slopes formed of the accumulation of débris from century-crumbled cliffs. Then the limitless, undulating, golden grain-fields of Iowa and Minnesota, over which great reaping-machines are seen slowly moving, with large, revolving arms, perhaps miles away. All which, passing before one’s eyes with panoramic effect, cannot but suggest new and enlarged ideas of the States, and of their wonderful diversity of surface.

Our two Pennsylvania cars go through with us, crossing the unbridged Mississippi on a flat-boat at Prairie du Chien ; and it is always with a grateful homefeeling that we get back into them, after passing a night in the strange rooms of a crowded hotel. We are sure to find our things as we left them, and to be welcomed by the shining faces of John, mixer of drinks, and his companion, who have kept faithful guard. Peering platform loungers marvel at us ; and more than once, with our extraordinary cars, and strange - looking traps inside, we are taken for some travelling showman’s troupe, and asked where we are going to perform.

On the evening of the fifth day (twelve hundred and sixty miles from Philadelphia), we strike the Mississippi once more, and run down, in the twilight, under white sandstone bluffs, to the depot opposite St. Paul. Here we are received by a procession of carriages, and taken over the lofty bridge, — the farthest span of which, on the side of the city, is ninety feet above the river, — and up the long streets that rise higher and higher on the swelling summit of the bluff, to be landed at last at our hotel, overlooking the town.

St. Paul, 7th. — To-day the business men of our party make an excursion up the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, to examine the track as far as it has been completed. The ladies, and we who are not railroad men, remain behind to make acquaintance with St. Paul.

For me it is a renewal of acquaintance. Sixteen years ago, on much such a sunny, beautiful morning as this, I landed from a steamboat at the “ levee ” under the bluff, climbed the steep road winding to the summit, and saw the rough cub of a town, then in its uncouth infancy. It had at that time a growth of five or six years, and numbered, I think, some three thousand inhabitants. It has now twenty thousand. I well remember its romantic situation, on the irregular terraces of the bluff, rising high above the river, with their background of still higher hills beyond ; but the lighted streets through which we rode last evening were quite new to me, and I have to rub my eyes a little this morning to reconcile what I recall of the past with what I behold of the present.

Superbly perched as it is upon these commanding heights, the town is not by any means well laid out. indeed, it seems never to have been laid out at all, with any view to the formation of a city befitting its important situation, but rather to have laid itself out as chance or the necessity of its growth directed. A great mistake has been made in not reserving tire sightly front of tlve bluff for a public promenade, like that which renders the view of Natchez so imposing and delightful. Many of the little old wooden tenements of the first settlers remain squatted among the fine blocks and residences of the prosperous new city, giving it an ugly look of incongruity. But this is a blemish which time will rapidly efface.

The day is fine, and the weather exhilarating, as I believe this Minnesota air always is to strangers. One feels like leaping and shouting, as he fills with delicious draughts his tingling lungs on these breezy hills. The people brag constantly of their climate, and not without reason. Almost every fifth man one meets has the same old story to tell, — how he or his wife or his daughter was dying of consumption in the East, having been, given up by the doctors, when, as a last resort, a journey to Minnesota was undertaken, and “ You see the result, sir ! ” striking his breast, or showing his daughters ruddy cheeks. The man with only one lung, or even with half a lung,—but that healed, and as good as a pair in Massachusetts, — is a very common phenomenon.

The winters here are a theme of especial eulogy. Although they freeze your feeble mercury, and only spiritthermometers can be safely used, their intense cold seems to differ not only in degree, but also in kind, from the cold weather with which we poor shivering mortals in the East are so well acquainted. “ I seldom think of wearing an overcoat here, even with the thermometer twenty or thirty degrees below zero,” says Mr. D—, a respectable hardware merchant; “but when I am in Pittsburg, where I go every winter to buy goods, I can’t put on clothing enough, but am always trying to get near a fire.” Is it then the moisture of the atmosphere penetrating to the skin, and conducting the caloric away from it, that gives us the sense of cold to which those in a dry air of a much lower temperature are so blissfully insensible ?

The deadly cold of the winter nights, however, is felt within doors, when the wood-fires burn out, and everything freezes above the cellars.

Even more bountifully than most new and thriving Western towns, St. Paul blossoms with children, — nearly every house showing its full bouquet of rosy faces. It is the young and enterprising who emigrate ; and the climate that gives health to the parents goes far to insure the life of the offspring.

One remarks a large foreign element in the population, three fifths of which, I am told, are German, Scandinavian, Irish, and French. The town is also a favorite summer resort of wealthy Southerners, who find it convenient to bring their families, household goods, and equipages up the river to their country residences here, on these airy bluffs.

Well-built blocks of stone, on the principal streets, attest the solid business prosperity of the place. Twenty years ago its entire annual trade scarcely exceeded one hundred thousand dollars; ten years ago it amounted to some four millions ; last year a single dry-goods house did a business of two millions. Within the coming year the new Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad will be completed between St. Paul and Duluth, bringing the head of steamboat navigation, on the river some three hundred, miles nearer to New York, by railroad and water communication, than it is at present by the way of Chicago and the Lakes, a result which cannot but give an extraordinary impulse to trade at this place.

There are not many points of local interest about St. Paul, but the people take a just pride in showing Summit Avenue, with its charming residences on an oak-wooded bluff; Lake Como, a very pretty sheet of water, yet hardly beautiful enough for the comparison which it challenges by its imported name ; Dayton’s Bluff, below the town, with its Indian mounds, and enchanting views of the far-gleaming river; and Carver’s Cave, which is, however, no longer the wonderfully romantic object which adventurous old John Carver described,— being closed by the ruins of its own fallen roof and walls.

Much of the land about St. Paul is held by “ non-residents,” whose negligent ownership bars improvement, and gives to the outskirts a singularly barren and lonely aspect, especially at the close of the day, when the night shuts down on a wide expanse of unfenced cow-pastures and bush-prairies, sparsely tufted with scrub-oaks and hazels.

In riding over these tracts I was interested to note how speedily and effectually the grasses and weeds of civilization exterminate, in the path of man, without any conscious aid from him, the wild grasses of the prairies and their whole tribe of sister plants. Wherever his cow-bells tinkle and colts whinny, there the coarse native sod spontaneously gives place to the fine, close turf of red-top and while clover. Civilization is finer and stronger than savagery; and as the white man displaces, not simply by the power of his own selfish will, but by an inexorable law of nature, the weaker, undeveloped red man, so his vast family of mute and animate things accompanies him, sweeping the prairies of whatever is unable to compete with them in the struggle for existence.” The Indian, with a touch of poetry and pathos in the word, calls the broad leaf of the plantain “ white man’s foot ” ; and wherever it appears there the print of his moccasin is fated soon to vanish.

The eclipse comes upon us duly today, according to appointment, and revives the good old fashion, which Mother Earth herself has.the good sense to follow, holding before her face the smoked glass of a hazy sky all the quiet, expectant, ghostly afternoon.

Sunday, 8th. — Church-bells are ringing all over the city, and throngs of well-dressed, serious citizens are pouring into open porches, and organs are booming within, and choirs singing, all in notable contrast with the scenes of sixteen years ago, when, as I remember, dog-fighting and kindred amusements were favorite Sunday pastimes with the ruder class of settlers, and St. Paul seemed somewhat less to merit its apostolic name.

Monday Morning. — An invitation from the officers of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad to make an excursion over their road : and from the city authorities of Minneapolis to pay their town a visit on the way. At the depot, near the steamboat-landing under the bluff, we meet a number of prominent citizens of St. Paul, who are to accompany us ; and we are soon speeding away over “the oldest railroad track in the State,” as our friends inform us. We are curious to know how old that may be. “ Seven years ; in sixty-two, the first iron rail was laid in Minnesota ; and we have now over eight hundred miles of railroads.”

The railroad runs ten miles westward, to St. Anthony, where it sends off a branch up the east bank of the river, while the main line crosses over to Minneapolis, sweeping thence, in a broad curve trending towards the northwest, over the magnificent tract of forest-bordered prairie country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River of the North. We keep the main line, glide over the railroad-bridge above the Falls, and find on the other side a delegation of Minneapolitans, with a string of carriages waiting to receive us. We are shown the town and the wonders of the Falls. Ah, how everything has changed since my last visit! Then St. Anthony was a village consisting of a few shops and houses and saw-mills, and several acres of logs in the river; and Minneapolis was not. Now St. Anthony has five thousand inhabitants, and Minneapolis, grown up entirely since then, eleven thousand. A suspension-bridge connects the two ; and church-spires, and high-roofed hotels, and lofty grain-elevators, and one more notable building than all, that of the State University, on the heights of St. Anthony, overlook the Falls.

These have changed no less than the aspect of the shores above. Then the Mississippi poured its waters over a rocky rim some sixteen or eighteen feet high ; while the stream below was islanded, as I well remember, by immense fragments, enormous careened blocks, of the broken limestone stratum which forms the upper bed of the river. This stratum, fourteen feet in thickness, rests upon a treacherous foundation of the same soft white sandstone whose pallid walls uplift the bluffs lower clown. The action of the recoiling current is continually cutting out the foundation, and the superincumbent limestone, thus undermined, is left projecting until, breaking away by its own weight, it launches huge masses down the Falls. An immense horseshoe has been formed, which is now filled with fragments of the broken limestone, and with derricks and timbers ; for the Minneapolitans, seeing how fast the source of their prosperity is moving away from them up the stream, have set to work in earnest, constructing a costly protective apron across the face of the Falls. To facilitate this work, a powerful temporary side dam has been built, which carries away the water in rushing, foaming rapids, with tempestuous roar and vapor, down its tremendous sluice, leaving dry the verge of the natural fall, with only a little stream here and there trickling over the rocks.

From the farther end of a slight bridge that spans this menacing torrent some of us cross dry-shod to the island which divides the main stream from the little fall on the St. Anthony side; and go up thence to view the great dam built for the husbanding of the waters, the endless procession of logs that come floating down, and the gang ot men, armed with pike-poles, assorting them as they arrive at the separating-booms, and sending them, each according to its mark of ownership, down their appropriate channels, to the mills below.

The river falls seventy feet in the course of a mile, affording water-power sufficient (well-informed persons assure us) “to turn all the spindles of England.” By a device said to be new in hydraulic engineering, the softness of the white sandstone, hitherto so fatal to the permanence of the perpendicular fall, has been curiously taken advantage of, and made tributary to the power it endangered. Wherever a supply of water can be had from the canals fed by the dams, there — no matter how far inland — a good mill-site is practicable. It is only necessary to sink a well or shaft through the overlying earth and limestone, communicating at the bottom with a tunnel opened up to it, in the sandstone, from the river-bank below the falls. The shaft serves as the water-wheel pit, from which the water is discharged through the tunnel. The various shafts already sunk for this purpose average about thirty-five feet in depth ; some of the tunnels are hundreds of feet in length. As the sandstone yields almost as readily as mere packed sand to the pick and spade of the workmen, and to the assaults of the recoiling river currents, I am concerned to know what may be the effect of thus pouring the river through it beneath the very foundations of the town. “ O, there is no danger; the tunnels don’t enlarge perceptibly, and there ’s no chance of the river getting the advantage of us.” I should hope not ! ²

We pay a visit to the saw-mills, and see the constant succession of logs, drawn in from above, passing through the singing and clashing teeth of saws, and coming out lumber, which is shot down long chutes into the river below, where it is made up into rafts ; — see blocks and slabs worked up by machinery into laths and staves and shingles, with a suddenness that must astonish them. Then we ride through the pleasant streets of the town, beautifully laid out on a broad plateau extending back from the river ; and return to the depot in time for the train which arrives from St. Paul with more of our party, and, as soon as we are aboard, speeds away with us west from the Mississippi.

A ride of fourteen miles over bushy oak barrens, then through a belt of timber fifty miles in breadth, — passing here and there a small farm-clearing, or “ claim shanty,” or gleaming blue lake, — and the prairie country opens before us, spotted with flowers, covered with waving wild grass and nodding tufts of plants, and stretching away, without visible farm or fence, to where its outlines meet the sky.

It is almost the first utterly untamed prairie We have seen; for here are no black squares of ploughed land checkering the distant hills, — no revolving reapers moving over golden-blue grainfields on the horizon’s verge ; but the only marks of civilization are the newlylaid railroad-track, the laborers’ shanties, and here and there a half-finished depot. The sight inspires an indescribable feeling of freshness and freedom and vastness. Then there is the native scent of the prairie, unlike any other wild odor in the world, — bringing back vividly to my memory a summer of my youth on the prairies of Illinois. For a moment I am there again ; — I pluck the gaudy flowers, I scare up the whirring grouse almost from under my feet, I tread the springing turf with the careless gladness of boyhood ;— then the mist of the gulf of years sweeps over me, and I awaken here, with an aching wonder at myself and these new strange scenes around me.

We run a few miles, to the end of the railroad, — if that can be called an end which is moving forward at the rate of a mile a day, — and witness the laying of the track. The grade is already prepared, — a simple flattened ridge of the black prairie soil thrown up from a trench on either side. Teams go forward with wagon-loads of ties which are laid across it at intervals. A hand-car follows, loaded with iron. The rails are run out in front and laid on the ties, an iron “chair” is slipped over the ends connecting them ; a touch with a measuring-rod, a few spikes driven, and the hand-car passes on, over rails which itself just carried. A little “levelling up” and straightening of the track make it ready for the engine and freight-train bringing up supplies of iron and ties, and for our own “ special,” which presently advances over a portion of road not built when we arrived a quarter of an hour before.

This is the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, to-day pushing out its feelers like some sentient crawling creature towards its present proposed terminus, Breckenridge, on the Red River of the North, still some hundred and sixty miles away. Hundreds of miles farther on the north and west extends just such a beautiful, fertile country as this before us, awaiting the plough and the seed-grain of the farmer. The entire valley of the Red River is described by those who have seen it as one of the richest and loveliest in the world,— a garden of delights. Its boundless wheat-lands are capable of supplying the granaries of Europe. Its climate is singularly mild and uniform, for it lies embosomed in the heart of the continent, where the isothermal lines make an astonishing sweep to the northward, giving even to the regions of the Assitieboine and Swan River beyond, and to the far-off valley of the Saskutchawan, the summer temperature of Pennsylvania and New York, ten degrees further south. What must be the result to America when railroads have opened to civilization these almost unknown regions of the vast Northwest!

Such thoughts came over us like the mild blowing of the prairie winds as we watch the laying of the initial track. It is a lovely day ; how fresh and sweet the air, breathing from the haunts of the bison and the elk, and wafting the odors of myriads of flowers! We scatter like school-children over the prairies, gathering bouquets, — our fair companions in their many-colored costumes showing like a larger and lovelier garland spangling the turf. Even in the midst of these romantic enjoyments, inevitable, all-compelling hunger visits us, and we are not sorry when the note of the steam-whistle summons us (Ye muses ! must I say it ?) to the dinner which the officers of the road have provided for their guests.