Charles Carleton Coffin

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE.

Our halting-place at noon furnishes a pleasing subject for a comic artist. Behold us beneath the shade of old oaks, our horses cropping the rank grass, a fire kindled against the trunk of a tree that has braved the storms of centuries, each toasting a slice of salt pork.

TOASTING PORK.

Governor, members of Congress, minister, judge, doctor, teamster, correspondent,—all hands are at it. Salt pork! Does any one turn up his nose at it? Do you think it hard fare? Just come out here and try it, after a twenty-five-mile gallop on horseback, in this clear, bracing atmosphere, with twenty more miles to make before getting into camp. We slept in a tent last night; had breakfast at 5 A. M.; are camping by night and tramping by day; are bronzed by the sun; and are roughing it! The exercise of the day gives sweet sleep at night. We had a good appetite at breakfast, and now, at noon, are as hungry as bears. Salt pork is not of much account in a down-town eating-house, but out here it is epicurean fare.

Just see the Ex-Governor of the Green Mountain State standing before the fire with a long stick in his hand, having three prongs like Neptune's trident. He is doing his pork to a beautiful brown. Now he lays it between two slices of bread, and eats it as if it were a most delicious morsel,—as it is.

A dozen toasting-forks are held up to the glowing coals. A dozen slices of pork are sizzling. We are not all of us quite so scientific in our toasting as the Ex-Governor in his.

Although I have had camp-life before, and have fried flapjacks on an old iron shovel, I am subject to mishaps. There goes my pork into the ashes; never mind! I shall need less pepper. I job my trident into the slice,—flaming now, and turning to crisp,—hold it a moment before the coals, and slap it on my bread in season to save a little of the drip.

Do I hear some one exclaim, How can he eat it? Ah! you who never have had experience on the prairies don't know the pleasures of such a lunch.

Now, because we are all as jolly as we can be, because I have praised salt pork, I wouldn't have everybody rushing out here to try it, as they have rushed to the Adirondacks, fired to a high pitch of enthusiasm by the spirited descriptions of the pleasures of the wilderness by the pastor of the Boston Park Street Church. What is sweet to me may be sour to somebody else. I should not like this manner of life all the time, nor salt pork for a steady diet.

Wooded prairies, oak openings, hills and vales, watered by lakes and ponds,—such is the character of the region lying south of Otter-Tail. Over all this section the water is as pure as that gurgling from the hillsides of New Hampshire.

Minnesota is one of the best-watered States of the Union. The thousands of lakes and ponds dotting its surface are fed by never-failing springs. This one feature adds immeasurably to its value as an agricultural State. In Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska the farmer is compelled to pump water for his stock, and in those States we see windmills erected for that purpose; but here the ponds are so numerous and the springs so abundant that far less pumping will be required than in the other prairie States of the Union.

We fall in with a Dutchman, where we camp for the night, who has taken up a hundred and sixty acres under the Pre-emption Act. He has put up a log-hut, turned a few acres of the sod, and is getting ready to live. His thrifty wife has a flock of hens, which supply us with fresh eggs. This pioneer has recently come from Montana. He had a beautiful farm in the Deer Lodge Pass of the Rocky Mountains, within seven miles of the summit.

"I raised as good wheat there as I can here," he says,—"thirty bushels to the acre."

"Why did you leave it?"

"I couldn't sell anything. There is no market there. The farmers raise so much that they can hardly give their grain away."

"Did you sell your farm?"

"No, I left it. It is there for anybody to take."

"Is it cold there?"

"No colder than it is here. We have a few cold days in winter, but not much snow. Cattle live in the fields through the winter, feeding on bunch-grass, which grows tall and is very sweet."

Here was information worth having,—the experience of a farmer. The Deer Lodge Pass is at the head-waters of the Missouri, in the main divide of the Rocky Mountains, and one of the surveyed lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad passes through it. We have thought of it as a place where a railroad train would be frozen up and buried beneath descending avalanches; but here is a man who has lived within seven miles of the top of the mountains, who raised the best of wheat, the mealiest of potatoes, whose cattle lived in the pastures through the winter, but who left his farm for the sole reason that he could not sell anything. Montana has no market except among the mining population, and the miners are scattered over a vast region. A few farmers in the vicinity of a mining-camp supply the wants of the place. Farming will not be remunerative till a railroad is completed up the valley of the Yellowstone or Missouri. What stronger argument can there be, what demonstration more forcible, for the immediate construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad? It will pass through the heart of the Territory which is yielding more gold and silver than any other Territory or State.

This farmer says that Montana is destined to be a great stock-growing State. Cattle thrive on the bunch-grass. The hills are covered with it, and millions of acres that cannot be readily cultivated will furnish pasturage for flocks and herds. This testimony accords with statements made by those who have visited the Territory, as well as by others who have resided there.

We have met to-day a long train of wagons filled with emigrants, who have come from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and some from Ohio.

Look at the wagons, each drawn by four oxen,—driven either by the owner or one of his barefoot boys. Boxes, barrels, chairs, tables, pots, and pans constitute the furniture. The grandmother, white-haired, old, and wrinkled, and the wife with an infant in her arms, with three or four romping children around her, all sitting on a feather-bed beneath the white canvas covering. A tin kettle is suspended beneath the axle, in which a tow-headed urchin, covered with dust, is swinging, clapping his hands, and playing with a yellow dog trotting behind the team. A hoop-skirt, a chicken-coop, a pig in a box, are the most conspicuous objects that meet the eye as we look at the hinder part of the wagon. A barefooted boy, as bright-eyed as Whittier's ideal,—now done in chromo-lithograph, and adorning many a home,—marches behind, with his rosy-cheeked sister, driving a cow and a calf.

To-night they will be fifteen miles nearer their destination than they were in the morning. Some of the teams have been two months on the road, and a few more days will bring them to the spot which the emigrant has already selected for his future home. They halt by the roadside at night. The oxen crop the rich grasses; the cow supplies the little ones with milk; the children gather an armful of sticks, the mother makes a cake, and bakes it before the camp-fire in a tin baker such as was found in every New England home forty years ago; the emigrant smokes his pipe, rolls himself in a blanket, and snores upon the ground beneath the wagon, while his family sleep equally well beneath the canvas roof above him. Another cake in the morning, with a slice of fried pork, a drink of coffee, and they are ready for the new day.

Not only along this road, but everywhere, we may behold just such scenes. A great army of occupation is moving into the State. The advance is all along the line. Towns and villages are springing up as if by magic in every county. Every day adds thousands of acres to those already under cultivation. The fields of this year are wider than they were a year ago, and twelve months hence will be much larger than they are to-day.

In all new countries, no matter how fertile they may be, breadstuffs must be imported at the outset. It was so when California was first settled; but to-day California is sending her wheat all over the world. The first settlers of Minnesota were lumbermen, and up to 1857 there was not wheat enough produced in the State to supply their wants. The steamers ascending the Mississippi to St. Paul were loaded with flour, and the world at large somehow came to think of Minnesota as being so cold that wheat enough to supply the few lumbermen employed in the forests and on the rivers could never be raised there.

See how this region, which we all thought of as lying too near the north pole to be worth anything, has developed its resources! In 1854 the number of acres under cultivation in the State was only fifteen thousand, or about two thirds of a single township.

Fifteen years have passed by, and the tilled area is estimated at about two million acres! In 1857 she imported grain; but her yield of wheat the present year is estimated at more than twenty million bushels!

I would not make the farmers of New England discontented. I would not advise all to put up their farms at auction, or any well-to-do farmer of Massachusetts or Vermont to leave his old home and rush out here without first coming to survey the country; but if I were a young man selling corsets and hoop-skirts to simpering young ladies in a city store, I would give such a jump over the counter that my feet would touch ground in the centre of a great prairie!

I would have a homestead out here. True, there would be hard fare at first. The cabin would be of logs. There would be short commons for a year or two. But with my salt pork I would have pickerel, prairie chickens, moose, and deer. I should have calloused hands and the back-ache at times; but my sleep would be sweet. I should have no theatre to visit nightly, no star actors to see, and should miss the tramp of the great multitude of the city,—the ever-hurrying throng. The first year might be lonely; possibly, I should have the blues now and then; but, possessing my soul with patience a twelvemonth, I should have neighbors. The railroad would come. The little log-hut would give place to a mansion. Roses would bloom in the garden, and morning-glories open their blue bells by the doorway. The vast expanse would wave with golden grain. Thrift and plenty, and civilization with all its comforts and luxuries, would be mine.

Are the colors of the picture too bright? Remember that in 1849 Minnesota had less than five thousand inhabitants, and that to-day she has nearly five hundred thousand.

I am writing to young men who have the whole scope of life before them. You are a clerk in a store, with a salary of five hundred dollars, perhaps seven hundred. By stinting here and there you can just bring the year round. It is a long, long look ahead, and your brightest day-dream of the future is not very bright.

Now take a look in this direction. You can get a hundred and sixty acres of land for two hundred dollars. If you obtain it near a railroad, it will cost three hundred and twenty dollars. It will cost three dollars an acre to plough the ground and prepare it for the first crop, besides the fencing. But the first crop, ordinarily, will more than pay the entire outlay for ground, fencing, and ploughing. Five years hence the land will be worth fifteen or twenty-five dollars per acre. This is no fancy sketch. It is simply a statement as to what has been the experience of thousands of people in Minnesota.

Think of it, young men, you who are rubbing along from year to year with no great hopes for the future. Can you hold a plough? Can you drive a span of horses? Can you accept for a while the solitude of nature, and have a few hard knocks for a year or two? Can you lay aside paper collars and kid gloves, and wear a blue blouse and blister your hands with work? Can you possess your soul in patience, and hold on your way with a firm purpose? If you can, there is a beautiful home for you out here. Prosperity, freedom, independence, manhood in its highest sense, peace of mind, and all the comforts and luxuries of life, are awaiting you.

There is no medicine for a wearied mind or jaded body equal to life on the prairies. When our party left the East, every member of it was worn down by hard work. Some of us were dyspeptic, some nervous, while others had tired brains. It is the misfortune of Americans to be ever working as if they were in the iron-mills, or as if the Philistines had them in the prison-house!

We have been a few weeks upon the frontier,—been beyond the reach of the daily newspaper, beyond care and trouble. The world has got on without us, and now we are on our way back, changed beings. We are as good as new,—tough, rugged, hale, hearty, and ready for a frolic here, or another battle with life when we reach home.

Behold us at our halting-place for the night; a clear stream near by winding through pleasant meadows, bordered by oaks and maples. The horses are unharnessed, and are rolling in the tall grass after their long day's work. The teamsters are pitching the tents, the cook is busy with his pots and kettles. Already we inhale the aroma steaming from the nose of the coffee-pot. The pork and fish and plover over the fire, like a missionary or colporteur or Sunday-school teacher, are doing good! What odor more refreshing than that exhaled from a coffee-pot steaming over a camp-fire, after twelve hours in the saddle,—the fresh breeze fanning your cheeks, and every sense intensified by beholding the far-reaching fields blooming with flowers or waving with ripening grain?

The shadows of night are falling, and though the sun has shone through a cloudless sky the evening air is chilly. We will warm it by kindling a grand bivouac-fire, where, after supper, we will sit in solemn council, or crack jokes, or tell stories, as the whim of the hour shall lead us.

There was a time when the gray-beards of our party were youngsters and played "horse" with a wooden bit between the teeth, the reins handled by a white-haired schoolmate. How we trotted, cantered, reared, pranced, backed, and then rushed furiously on, making the little old hand-cart rattle over the stones! It was long ago, but we have not forgotten it, and to-night we will be boys once more.

Yonder by the roadside lies a fallen oak, a monarch of the forest, broken down by the wind,—by the same tempest that levelled our tents. It shall blaze to-night. We will sit in its cheerful light. It would be ignoble to hack it to pieces and bring it into camp an armful at a time; we will drag it bodily, lop off the limbs and pile them high upon the trunk, touch a match to the withered leaves, and warm the chilly air.

"All hands to the harness!" It is a royal team. How could it be otherwise with the Ex-Governor of the Green Mountain State for leader, matched with our Judge, who, for sixteen years, honored the judiciary of Maine, with three members of Congress past and present, a doctor of divinity and another of medicine,—all in harness? We have a strong cart-rope of the best Manilla hemp, which has served us many a turn in pulling our wagons through the sloughs, and which is brought once more into service. A few strokes of the axe provide us with levers which serve for yokes. We pair off, two and two, and take our places in the team.

"Are you all ready? Now for it!" It is the voice of our leader.

"Gee up! Whoa! Whoa! Hip! Hurrah! Now she goes!"

We shout and sing, and feel an ecstatic thrill running all over us, from the tips of our fingers down into our boots!

What a deal of power there is in a yell! The teamster screams to his horses; the plough-boy makes himself hoarse by shouting to his oxen; the fireman feels that he is doing good service when he goes tearing down the street yelling with all his might. He never would put out the fire if he couldn't yell. A hurrah elected General Harrison President of the United States, and it has won many a political battle-field. A hurrah starts the old oak from its bed. See the Executive as he sets his compact shoulders to the work, making the lever bend before him. Notice the tall form of the Judge bowing in the traces! If the rope does not break, the log is bound to come.

The two are good at pulling. They have shown their power by dragging one of the greatest enterprises of modern times over obstacles that would have discouraged men of weaker nerve. The public never will know of the hard work performed by them in starting the Northern Pacific Railroad,—how they have raised it from obscurity, from obloquy, notwithstanding opposition and prejudice. The time will come when the public will look upon the enterprise in its true light. When the road is opened from Lake Superior westward, when the traveller finds on every hand a country of surpassing richness, a climate in the Northwest as mild as that of Pennsylvania, when he sees the numberless attractions and exhaustless resources of the land, then, and not till then, will the labors of Governor Smith and his associates in carrying on this work be appreciated.

To-night they enter with all the zest of youth into the project of building a camp-fire, and tug at the rope with the enthusiasm of boyhood.

It is a strong team. Our doctor of divinity, whether in the pulpit or on the prairie, pulls with "a forty parson power," to use Byron's simile. And our M.D., whether he has hold of a gnarled oak or the stump of a molar in the mouth of a pretty young lady, is certain to master it.

A member of Congress "made believe pull," as we used to say in our boyhood, but complacently smoked his pipe the while; the correspondent tipped a wink at the smoker, seized hold of a lever, shouted and yelled as if laying out all his strength, and pulled—about two pounds! But we dragged it in amid the hurrahs of the teamsters, wiped the sweat from our brows, and then through the evening sat round the blazing log, and made the air ring with our merry laughter. So we rubbed out the growing wrinkles, smoothed the lines of care, and turned back the shadow creeping up the dial.