IN THE FOREST.

In preceding chapters the characteristics of the country west of the Mississippi have been set forth; but many a man seeking a new home would be lonely upon the prairies. The lumberman of Maine, who was born in the forest, who in childhood listened to the sweet but mournful music of the ever-sighing pines, would be home-sick away from the grand old woods. The trees are his friends. The open country would be a solitude, but in the depths of the forest he would ever find congenial company. There the oaks, the elms, and maples reach out their arms lovingly above him, sheltering him alike from winter's blasts and summer's heats. Even though he may have no poetry in his soul, the woods will have a charm for him, for there he finds a harvest already grown and waiting to be gathered, as truly as if it were so many acres of ripened wheat.

It is not difficult to pick out the "Down-Easters" in Minnesota. When I hear a man talk about "stumpage" and "thousands of feet," I know that he is from the Moosehead region, or has been in a lumber camp on the Chesuncook. He has eaten pork and beans, and slept on hemlock boughs on the banks of the Madawaska. When he cocks his head on one side and squints up a pine-tree, I know that he has Blodget's Table in his brain, and can tell the exact amount of clear and merchantable lumber which the tree will yield. His paradise is in the forest, and there alone.

The region east of the Mississippi and around its head-waters is the Eden of lumbermen.

The traveller who starts from St. Paul and travels westward will find a prairie country; but if he travels eastward, or toward the northeast, he will find himself in the woods, where tall pines and spruces and oaks and maples rear their gigantic trunks. It is not all forest, for here and there we see "openings" where the sunlight falls on pleasant meadows; but speaking in general terms, the entire country east of the Mississippi, in Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, and in that portion of Michigan lying between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, is the place for the lumberman.

The soil is sandy, and the geologist will see satisfactory traces of the drift period, when a great flood of waters set southward, bringing granite bowlders, pebbles, and stones from the country lying between Hudson Bay and Lake Superior.

The forest growth affects the climate. There is more snow and rain east of the Mississippi than west of it. The temperature in winter on Lake Superior is milder than at St. Paul, but there is more moisture in the air. The climate at Duluth or Superior City during the winter does not vary much from that of Chicago. Notwithstanding the difference of latitude, the isothermal line of mean temperature for the year runs from the lower end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake Superior. Probably more snow falls in Minnesota than around Chicago, for in all forest regions in northern latitudes there is usually a heavier rain and snow fall than in open countries. The time will probably come when the rain-fall of eastern Minnesota and northern Michigan will be less than it is now. When the lumbermen have swept away the forests, the sun will dry up the moisture, there will be less rain east of the Mississippi, while the probabilities are that it will be increased westward over all the prairie region. Orchards, groves, corn-fields, wheat-fields, clover-lands,—all will appear with the advance of civilization. They will receive more moisture from the surrounding air than the prairie grasses do at the present time. Everybody knows that the hand of man is powerful enough to change climate,—to increase the rain-fall here, to diminish it there; to lower the temperature, or to raise it.

The Ohio River is dwindling in size because the forests of Ohio and Pennsylvania are disappearing. Palestine, Syria, and Greece, although they have supported dense populations, are barren to-day because the trees have been cut down. If this were an essay on the power of man over nature, instead of the writing out of a few notes on the Northwest, I might go on and give abundant data; but I allude to it incidentally in connection with the climate, which fifty years hence will not in all probability be the same that it is to-day.

Having in preceding pages taken a survey of the magnificent farming region beyond the Mississippi, it remains for us to take a look at the country between the Mississippi and Lake Superior.

Leaving our camp equipage and the horses that had borne us over the prairies, bidding good by to our many friends in Minneapolis and St. Paul, we started from the last-named city for a trip of a hundred and fifty miles through the woods. The first fifty miles was accomplished by rail, through a country partially settled. Upon the train were several ladies and gentlemen on their way to White Bear Lake, not the White Bear of the West, but a lovely sheet of water ten miles north of St. Paul. It is but a few years since Wabashaw and his dusky ancestors trolled their lines by day and speared pickerel and pike by torchlight at night upon its placid bosom, but now it is the favorite resort of picnic-parties from St. Paul. Here and there along the shores are low grass-grown monuments, raised by the Chippewas when they were a powerful nation among the Red Men.

The lake is six miles long and dotted with islands. It was a general gathering-place of the Indians, as it is now of the people of the surrounding country. Its curving shores and pebbly beaches, bordered by a magnificent forest, present a charming and peaceful picture.

We are accompanied on our trip by the President of the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, and other gentlemen connected with the railroads of the Northwest. At Wyoming we leave our friends, bid good by to the locomotive, and say how do you do to a bright new mud-wagon! It is set on thorough-braces, with a canvas top. There are seats for nine inside and one with the driver outside. Carpet-bags and valises are stowed under the seats. We have no extra luggage, but are in light staging order.

We are bound for Superior and Duluth.

"You will have a sweet time getting there," is the remark of a mud-bespattered man sitting on a pile of lumber by the roadside. He has just come through on foot with a dozen men, who have thrown down the shovel to take up the sickle, or rather to follow the reaper during harvest.

What he means by our having a sweet time we do not quite comprehend.

"You will find the road baddish in spots," says another.

A German, with bushy beard and uncombed hair, barefooted, and carrying his boots in his hands, exclaims, "It ish von tam tirty travel all the time!"

We understand him. With a crack of the whip we roll away, our horses on the trot, passing cleared fields, where cattle are up to their knees in clover, past wheat-fields ready for the reaper, reaching at noon our halting-place for dinner.

Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out West where there are delicious apple-pies, or anything especially nice in the pastry line, on the table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess came from Maine; at least, such has been my experience. I remember calling at a house in central Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the standard dish of the Southwest "hog and hominy," obtaining a luxurious dinner, finishing off with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands that were trained to housework on the banks of the Penobscot. Last year I found a lady from Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confident that she was from the Pine-Tree State the moment I saw her pies; for somehow the daughters of Down East have the knack of making pastry that would delight an epicure. And now in Minnesota we sit down to a substantial dinner topped off, rounded, and made complete by a piece of Maine apple-pie.

The daughters of New Hampshire and of Vermont may possibly make just as good cooks, but it has so happened that we have fallen in with housewives from Maine when our appetite was sharpened for something good.

Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who came to Minnesota from the Kennebec. He knew how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough and harrow and stump-puller have been at work, and now we look out upon wheat-fields and acres of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white clover, and hear the humming of the bees. We see at a glance the capabilities of the forest region of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as if we were to read all the works extant on soil, climatology, natural productions, etc. Here, as well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat, corn, potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully and profitably cultivated.

"I raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre last year, and I guess I shall have that this year," said the owner of the farm.

This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here without capital, or rather with capital arms and strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it is: a neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the floor, a sofa, a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls; a large barn; granary well filled,—a comfortable home with a bright future before them.

When the timber has disappeared from eastern Minnesota, the land will produce luxuriantly. The country will not be settled quite as rapidly here as west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever a wilderness. The time will come when along every stream there will be heard the buzzing of saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click and clatter of machinery. This vast area of timber will invite every kind of manufacturing, and the same elements which have contributed so largely to build up the Eastern States—the manufacturing and industrial—will here aid in building up one of the strongest communities of our future republic.

Clearings here and there, cabins by the roadside, bark wigwams which have sheltered wandering Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest, are the features of the country through which we ride this glorious afternoon, with the sunlight glimmering among the trees, till suddenly we come upon Chengwatona.

It is a small village on Snake River, with a hotel, half a dozen houses, and a saw-mill where pine logs are going up an incline from the pond at one end, and coming out in the shape of bright new lumber at the other.

The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an immense area, and looking toward the descending sun we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless, and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed of all their beauty, present an indescribable scene of desolation when contrasted with the luxuriance of the living forest through which we have passed.

With a fresh team we move on, finding mud "spots" now and then. We remember the remarks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into holes, the forward wheels going down kerchug, sending bucketsful of muddy water upward to the roof of the wagon and forward upon the horses; jounce over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering; then come upon a series of hollows through which we ride as in a jolly-boat on the waves of the sea. The wagon is ballasted by two members of Congress on the back seat, and by our rotund physician and the Vice-President of the Northern Pacific on the middle seat. The President is outside with the driver, on the lookout for breakers, while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard, stowed beneath the hatches, must take whatever comes. The members of Congress bob up and down like electric pith-balls between the negative and positive poles of a galvanic battery,—only that the positive is the prevailing force! When the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go up; and then, as they descend, the seat, by some unaccountable process, comes up, meets them half-way,—and with such a bump!

Then we who are shaking our sides with laughter on the front seat, congratulating ourselves, like the Pharisees, that we are not as they are, suddenly find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we regain our places, the M.D. and Vice-President come forward with a rush and embrace us fraternally. We get our legs so mixed up with our neighbors' that we can hardly tell whether our feet belong to ourselves or to somebody else! The light weights of the party are knocked about like shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those ridiculous, round-bottomed, grinning images that we see in the toy-shops! I find myself going up and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when tossed in a blanket.

Our dinners are well settled when we reach Grindstone,—our stopping-place for the night. The town is located on Grindstone Creek, and consists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by burnt timber.

Half a dozen men who have footed it from Duluth are nursing their sore feet in one of the three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture of the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in the centre and three rough benches against the walls, which are papered with pictorial newspapers.

The occupants are discussing the future prospects of Duluth.

"It is a right smart chance of a place," says a tall, thin-faced, long-nosed man stretched in one corner. We know by the utterance of that one sentence that he is from southern Illinois.

"They have got their i-deas pretty well up though, on real estate, for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent of the i, has shown that he too is a Western man.

An Amazon in stature, with a round red face, hurries up a supper of pork and fried eggs; and then we who are going northward, and they who are travelling southward,—sixteen of us, all told,—creep up the narrow stairway to the unfinished garret, and go to bed, with our noses close to the rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of which we look out and behold the stars marching in grand procession across the midnight sky.

It is glorious to lie there and feel the tire and weariness go out of us; to look into the "eternities of space," as Carlyle says of the vault of heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the measureless empyrean are brought down to sublunary things by four of the sleepers who engage in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck and neck, or rather nose and nose, that it is impossible to decide whether the deep sonorous—not to say snorous?—bass of the big fellow by the window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts of the thin-faced, lantern-jawed, long-nosed man from southern Illinois, is entitled to the trumpet or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to signalize such championship. Either of them would have been a power in the grand chorus of the Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be equal to the big organ!

We are off early in the morning, feeling a little sore in spots. The first thump extorts a sudden oh! from a member of Congress, but we are philosophic, and accommodate ourselves to circumstances, tell stories between the bumpings, and make the grand old forest ring with our laughter. It is glorious to get away from the town, and out into the woods, where you can shout and sing and let yourself out without regard to what folks will say! The fountain of perennial youth is in the forest,—never in the city. Its healing, beautifying, and restoring waters do not run through aqueducts; they are never pumped up; but you must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old trees and drink from the crystal stream to obtain them.

We quench our thirst from gurgling brooks, pick berries by the roadside, walk ahead of the lumbering stage, and enjoy the solitude of the interminable forest.

Eighteen miles of travel brings us to Kettle River Crossing, where we sit down to a dinner of blackberries and milk, bread and butter, and blackberry-pie, in a clean little cottage, with pictures on the walls, books on a shelf, a snow-white cloth on the table, and a trim little woman waiting upon us.

"May I ask where you are from?"

"Manchester, New Hampshire."

It was Lord Morpeth or the Duke of Argyle, I have forgotten which, who said that New England looked as if it had just been taken out of a bandbox; so with this one-storied log-house and everything around it. We had sour-krout at Grindstone, but have blackberries here; and that is just the difference between Dutchland and New England, whether you seek for them on the Atlantic slope or in the heart of the continent.

Space is wanting to tell of all the incidents of a three days' forest ride,—how we trolled for pickerel on a little lake, seated in a birch-bark canoe, and hauled them in hand over hand,—bouncing fellows that furnished us a delicious breakfast; how we laughed and told stories, never minding the bumping and thumping of the wagon, and came out strong, like Mark Tapley, every one of us; how we gazed upon the towering pines and sturdy oaks, and beheld the gloom settling over nature when the great eclipse occurred; and how, just as night was coming on, we entered Superior, and saw a horned owl sitting on the ridge-pole of a deserted house in the outskirts of the town, surveying the desolate scene in the twilight,—looking out upon the cemetery, the tenantless houses, and the blinking lights in the windows.

Superior has been, and still is, a city of the Future, rather than of the Present. It was laid out before the war on a magnificent scale by a party of Southerners, among whom was John C.Breckenridge, who is still a large owner in corner lots.

It has a fine situation at the southwestern corner of the lake, on a broad, level plateau, with a densely timbered country behind it. The St. Louis River, which rises in northern Minnesota, and which comes tumbling over a series of cascades formed by the high land between Lake Superior and the Mississippi, spreads itself out into a shallow bay in front of the town, and reaches the lake over a sand-bar.

Government has been erecting breakwaters to control the current of the river, with the expectation of deepening the channel, which has about nine feet of water; but thus far the improvements have not accomplished the desired end. The bar is a great impediment to navigation, and its existence has had a blighting effect on the once fair prospects of Superior City. Dredges are employed to deepen the channel, but those thus far used are small, and not much has been accomplished. The citizens of Superior are confident that with a liberal appropriation from government the channel can be deepened, and that, when once cleared out, it can be kept clear at a small expense.

Superior has suffered severely from the reaction which followed the flush times in 1857. A large amount of money was expended in improvements,—grading streets, opening roads, building piers, and erecting houses. Then the war came on, and all industry was paralyzed. The Southern proprietors were in rebellion. The growth of the place, which had been considerable, came to a sudden stand-still.

The situation of the town, while it is fortunate in some respects, is unfortunate in others. It is in Wisconsin, while the point which reaches across the head of the lake is in Minnesota. The last-named State wanted a port on the lake in its own dominion, and so Duluth has sprung into existence as the rival of its older neighbor.

The St. Paul and Superior Railroad, having its terminus at Duluth, lies wholly within the State of Minnesota, and comes just near enough to Superior to tantalize and vex the good people of that place.

But the citizens of that town have good pluck. I do not know what motto they have adopted for their great corporate seal, but Nil Desperandum would best set forth their hopefulness and determination. They are confident that Superior is yet to be the queen city of the lake, and are determined to have railway communication with the Mississippi by building a branch line to the St. Paul and Superior Road.

Our party is kindly and hospitably entertained by the people of the place, and to those who think of the town as being so far northwest that it is beyond civilization, I have only to say that there are few drawing-rooms in the East where more agreeable company can be found than that which we find in one of the parlors of Superior; few places where the sonatas of Beethoven and Mendelssohn can be more exquisitely rendered upon the pianoforte, by a lady who bakes her own bread and cares for her family without the aid of a servant.

It is the glory of our civilization that it adapts itself to all the circumstances of life. I have no doubt that if Minnie, or Winnie, or Georgiana, or almost any of the pale, attenuated young ladies who are now frittering away their time in studying the last style of paniers, or thrumming the piano, or reading the last vapid novel, were to have their lot cast in the West,—on the frontiers of civilization,—where they would be compelled to do something for themselves or those around them, that they would manfully and womanfully accept the situation, be far happier than they now are, and worth more to themselves and to the world.

I dare say that nine out of every ten young men selling dry-goods in retail stores in Boston and elsewhere have high hopes for the future. They are going to do something by and by. When they get on a little farther they will show us what they can accomplish. But the chances are that they will never get that little farther on. The tide is against them. One thing we are liable to forget; we measure ourselves by what we are going to do, whereas the world estimates us by what we have already done. How any young man of spirit can settle himself down to earning a bare existence, when all this vast region of the Northwest, with its boundless undeveloped resources before him, is inviting him on, is one of the unexplained mysteries of life. They will be Nobodies where they are; they can be Somebodies in building up a new society. The young man who has measured off ribbon several years, as thousands have who are doing no better to-day than they did five years ago, in all probability will be no farther along, except in years, five years hence than he is now.