DULUTH.

Embarking at a pier, and steering northwest, we pass up the bay, with the long, narrow, natural breakwater, Minnesota Point, on our right hand, and the level plateau of the main-land, with a heavy forest growth, on our left. Before us, on the sloping hillside of the northern shore, lies the rapidly rising town of Duluth, unheard of twelve months ago, but now, to use a Western term, "a right smart chance of a place."

One hundred and ninety years ago Duluth, a French explorer, was coasting along these shores, and sailing up this bay over which we are gliding. He was the first European to reach the head of the lake. He crossed the country to the Upper Mississippi, descended it to St. Paul, where he met Father Hennipen, who had been held in captivity by the Indians.

It is suitable that so intrepid an explorer should be held in remembrance, and the founders of the new town have done wisely in naming it for him, instead of calling it Washington or Jackson, or adding another "ville" to the thousands now so perplexing to post-office clerks.

The new city of the Northwest is sheltered from northerly winds by the high lands behind it. The St. Louis River, a stream as large as the Merrimac, after its turbulent course down the rocky rapids, with a descent altogether of five hundred feet, flows peacefully past the town into the Bay of Superior. The river and lake together have thrown up the long and narrow strip of land called Minnesota Point, reaching nearly across the head of the lake, and behind which lies the bay. It is as if the Titans had thrown up a wide railway embankment, or had tried their hand at filling up the lake. The bay is shallow, but the men who projected the city of Duluth are in no wise daunted by that fact. They have planned to make a harbor by building a mole out into the lake fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. It is to extend from the northern shore far enough to give good anchorage and protection to vessels and steamers.

The work to be done is in many respects similar to what has been accomplished at both ends of the Suez Canal. When M.Lesseps set about the construction of that magnificent enterprise, he found no harbor on the Mediterranean side, but only a low sandy shore, against which the waves, driven by the prevailing western winds, were always breaking.

The shore was a narrow strip of sand, behind which lay a shallow lagoon called Lake Menzaleh. There was no granite or solid material of any description at hand for the construction of a breakwater. Undaunted by the difficulties, he commenced the manufacture of blocks of stone on the beach, mixing hydraulic lime brought from France with the sand of the shore, and moistening it with salt water. He erected powerful hydraulic presses and worked them by steam. After the blocks, which weighed twenty tons each, had dried three months, they were taken out on barges and tumbled into the ocean in the line of the moles, one of which was 8,178 feet, nearly a mile and a half, in length; the other 5,000 feet, enclosing an area of about five hundred acres. More than 100,000 blocks of manufactured stone were required to complete these two walls. They were not laid in cement, for it has been found that a rubble wall is better than finished masonry to resist the action of the waves. Having completed the walls, dredges were set to work, and the area has been deepened enough to enable the largest vessels navigating the Mediterranean to find safe anchorage.

These breakwaters were required for the outer harbor, but an inner basin was needed. To obtain it, M.Lesseps cut a channel through the low ridge of sand to Lake Menzaleh, where the water upon an average was four feet deep. A large area has been dredged in the lake, and docks constructed, and now the commerce of the world between the Orient and the Occident passes through the basin of Port Said.

The Suez Canal, the construction of a large harbor on the sand-beach of the Mediterranean, and another of equal capacity on the Red Sea, is one of the wonders of modern times,—a triumph of engineering skill and of the indomitable will of one energetic man.

The people of Duluth will not be under the necessity of manufacturing the material for the breakwater, for along the northern shore there is an abundant supply of granite which can be easily quarried. It is proposed to make an inner harbor by digging a canal across Minnesota Point and excavating the shallows.

The difficulties to be overcome at Duluth bear slight comparison with those already surmounted on the Mediterranean. The commercial men of Chicago contemplate the fencing in of a few hundred acres of Lake Michigan; and there is no reason to doubt that a like thing can be done at the western end of Lake Superior.

Two years ago Duluth was a forest; but in this month of May, 1870, it has two thousand inhabitants, with the prospect of doubling its population within a twelvemonth. The woodman's axe is ringing on the hills, and the trees are falling beneath his sturdy strokes. From morning till night we hear the joiner's plane and the click of the mason's trowel. You may find excellent accommodation in a large hotel, erected at a cost of forty thousand dollars. We may purchase the products of all climes in the stores,—sugar from the West Indies, coffee from Java, tea from China, or silks from the looms of France.

The printing-press is here issuing the Duluth Minnesotian, a sprightly sheet that looks sharply after the interests of this growing town.

Musical as the ripples upon the pebbly shore of the lake are the voices of the children reciting their lessons in yonder school-house. I am borne back to boyhood days,—to the old school-house, with its hard benches, where I studied, played, caught flies, was cheated swapping jack-knives, and got a licking besides! Glorious days they were for all that!

Presbyterian and Episcopal churches are already organized, also an Historical Society. During the last winter a course of lectures was sustained.

The stumps are yet to be seen in the streets, but such is the beginning of a town which may yet become one of the great commercial cities of the interior.

A meteorological record kept at Superior since 1855 shows that the average period of navigation has been two hundred and sixteen days, which is fully as long as the season at Chicago.

Steaming up the river several miles to the foot of the first rapids, and landing on the northern shore, climbing up a wet and slippery bank of red clay we are on the line of the railroad, upon which several hundred men are employed.

Grades of fifty feet to the mile are necessary from the lake up to the falls of the St. Louis, but the tonnage of the road will be largely eastward, down the grade, instead of westward.

The road will be about a hundred and forty miles in length, connecting the lake with the network of railroads centring at St. Paul. It is liberally endowed, having in all 1,630,000 acres of land heavily timbered with pine, butternut, white oak, sugar-maple, ash, and other woods.

There is no doubt that this line of road will do an immense amount of business. Such is the estimation in which it is held by the moneyed men of Philadelphia, that Mr. Jay Cooke obtained the entire amount of money necessary to construct it in four days! The bonds, I believe, were not put upon the market in the usual manner, by advertising, but were taken at once by men who wanted them for investment.

A single glance at the map must be sufficient to convince any intelligent observer of the value of such a franchise. The wheat of Minnesota, to reach Chicago now, must be taken by steamers to La Crosse or Prairie du Chien, and thence transported by rail across Wisconsin, but when this road is put in operation, the products of Minnesota, gathered at St. Paul or Minneapolis, will seek this new outlet.

Think of the scene of activity there will be along the line, not only of this road, but of the Northern Pacific, when the two are completed to the lake, of an almost continuous train of cars, of elevators pouring grain from cars to ships and steamers. Think of the fleet that will soon whiten this great inland sea, bearing the products of the immense wheat-field eastward to the Atlantic cities, and bringing back the industries of the Eastern States!

It is only when I sit down to think of the future, to measure it by the advancement already made, that I can comprehend anything of the coming greatness of the Northwest,—20,000,000 bushels of wheat this year; 500,000 inhabitants in the State, yet scarcely a hundredth part of the area under cultivation. What will be the product ten years hence, when the population will reach 1,500,000? What will it be twenty years hence? How shall we obtain any conception of the business to be done on these railways when Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Oregon, and all the vast region of the Assinniboine and the Saskatchawan, pour their products to the nearest water-carriage eastward? We are already beyond our depth, and are utterly unable to comprehend the probable development.

The men who are building this railroad from St. Paul to Duluth have not failed to recognize this one fact, that by water Duluth is as near as Chicago to the Atlantic cities. Wheat and flour can be transported as cheaply from Duluth to Buffalo or Ogdensburg as from the southern end of Lake Michigan, while the distance from St. Paul to Lake Superior is only one hundred and forty miles against four hundred and eighty to Chicago. We may conclude that the wheat of Minnesota can be carried fifteen or twenty cents a bushel cheaper by Duluth than by Lake Michigan,—a saving to the Eastern consumer of almost a dollar on each barrel of flour. Twenty cents on a bushel saved will add at least four dollars to the yearly product of an acre of land.

The difference in freight on articles manufactured in the East and shipped to Minnesota will be still more marked, for grain in bulk is taken at low rates, while manufactured goods pay first-class. The completion of this railway will be a great blessing to the people of New England and of all the East, as well as to those of the Northwest. Anything that abridges distance and cheapens carriage is so much absolute gain. I do not think that there is any public enterprise in the country that promises to produce more important results than the opening of this railway.

An elevator company has been organized by several gentlemen in Boston and Philadelphia, and the necessary buildings are now going up. The wheat will be taken directly from the cars into the elevator, and discharged into the fleet of propellers running to Cleveland, Buffalo, and Ogdensburg, already arranged for this Lake Superior trade.

The region around the western end of the Lake has resources for the development of a varied industry. The wooded section extends from Central Wisconsin westward to the Leaf Hills beyond the Mississippi, and northward to Lake Winnipeg. This is to be the lumbering region of the Northwest, for the manufacture of all agricultural implements,—reapers, mowers, harvesters, ploughs, drills, seed-sowers, wagons, carriages, carts, and furniture,—besides furnishing lumber for fencing, for railroad and building purposes.

Upon the St. Louis River there is exhaustless water-power,—a descent of five hundred feet, with a stream always pouring an abundant flood. Its source is among the lakes of northern Minnesota, which, being filled to overflowing by the rains of spring and early summer, become great reservoirs. With such a supply of water there is no locality more favorably situated for the manufacture of every variety of domestic articles. Undoubtedly the water-power will be largely employed for flouring-mills. The climate is admirably adapted to the grinding of grain. The falls being so near the lake, there will be cheap transportation eastward to Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, while westward are the prairies, easily reached by the railroads.

The geological formation on the north side of Lake Superior is granite, but as we follow up the St. Louis River we come upon a ridge of slate. It forms the backbone of the divide between the lake and the Mississippi River.

A quarry has been opened from which slates of a quality not inferior to those of Vermont are obtained, and so far as we know it is the only quarry in the Northwest. It is almost invaluable, for Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, western Minnesota, and Dakota have very little wood. Shingles are costly, but here is abundant material to cover the roofs of the millions of houses that are yet to rise upon the prairies.

This slate formation is thus referred to by Thomas Clark, State Geologist, in his Report to the Governor of Minnesota, dated December, 1864 (pp. 29, 30):—

"These slates are found in all degrees of character, from the common indurated argillaceous fissile to the highly metamorphosed and even trappous type. The working of these slates demands the attention of builders; their real value is economically of more importance to the prairie and sparsely timbered valley of the Mississippi than any other deposit in the State's possession on the lake. The annual draught of hundreds of millions of lumber upon the pine forests of the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi and tributaries will exhaust those regions before the close of this century. The trustees of our young Commonwealth are emphatically admonished to encourage and foster the working of these slates, and to bring them into use at the earliest time possible. A hundred square feet of dressed slates at the quarries of Vermont, New York, and Canada are worth from one and a half to two dollars; the weight ranges from four to six hundred pounds, or about four squares to the ton. A ton of this roofing may be transported from the St. Louis quarry to the Mississippi, by railway, at three dollars, and thence by river to the landings as far down as St. Louis or Cairo; but the article may be at all points in this State accessible by boats or railway, at an average cost of fifteen dollars per ton, or, at most, four dollars per square,—little, if any, more than pine shingles; the former as good for a century as the latter is for a decade. The supply of these cliffs is literally inexhaustible; if one fourth of this slate area in the St. Louis Valley proves available,—and doubtless one half will,—it will yield one thousand millions of tons.

"The demand for this slate at ten roofs to the square mile, and for forty thousand square miles, would be one million of tons, or one thousandth part of the material. The annual demand for slates in the Mississippi Valley may be reasonably estimated at one hundred thousand tons, an exportable product of two hundred thousand dollars, besides the element of a permanent income to the railways and water-craft of the State of a half-million of dollars annually."

To-day the country along the St. Louis is a wilderness. Climb the hills, and look upon the scene, and think of the coming years.

Here, through the bygone centuries, the Indians have set their nets and hooks without ever dreaming of laying their hands upon the wealth that Nature has ever in store for those who will labor for it.

A few of the original lords of the forests are here, and they are the only idlers of this region. They lounge in the streets, squat in groups under the lee of buildings, and pick animated somethings from their hair!

Their chief appears in an old army coat with three stars on each shoulder, indicating that he ranks as a lieutenant-general among his people. He walks with dignity, although his old black stove-pipe hat is badly squashed. The warriors follow him, wrapped in blankets, with eagle feathers stuck into their long black hair, and are as dignified as the chief. Labor! not they. Pale-faces and squaws may work, they never. Squaw-power is their highest conception of a labor-saving machine. They have fished in the leaping torrent, but never thought of its being a giant that might be put to work for their benefit.

It is evident that a great manufacturing industry must spring up in this region. At Minneapolis, St. Cloud, and here on the St. Louis, we find the three principal water-powers of the Northwest. The town of Thompson, named in honor of one of the proprietors, Mr. Edgar A.Thompson of Philadelphia, has been laid out at the falls, and being situated on the line of the railroad, and so convenient to the lake, will probably have a rapid growth. The St. Paul and Mississippi Railroad, which winds up the northern bank of the river, crosses the stream at that point, and strikes southward through the forests to St. Paul.

The road, in addition to its grant of land, has received from the city of St. Paul $200,000 in city bonds, and this county of St. Louis at the head of the lake has given $150,000 in county bonds.

The lands of this company are generally heavily timbered,—with pine, maple, ash, oak, and other woods.

The white pines of this region are almost as magnificent as those that formerly were the glory of Maine and New Hampshire. Norway pines abound. Besides transporting the lumber from its own extensive tracts and the lands of the government adjoining, it will be the thoroughfare for an immense territory drained by the Snake, Kettle, St. Louis, and St. Croix Rivers.

The lands that bear such magnificent forest-trees are excellent for agriculture. Nowhere in the East have I ever seen ranker timothy and clover than we saw on our journey from St. Paul.

The company offers favorable terms to all settlers. Men from Maine and New Hampshire are already locating along the line, and setting up saw-mills. They were lumbermen in the East, and they prefer to follow the same business in the West, rather than to speed the plough for a living. I doubt not that the chances for making money are quite as good in the timbered region as on the prairies, for the lumber will pay for the land several times over, which, when put into grain or grass, yields enormously.