The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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but the valleys present a delightful panorama of woodland and prairie, flanked by miles of rolling hills, swelling gently from the margin of streams, and picturesquely dotted with yellow pines. The forests are almost entirely free from underwood, and with the exception of a few worthless tracts, the whole face of the country — hill and dale, woodland and plain — is covered with an abundant growth of grass, possessing nutritious qualities of the highest order. Hence its value to the colony as a grazing district is of the highest importance. Cattle and horses are found to thrive wonderfully on the 'bunch' grass, and to keep in excellent condition at all seasons. The whole area is more or less available for grazing purposes. Thus the natural pastures of the middle belt may be estimated at hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.
"Notwithstanding the elevation, the seasons exhibit no remarkable extremes of temperature; the winters, though sharp enough for all the rivers and lakes to freeze, are calm and clear, so that the cold, even when most severe, is not keenly felt. Snow seldom exceeds eighteen inches in depth, and in many valleys of moderate elevation cattle often range at large during the winter months, without requiring shelter or any food but the natural grasses.... Judging from present experience, there can be no doubt that in point of salubrity the climate of British Columbia excels that of Great Britain, and is indeed one of the finest in the world."
In regard to the agricultural capabilities of this mountain region, the same author remarks: —
"Here in sheltered and well-irrigated valleys, at altitudes of as much as 2,500 feet above the sea, a few farming experiments have been made, and the results have thus far been beyond measure encouraging. At farms in the San José and Beaver valleys, situated nearly 2,200 feet above the sea, and again at Fort Alexander, at an altitude of 1,450 feet, wheat has been found to produce nearly forty bushels to the acre, and other grain and vegetable crops in proportion.... It may be asserted that two thirds at least of this eastern division of the central belt may, when occasion arrives, be turned to good account either for purposes of grazing or tillage."
Probably there are no streams, bays, or inlets in the world that so abound with fish as the salt and fresh waters of the northwest Pacific. The cod and herring fisheries are equal to those of Newfoundland, while every stream descending from the mountains literally swarms with salmon.
In regard to the fisheries of British Columbia, Lieutenant Palmer says: —
"The whole of the inlets, bays, rivers, and lakes of British Columbia abound with delicious fish. The quantity of salmon that ascend the Fraser and other rivers on the coast seems incredible. They first enter Fraser and other rivers in March, and are followed in rapid succession by other varieties, which continue to arrive until the approach of winter; but the great runs occur in July, August, and September. During these months so abundant is the supply that it may be asserted without exaggeration, that some of the smaller streams can hardly be forded without stepping upon them." (Journal of the Geographical Society.)
Ah! wouldn't it be glorious sport to pull out the twenty-five-pounders from the foaming waters of the Columbia, — to land them, one after another, on the grassy bank, and see the changing light upon their shining scales! and then sitting down to dinner to have one of the biggest on a platter, delicately baked or boiled, with prairie chicken, plover, pigeon, and wild duck! We will have it by and by, when Governor Smith and Judge Rice, who are out here seeing about the railroad, get the cars running to the Pacific; they will supply all creation east of the Rocky Mountains with salmon! There are not many of us who can afford to dine off salmon when it is a dollar a pound, and the larger part of the crowd can never have a taste even; but these railroad gentlemen will bring about a new order of things. When they get the locomotive on the completed track, and make the run from the Columbia to Chicago in about sixty hours, as they will be able to do, all hands of us who work for our daily bread will be able to have fresh salmon at cheap rates.
What a country! I have drawn a hypothetical line from Milwaukie to the Pacific, — not that the region south of it — Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, or California — does not abound in natural resources, with fruitful soil and vast capabilities, but because the configuration of the continent — the water-systems, the mountain-ranges, the elevations and depressions, the soil and climate — is in many respects different north of the 43d parallel from what it is south of it. We need not look upon the territory now held by Great Britain with a covetous eye. The 49th parallel is an imaginary line running across the prairies, an arbitrary political boundary which Nature will not take into account in her disposition of affairs in the future. Sooner or later the line will fade away. Railway trains — the constant passing and repassing of a multitude of people speaking the same language, having ideas in common, and related by blood — will rub it out, and there will be one country, one people, one government. What an empire then! The region west of Lake Michigan and north of the latitude of Milwaukie — the 43d parallel extended to the Pacific — will give to the nation, to say nothing of Alaska Territory, forty States as large as Ohio, or two hundred States of the size of Massachusetts!
I have been accustomed to look upon this part of the world as being so far north, so cold, so snowy, so distant, — and all the other imaginary so's, — that it never could be available for settlement; but the facts show that it is as capable of settlement as New York or New England, — that the country along the Athabasca has a climate no more severe than that of northern New Hampshire or Maine, while the summers are more favorable to the growing of grains than those of the northern Atlantic coast.
It is not, therefore, hypothetical geography. Following the 43d parallel eastward, we find it passing along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, through central Italy, and through the heart of the Turkish Empire. Nearly all of Europe lies north of it, — the whole of France, half of Italy, the whole of the Austrian Empire, and all of Russia's vast dominions.
The entire wheat-field of Europe is above that parallel. The valleys of the Alps lying between the 46th and 50th parallels swarm with an industrious people; why may not those of the Rocky Mountains at the head-waters of the Missouri and Columbia in like manner be hives of industry in the future?
If a Christiania, a Stockholm, and a St. Petersburg, with golden-domed churches, gorgeous palaces, and abodes of comfort, can be built up in lat. 60 in the Old World, why may we not expect to see their counterpart in the New, when we take into account the fact that a heated current from the tropics gives the same mildness of climate to the northwestern section of this continent that the Gulf Stream gives to northern Europe?
With this outlook towards future possibilities, we see Minnesota the central State of the Continental Republic of the future.
With the map of the continent before me, I stick a pin into Minneapolis, and stretch a string to Halifax, then, sweeping southward, find that it cuts through southern Florida, and central Mexico. It reaches almost to San Diego, the extreme southwestern boundary of the United States, — reaches to Donner Pass on the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, within a hundred miles of Sacramento. Stretching it due west, it reaches to Salem, Oregon. Carrying it northwest, I find that it reaches to the Rocky Mountain House on Peace River, — to that region whose beauty charmed Mackenzie and Father De Smet. The Peace River flows through the Rocky Mountains, and at its head-waters we find the lowest pass of the continent. The time may come when we of the East will whirl through it upon the express-train bound for Sitka! It is two hundred miles from the Rocky Mountain House to that port of southern Alaska.
The city of Mexico is nearer Minneapolis by nearly a hundred miles than Sitka. Trinity Bay on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, Puerto Principe on the island of Cuba, the Bay of Honduras in Central America, and Sitka, are equidistant from Minneapolis and St. Paul.
When Mr. Seward, in 1860, addressed the people of St. Paul from the steps of the Capitol, it was the seer, and not the politician, who said: —
"I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this great continent will be found somewhere within a circle or radius not far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi River!"
CHAPTER V
THE FRONTIER