CHAPTER VI

       ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

       Table of Contents

      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.

      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