The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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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