CHAPTER VII

       IN THE FOREST

       Table of Contents

      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.

      "But now the wheat is green and high

       On clods that hid the warrior's breast,

       And scattered in the furrows lie

       The weapons of his rest."

      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