The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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fields, where cattle are up to their knees in clover, past wheat-fields ready for the reaper, reaching at noon our halting-place for dinner.
Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out West where there are delicious apple-pies, or anything especially nice in the pastry line, on the table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess came from Maine; at least, such has been my experience. I remember calling at a house in central Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the standard dish of the Southwest "hog and hominy," obtaining a luxurious dinner, finishing off with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands that were trained to housework on the banks of the Penobscot. Last year I found a lady from Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confident that she was from the Pine-Tree State the moment I saw her pies; for somehow the daughters of Down East have the knack of making pastry that would delight an epicure. And now in Minnesota we sit down to a substantial dinner topped off, rounded, and made complete by a piece of Maine apple-pie.
The daughters of New Hampshire and of Vermont may possibly make just as good cooks, but it has so happened that we have fallen in with housewives from Maine when our appetite was sharpened for something good.
Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who came to Minnesota from the Kennebec. He knew how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough and harrow and stump-puller have been at work, and now we look out upon wheat-fields and acres of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white clover, and hear the humming of the bees. We see at a glance the capabilities of the forest region of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as if we were to read all the works extant on soil, climatology, natural productions, etc. Here, as well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat, corn, potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully and profitably cultivated.
"I raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre last year, and I guess I shall have that this year," said the owner of the farm.
This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here without capital, or rather with capital arms and strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it is: a neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the floor, a sofa, a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls; a large barn; granary well filled, — a comfortable home with a bright future before them.
When the timber has disappeared from eastern Minnesota, the land will produce luxuriantly. The country will not be settled quite as rapidly here as west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever a wilderness. The time will come when along every stream there will be heard the buzzing of saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click and clatter of machinery. This vast area of timber will invite every kind of manufacturing, and the same elements which have contributed so largely to build up the Eastern States — the manufacturing and industrial — will here aid in building up one of the strongest communities of our future republic.
Clearings here and there, cabins by the roadside, bark wigwams which have sheltered wandering Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest, are the features of the country through which we ride this glorious afternoon, with the sunlight glimmering among the trees, till suddenly we come upon Chengwatona.
It is a small village on Snake River, with a hotel, half a dozen houses, and a saw-mill where pine logs are going up an incline from the pond at one end, and coming out in the shape of bright new lumber at the other.
The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an immense area, and looking toward the descending sun we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless, and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed of all their beauty, present an indescribable scene of desolation when contrasted with the luxuriance of the living forest through which we have passed.
With a fresh team we move on, finding mud "spots" now and then. We remember the remarks of the fellows at the railroad. We dive into holes, the forward wheels going down kerchug, sending bucketsful of muddy water upward to the roof of the wagon and forward upon the horses; jounce over corduroy which sets our teeth to chattering; then come upon a series of hollows through which we ride as in a jolly-boat on the waves of the sea. The wagon is ballasted by two members of Congress on the back seat, and by our rotund physician and the Vice-President of the Northern Pacific on the middle seat. The President is outside with the driver, on the lookout for breakers, while the rest of us, like passengers on shipboard, stowed beneath the hatches, must take whatever comes. The members of Congress bob up and down like electric pith-balls between the negative and positive poles of a galvanic battery, — only that the positive is the prevailing force! When the forward wheels go down to the hub, they go up; and then, as they descend, the seat, by some unaccountable process, comes up, meets them half-way, — and with such a bump!
Then we who are shaking our sides with laughter on the front seat, congratulating ourselves, like the Pharisees, that we are not as they are, suddenly find ourselves sprawling on the floor. When we regain our places, the M. D. and Vice-President come forward with a rush and embrace us fraternally. We get our legs so mixed up with our neighbors' that we can hardly tell whether our feet belong to ourselves or to somebody else! The light weights of the party are knocked about like shuttlecocks, while the solid ones roll like those ridiculous, round-bottomed, grinning images that we see in the toy-shops! I find myself going up and down after the manner of Sancho Panza when tossed in a blanket.
Our dinners are well settled when we reach Grindstone, — our stopping-place for the night. The town is located on Grindstone Creek, and consists of a log-house and stable, surrounded by burnt timber.
Half a dozen men who have footed it from Duluth are nursing their sore feet in one of the three rooms on the ground-floor. The furniture of the apartment consists of a cast-iron stove in the centre and three rough benches against the walls, which are papered with pictorial newspapers.
The occupants are discussing the future prospects of Duluth.
"It is a right smart chance of a place," says a tall, thin-faced, long-nosed man stretched in one corner. We know by the utterance of that one sentence that he is from southern Illinois.
"They have got their i-deas pretty well up though, on real estate, for a town that is only a yearlin'," says another, who, by his accent of the i, has shown that he too is a Western man.
An Amazon in stature, with a round red face, hurries up a supper of pork and fried eggs; and then we who are going northward, and they who are travelling southward, — sixteen of us, all told, — creep up the narrow stairway to the unfinished garret, and go to bed, with our noses close to the rafters and long shingles, through the crevices of which we look out and behold the stars marching in grand procession across the midnight sky.
It is glorious to lie there and feel the tire and weariness go out of us; to look into the "eternities of space," as Carlyle says of the vault of heaven. But our profound thoughts upon the measureless empyrean are brought down to sublunary things by four of the sleepers who engage in a snoring contest. The race is so close, neck and neck, or rather nose and nose, that it is impossible to decide whether the deep sonorous — not to say snorous? — bass of the big fellow by the window, or the sharp, piercing, energetic snorts of the thin-faced, lantern-jawed, long-nosed man from southern Illinois, is entitled to the trumpet or horn, or whatever may be appropriate to signalize such championship. Either of them would have been a power in the grand chorus of the Coliseum Jubilee, and both together would be equal to the big organ!
We are off early in the morning, feeling a little sore in spots. The first thump extorts a sudden oh! from a member of Congress, but we are philosophic, and accommodate ourselves to circumstances, tell stories between the bumpings, and make the grand old forest ring with our laughter. It is glorious to get away from the town, and out into the woods, where you can shout and sing and let yourself out without regard to what folks will say! The fountain of perennial youth is in the forest, — never in the city. Its healing, beautifying, and restoring waters do not run through aqueducts; they are never pumped up; but you must lie down upon the mossy bank beneath old trees and drink from the crystal stream to obtain them.
We quench our thirst from gurgling brooks, pick berries by the roadside, walk ahead of the lumbering stage, and enjoy the solitude of the interminable forest.
Eighteen miles of travel brings us to Kettle River Crossing, where we sit down to a dinner