The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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and milk, bread and butter, and blackberry-pie, in a clean little cottage, with pictures on the walls, books on a shelf, a snow-white cloth on the table, and a trim little woman waiting upon us.
"May I ask where you are from?"
"Manchester, New Hampshire."
It was Lord Morpeth or the Duke of Argyle, I have forgotten which, who said that New England looked as if it had just been taken out of a bandbox; so with this one-storied log-house and everything around it. We had sour-krout at Grindstone, but have blackberries here; and that is just the difference between Dutchland and New England, whether you seek for them on the Atlantic slope or in the heart of the continent.
Space is wanting to tell of all the incidents of a three days' forest ride, — how we trolled for pickerel on a little lake, seated in a birch-bark canoe, and hauled them in hand over hand, — bouncing fellows that furnished us a delicious breakfast; how we laughed and told stories, never minding the bumping and thumping of the wagon, and came out strong, like Mark Tapley, every one of us; how we gazed upon the towering pines and sturdy oaks, and beheld the gloom settling over nature when the great eclipse occurred; and how, just as night was coming on, we entered Superior, and saw a horned owl sitting on the ridge-pole of a deserted house in the outskirts of the town, surveying the desolate scene in the twilight, — looking out upon the cemetery, the tenantless houses, and the blinking lights in the windows.
Superior has been, and still is, a city of the Future, rather than of the Present. It was laid out before the war on a magnificent scale by a party of Southerners, among whom was John C. Breckenridge, who is still a large owner in corner lots.
It has a fine situation at the southwestern corner of the lake, on a broad, level plateau, with a densely timbered country behind it. The St. Louis River, which rises in northern Minnesota, and which comes tumbling over a series of cascades formed by the high land between Lake Superior and the Mississippi, spreads itself out into a shallow bay in front of the town, and reaches the lake over a sand-bar.
Government has been erecting breakwaters to control the current of the river, with the expectation of deepening the channel, which has about nine feet of water; but thus far the improvements have not accomplished the desired end. The bar is a great impediment to navigation, and its existence has had a blighting effect on the once fair prospects of Superior City. Dredges are employed to deepen the channel, but those thus far used are small, and not much has been accomplished. The citizens of Superior are confident that with a liberal appropriation from government the channel can be deepened, and that, when once cleared out, it can be kept clear at a small expense.
Superior has suffered severely from the reaction which followed the flush times in 1857. A large amount of money was expended in improvements, — grading streets, opening roads, building piers, and erecting houses. Then the war came on, and all industry was paralyzed. The Southern proprietors were in rebellion. The growth of the place, which had been considerable, came to a sudden stand-still.
The situation of the town, while it is fortunate in some respects, is unfortunate in others. It is in Wisconsin, while the point which reaches across the head of the lake is in Minnesota. The last-named State wanted a port on the lake in its own dominion, and so Duluth has sprung into existence as the rival of its older neighbor.
The St. Paul and Superior Railroad, having its terminus at Duluth, lies wholly within the State of Minnesota, and comes just near enough to Superior to tantalize and vex the good people of that place.
But the citizens of that town have good pluck. I do not know what motto they have adopted for their great corporate seal, but Nil Desperandum would best set forth their hopefulness and determination. They are confident that Superior is yet to be the queen city of the lake, and are determined to have railway communication with the Mississippi by building a branch line to the St. Paul and Superior Road.
Our party is kindly and hospitably entertained by the people of the place, and to those who think of the town as being so far northwest that it is beyond civilization, I have only to say that there are few drawing-rooms in the East where more agreeable company can be found than that which we find in one of the parlors of Superior; few places where the sonatas of Beethoven and Mendelssohn can be more exquisitely rendered upon the pianoforte, by a lady who bakes her own bread and cares for her family without the aid of a servant.
It is the glory of our civilization that it adapts itself to all the circumstances of life. I have no doubt that if Minnie, or Winnie, or Georgiana, or almost any of the pale, attenuated young ladies who are now frittering away their time in studying the last style of paniers, or thrumming the piano, or reading the last vapid novel, were to have their lot cast in the West, — on the frontiers of civilization, — where they would be compelled to do something for themselves or those around them, that they would manfully and womanfully accept the situation, be far happier than they now are, and worth more to themselves and to the world.
I dare say that nine out of every ten young men selling dry-goods in retail stores in Boston and elsewhere have high hopes for the future. They are going to do something by and by. When they get on a little farther they will show us what they can accomplish. But the chances are that they will never get that little farther on. The tide is against them. One thing we are liable to forget; we measure ourselves by what we are going to do, whereas the world estimates us by what we have already done. How any young man of spirit can settle himself down to earning a bare existence, when all this vast region of the Northwest, with its boundless undeveloped resources before him, is inviting him on, is one of the unexplained mysteries of life. They will be Nobodies where they are; they can be Somebodies in building up a new society. The young man who has measured off ribbon several years, as thousands have who are doing no better to-day than they did five years ago, in all probability will be no farther along, except in years, five years hence than he is now.
CHAPTER VIII
DULUTH
Embarking at a pier, and steering northwest, we pass up the bay, with the long, narrow, natural breakwater, Minnesota Point, on our right hand, and the level plateau of the main-land, with a heavy forest growth, on our left. Before us, on the sloping hillside of the northern shore, lies the rapidly rising town of Duluth, unheard of twelve months ago, but now, to use a Western term, "a right smart chance of a place."
One hundred and ninety years ago Duluth, a French explorer, was coasting along these shores, and sailing up this bay over which we are gliding. He was the first European to reach the head of the lake. He crossed the country to the Upper Mississippi, descended it to St. Paul, where he met Father Hennipen, who had been held in captivity by the Indians.
It is suitable that so intrepid an explorer should be held in remembrance, and the founders of the new town have done wisely in naming it for him, instead of calling it Washington or Jackson, or adding another "ville" to the thousands now so perplexing to post-office clerks.
The new city of the Northwest is sheltered from northerly winds by the high lands behind it. The St. Louis River, a stream as large as the Merrimac, after its turbulent course down the rocky rapids, with a descent altogether of five hundred feet, flows peacefully past the town into the Bay of Superior. The river and lake together have thrown up the long and narrow strip of land called Minnesota Point, reaching nearly across the head of the lake, and behind which lies the bay. It is as if the Titans had thrown up a wide railway embankment, or had tried their hand at filling up the lake. The bay is shallow, but the men who projected the city of Duluth are in no wise daunted by that fact. They have planned to make a harbor by building a mole out into the lake fifteen hundred or two thousand feet. It is to extend from the northern shore far enough to give good anchorage and protection to vessels and steamers.
The work to be done is in many respects similar to what has been accomplished at both ends of the Suez Canal. When M. Lesseps set about the construction of that magnificent enterprise, he found no harbor on the Mediterranean side, but only a low sandy shore, against which the waves, driven by the prevailing western winds, were always