The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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vastly greater than that now under construction; and inasmuch as it is impossible to carry a load up or down hill without costing something, it follows that this road can be operated more economically than a line crossing four mountain-ranges, and the ultimate result will be a cheapening of transportation across the continent, and a great development of the Asiatic trade.
Throughout the entire distance between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean along the line, the husbandman may turn the sod with his plough, the herdsman fatten his flocks, the lumberman reap the harvest of the forests, or the miner gather golden ore.
A Bureau of Emigration is to be established by the company, which will be of invaluable service to the emigrant.
Many persons in the Eastern and Middle States are desirous of moving to the Northwest, but it is hard to cut loose from old associations, to leave home and friends and strike out alone upon the prairie; they want company. The human race is gregarious. There are not many who care to be hermits, and most of us prefer society to solitude.
This feature of human nature is to be kept in view, and it will be the aim of the Bureau of Emigration to offer every facility to those seeking new homes to take their friends with them.
Upon the completion of every twenty-five miles of road, the company will be put in possession of forty sections of land per mile. The government will hold the even-numbered sections, and the company those bearing the odd numbers.
The land will be surveyed, plotted, and the distinctive features of each section described. Emigration offices are to be established in our own country as well as abroad, where maps, plans, and specifications will be found.
One great drawback to the settlement of the prairie lands of Illinois and Iowa has been the want of timber for the construction of houses. Persons with limited means, having only their own hands, found it hard to get started on a treeless prairie. Their first work is to obtain a house. The Bureau propose to help the man who is anxious to help himself on in the world, by putting up a portable house for him on the land that he may select. The houses will be small, but they will serve till the settler can get his farm fenced in, his ground ploughed, and two or three crops of wheat to market. The abundance of timber in Minnesota will enable the company to carry out this new feature of emigration.
It will be an easy matter for a family from Lowell, another from Methuen, a third from Andover, a fourth from Reading, a fifth from Haverhill, to select their land in a body and start a Massachusetts colony in the Seat of Empire.
Far better this method than for each family to go out by itself. Going as a colony they will carry the moral atmosphere of their old homes with them. They will have a school in operation the week after their arrival. And on Sabbath morning, swelling upward on the summer air, sweeter than the lay of lark amid the flowers, will ascend the songs of the Sunday school established in their new home. Looking forward with ardent hope to prosperous years, they will still look beyond the earthly to the heavenly, and sing, —
"My heavenly home is bright and fair,
Nor pain nor death shall enter there."
This is no fancy sketch; it is but a description of what has been done over and over again in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and all the Western States. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company want their lands settled by an industrious, thrifty, energetic people, who prize everything that goes to make up the highest grade of civilization, and they are ready to render such help as no colonies have yet had.
The land will be sold to actual settlers at low rates, and on liberal terms of payment. The portable houses will be sold at cost, transported on the cars, and set up for the colonists if they desire it.
The Bureau will be put in operation as soon as it can be systematically organized, and I doubt not that thousands will avail themselves of its advantages to establish their future homes near a railroad which will give the shortest line across the continent, marked by low gradients, running through the lowest passes of the Rocky Mountains, through a country capable of cultivation all the way from the lakes to the Pacific.
Am I dreaming?
Across this belt of land between Lake Superior and the Pacific lies the world's great future highway. The physical features of this portion of the continent are favorable for the development of every element of a high civilization.
Take one more look at the map, and observe the situation of the St. Lawrence and the lakes, furnishing water-carriage for freight half-way from ocean to ocean, — the prairies extending to the base of the Rocky Mountains, — the one summit to be crossed, — the bays, inlets, and harbors of the Pacific shore laved by ocean currents and warmed by winds wafted from the equator to the Arctic Sea. Observe also the shortest lines of latitude.
The geographical position is in the main axial line of the world's grand commercial movement. San Francisco and Puget Sound are the two western gateways of the continent. Rapid as has been the advancement of civilization around the Golden Gate, magnificent as its future may be, yet equally grand and majestic will be the northern portal of the great Republic. Not only will it be on the shortest possible route between England and Asia, but it will be in the direct line between England and the Asiatic dominions of Russia.
While we are building our railroads westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the Emperor of Russia is extending his from the Ural Mountains eastward, down the valley of the Amoor, to open communication with China and Japan. The shortest route of travel round the world a few years hence will lie through the northern section of this continent and through Siberia. The Himalaya Range of mountains and the deserts of Central Asia will be impassible barriers to railroads between India and China, or Central Europe and the East; but the valley of the Amoor is fertile, and there is no fairer section of the Czar's dominions than Siberia. From Puget Sound straight across the Pacific will be found, a few years hence, the shortest route around the world.
Farm-houses dot the landscape, roses climb by cottage-doors, bees fill the air with their humming, bringing home to their hives the sweets gathered from far-off prairie-flowers; the prattle of children's voices floats upon the air, the verdant waste becomes an Eden, villages, towns, and cities spring into existence. A great metropolis rises upon the Pacific shore, where the winter air is laden with the perfume of ever-blooming flowers.
The ships of all nations lie at anchor in the land-locked bays, or shake out their sails for a voyage to the Orient. Steamships come and go, laden with the teas of China and Japan, the coffee of Java, the spices of Sumatra. I hear the humming of saws, the pounding of hammers, the flying of shuttles, the click and clatter of machinery. By every mill-stream springs up a town. The slopes are golden with ripening grain. The forest, the field, the mine, the river, alike yield their abundance to the ever-growing multitude.
Such is the outlook towards the future. Will the intellectual and moral development keep pace with the physical growth? If those are wanting, the advancement will be towards Sodom. The future man of the Northwest will have American, Norse, Celtic, and Saxon blood in his veins. His countenance, in the pure, dry, electric air, will be as fresh as the morning. His muscles will be iron, his nerves steel. Vigor will characterize his every action, — for climate gives quality to the blood, strength to the muscles, power to the brain. Indolence is characteristic of people living in the tropics, and energy of those in temperate zones.
The citizen of the Northwest will be a freeman. No shackles will bind him, nor will he wear a lock upon his lips. To the emigrant from the Old World the crossing of the ocean is an act of emancipation; it is like the Marseillaise, — it fires him with new hopes and aspirations.
"Here the free spirit of mankind at length
Throws its last fetters off, and who shall place
A limit to the giant's unchained strength,
Or curb his swiftness in the forward race?
For like the comet's way through infinite space,
Stretches the long untravelled path of light
Into the depth of ages; we may trace,
Distant, the brightening glory of its flight,
Till the receding rays are lost