The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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bursting of the storm. The canvas roof and walls of our house flap suddenly in the wind. The cords are drawn taut against the tent-pins. The roof rises, settles, surges up and down, to and fro, the walls belly in and then out against the swaying frame. The rain comes in great drops, in small drops, in drifting spray, rattling upon the canvas like a hundred thousand muskets, — just as they rattled and rolled on that awful day at the Wilderness when the two greatest armies ever gathered on this continent met in deadly conflict.
All the while the tent is as bright with lightning as with the sun at noonday. By the side of my cot is a book which I have been reading; taking it in my hand, I read the finest print, noted the hour, minute, and position of the second-hand upon my watch.
Looking out through the opening of the fly, I behold the distant woodland, the fences, the bearded grain laid prostrate by the blast, the rain-drops falling aslant through the air, the farm-house a half-mile distant, — all revealed by the red glare of the lightning. All the landscape is revealed. For an instant I am in darkness, then all appears again beneath the lurid light.
The storm grows wilder. The gale becomes a tempest, and increases to a tornado. The thunder crashes around, above, so near that the crackling follows in an instant the blinding flash. It rattles, rolls, roars, and explodes like bursting bombs.
The tent is reeling. Knowing what will be the result, I hurry on my clothing, and have just time to seize an india-rubber coat before the pins are pulled from the ground. I spring to the pole, determined to hold on to the last.
Though the lightning is so fearful, and the moment well calculated to arouse solemn thoughts, we cannot restrain our laughter when two occupants of an adjoining tent rush into mine in the condition of men who have had a sousing in a pond. The wind pulled their tent up by the roots, and slapped the wet canvas down upon them in a twinkling. They crawled out like muskrats from their holes, — their night-shirts fit for mops, their clothing ready for washing, their boots full of water, their hats limp and damp and ready for moulding into corrugated tiles.
It is a ludicrous scene. I am the central figure inside the tent, — holding to the pole with all my might, bareheaded, barefooted, my body at an angle of forty-five degrees, my feet sinking into the black mire, — the dripping canvas swinging and swaying, now lifted by the wind and now flapping in my face, and drenching anew two members of Congress, who sit upon my broken-down bed, shivering while wringing out their shirts!
When the fury of the storm is over, I rush out to drive down the pins, and find that my tent is the only one in the encampment that is not wholly prostrated. The members of the party are standing like shirted ghosts in the storm. The rotund form of our M. D. is wrapped in the oil-cloth table-cover. For the moment he is a hydropath, and complacently surveys the wreck of tents. The rain falls on his bare head, the water streams from his gray locks, and runs like a river down his broad back; but he does not bow before the blast, he breasts it bravely. I do not hear him, but I can see by his features that he is silently singing the Sunday-school song, —
"I'll stand the storm,
It won't be long."
Tents, beds, bedding, clothing, all are soppy and moppy, and the ground a quagmire. We go ankle deep into the mud. We might navigate the prairies in a boat.
Our purveyor, Mr. Brackett, an old campaigner, knows just what to do to make us comfortable. He has a dry tent in one of the wagons, which, when the rain has ceased, is quickly set up. His cook soon has his coffee-pot bubbling, and with hot coffee and a roaring fire we are none the worse for the drenching.
The storm has spent its fury, and is passing away, but the heavens are all aglow. Broad flashes sweep across the sky, flame up to the zenith, or quiver along the horizon. Bolt after bolt falls earthward, or flies from the north, south, east, and west, — from all points of the compass, — branching into beautiful forms, spreading out into threads and fibres of light, each tipped with golden balls or beads of brightest hue, seen a moment, then gone forever.
Flash and flame, bolt and bar, bead, ball, and line, follow each other in quick succession, or all appear at once in indescribable beauty and fearful grandeur. We can only gaze in wonder and admiration, though all but blinded by the vivid flashes, and though each bolt may be a messenger of death, — though in the twinkling of an eye the spirit may be stricken from its present tabernacle and sent upon its returnless flight. The display, so magnificent and grand, has its only counterpart in the picture which imagination paints of Sinai or the final judgment.
In an adjoining county the storm was attended by a whirlwind. Houses were demolished and several persons killed. It was terrifying to be in it, to hear the deafening thunder; but it was a sight worth seeing, — that glorious lighting up of the arch of heaven.
It required half a day of bright sunshine to put things in trim after the tornado, and then on Saturday afternoon the party pushed on to Cold Spring and encamped on the bank of Sauk River for the Sabbath.
The camp was named "Jay Cooke," in honor of the energetic banker who is the financial agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Sweet, calm, and peaceful the hours. Religious services were held, conducted by Rev. Dr. Lord, who had a flour-barrel and a candle-box before him for a pulpit; a congregation of teamsters, with people from the little village near by, and the gentlemen composing our party, some of us seated on boxes, but most of us sitting upon the ground. Nor were we without a choir. Everybody sung Old Hundred; and though some of us could only sound one note, and that straight along from beginning to end, like the drone of a bagpipe, it went gloriously. Old Hundred never was sung with better spirit, though there was room for improvement of the understanding, especially in the base. The teamsters, after service, hunted turtle-eggs on the bank of the river, and one of them brought in a hatful, which were cooked for supper.
Our course from Cold Spring was up the Sauk Valley to Sauk Centre, a lively town with an excellent water-power. The town is about six years old, but its population already numbers fifteen hundred. The country around it is one of the most beautiful and fertile imaginable. The Sauk River is the southern boundary of the timbered lands west of the Mississippi. As we look southward, over the magnificent expanse, we see farm-houses and grain-fields, but on the north bank are dense forests. The prairie lands are already taken up by settlers, while there are many thousand acres of the wooded portion of Stearns County yet in the possession of the government. The emigrant can raise a crop of wheat the second year after beginning a farm upon the prairies, while if he goes into the woods there is the slow process of clearing and digging out of stumps, and a great deal of hard labor before he has any returns. Those prairie lands that lie in the immediate vicinity of timber are most valuable. The valley of the Sauk, besides being exceedingly fertile, has timber near at hand, and has had a rapid development. It is an inviting section for the capitalist, trader, mechanic, or farmer, and its growth promises to be as rapid in the future as it has been since 1865.
A two days' ride over a magnificent prairie brings us to White Bear Lake. If we had travelled due west from St. Cloud, along the township lines, sixty miles, we should have found ourselves at its southern shore instead of its northern. Our camp for the night was pitched on the hills overlooking this sheet of water. The Vale of Tempe could not have been fairer, and Arcadia had no lovelier scene, than that which we gazed upon from the green slope around our tents, blooming with wild roses, lilies, petunias, and phlox.
The lake stretches southward a distance of twelve miles, indented here and there by a wooded promontory, with sandy beaches sweeping in magnificent curves, with a patch of woodland on the eastern shore, and a green fringe of stately oaks and elms around its entire circumference. As far as the vision extends we behold limitless fields, whose verdure changes in varying hues with every passing cloud, and wanting only a background of highlands to make it as lovely as Windermere, the most enchanting of all the lakes of Old England.
At our feet was the little town of Glenwood. We looked down upon a hotel with the stars and stripes waving above it; upon a neat