CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library F 606 F24 Five years in Minnesota : sicetches of li oiin 3 1924 028 912 677 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028912677 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA 3k:£;tch£;$ LIFE IN A WESTERN STATE. MAUEICE FAEKAE, M.A. Oxon., LATE J.P., MINNESOTA. « They till the land, but own the land they till." LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, SEAELE, & EIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET. 1880. lokdonT printed by william clowes and sons, STAHFOBO ETBEXT AND CEARIKG CBOSS. TO €mil]a atib "^ahtxi PEEFACE. At a time when the depressed state of British agriculture and commerce and the lamentable condition of affairs in Ireland are forcing the alternative of an extensive and compulsory emigration upon the minds of all classes of society a^ the only remedial measure, an apology for the appearance of a work like the present is perhaps hardly necessary. The views of an individual are, I am aware, easily influenced in favour of a country in which he has for some years made his home. Should the following pages appear to some readers like de- scriptions of an impossible paradise, they are, at any rate, fully borne out, by the a 3 VIU PEEFACE. letters of the special correspondent oi the Times accompanying the Royal Britisn Agricultural Commission, and which have appeared in that journal since my return to this country. The Commissioners travelled through the immediate district of which I write, on the eve of my departure from St. Paul. Though I will not venture to antici- pate their ultimate verdict in the forthcom- ing blue-book, I may, perhaps, say without, impropriety that they made no attempt to conceal their enthusiasm as to the beautiful district of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa as one of the finest countries i'or general agriculture and stock-raising which they had visited in their extended travels through the States. I am happy to be confirmed by such competent authorities in my belief, verified by careful personal observation and discussion through the North-western newspapers, that perhaps the richest belt for general agricultural purposes west of the Mississippi lies on the boundary line of Minnesota and Iowa PREFACE. JX roughly speaking in an area of about a hundred miles on either side of such boundary line, and extending from that river some hundred and fifty miles west ijito Dahkotah — how much farther is not yet known, that district being still a Terri- tory, and comparatively unsettled. And my reasons for this belief are based upon the fact that in this particular district it is known that Indian corn, wheat, oats, barley, flax, beans, all kinds of root crops, and especia,lly the, noble sugar-plant, flour- ish, to an extent unequalled in any other district of the States except as specialities, while for stock-raising their luxuriant well- watered prairies can nowhere be sur- passed. We hear a great deal about the large yield of wheat in the extreme north of Minnesota. Descriptions of the monster farms there and in Dahkotah, with their ten and twenty thousand acres in that crop, are familiar to readers of English journals. But it must be remembered that Indian X PREFACE, corn, whicli is absolutely necessary to raising stock profitably, cannot be grown there successfully, while the severity of the climate in winter renders it unsuited to settlers from temperate regions like our own islands. I would advise intending emigrants to have nothing to do with lands lying north of 46° or 47°, unless for purposes of wheat speculation. Living in those in- hospitable regions becomes a curse during the long winter months. The thermometer on December 24, 1879, marked 90° below freezing on the boundary line of the British possessions. I would not of course be supposed to imply that the district described in the following pages is superior to many other agricultural districts in the older and longer- settled States east of the Mississippi, with the single exception that so far as is yet known the sugar-plant can only be success- fully grown in the " belt " referred to. Speaking of this crop, the ' New American Farm Book,' the standard work throughout PREFACE. XI the States, says : " Should this crop be suc- cessfully manufactured into sugar, an un- told source of wealth and luxury will be found in wide portions of the country now dependent on other climates and countries." The process has only recently been dis- covered, but granulation is now perfect, and sugar-factories will speedily spring up in all directions where it can be grown. But farms in Eastern States are like farms in Norfolk or Essex, held at high prices. Land which in south-western Minnesota or northern Iowa can be bought to-day at an average of thirty shillings an acre, is worth, a hundred miles east of the Mississippi, as many pounds. Ten years hence, with settlement progressing at its present rate, and the former will have enhanced in value tenfold. My personal connection with Minnesota has been finally severed, and in presenting these pictures of life in the Far West, I have no other object in view than to direct public attention in England to one of the XU PEEFACB. most beautiful and healthy 'countries in the world, of fine agricultural capabilities, and with none of the drawbacks of ague- and fever- stricken Texas, or of that trans- atlantic Siberia — Manitoba. Engagements for lectures in country districts on the subject of Emig'ration to Minnesota can be made on application to me through the publishers.* LoNDOX, February 1880. * State op Minnesota, Executive Department, St. Paul. September bO, 1879. State Board of Immiqeation op Minnesota. To Mabkioe Faebab, Esq., greeting: Reposing especial trust in your prudence, integrity, and ability, we have authorized you to act as Agent for the promotion of Immigration to this State by lecturing and otherwise diffusing information in Great Britain. In testimony whereof, we have herewith attached the Great Seal (l.s.) of the State. J. S. PiLLSBtJEY, Governor, President of Board. I J. S. IviO'E^B, Secretary of State. Attest. < „ „ .. • \ H. 11. YODNQ, Secretary of State Board of Immigration. CONTENTS. PAOK PKKFACE .. .. ,. .. .. .. vii CHAPTEE I. INTRODUCTORY — BAD TIMES .. .. .. 1 CHAPTEE II. "OUTWARD bound" .. .. .. .. 21 CHAPTEE III. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL .. .. 40 CHAPTEE IV. "ON THE prairie" — AN ENGLISH COLONY .. 67 CHAPTEE V. "IN THE timber" .. .. .. .. 91 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTEE YI. PACK " AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS " AN INDIAN RESERVATION .. .. .. .. •• H^ CHAPTEE VII. sroRT .. .. .. .. •■ ■• 153 CHAPTEE VIII. PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LITE .. .. 168 CHAPTEE IX. THE EMIGRATION QUESTION .. .. .. 210 APPESDIX .. .. .. .. .. .. 233 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY BAD TIMES. There are some marked peculiarities in the present agricultural and commercial distress which must strike every thoughtful student of political economy. One is its universal incidence. But the range of observation is so wide, the causes of disaster are connected by such remote and subtle links, and so involved is their mutual operation, that men have almost abandoned as hopeless the problem of solving the secret of, still more of discovering the remedy for, a stag- nation in trade and a depression in agri- B 2 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. culture more or less severe all over the world, and whicli has no parallel in living memory. Certain facts are well ascertained. A long-continued period of high prices, large profits, vast industrial enterprise, rash speculation, almost unlimited credit, has been followed by now nearly seven years of commercial paralysis. Agriculture and trade in every civilised country have been carried on, if not at a loss, at least in the narrowest and most restricted limits. Values have fallen, and they continue stiU to fall, day by day, and no one seems able to foretell when the limit of depression will be reached. Everything seems to be ap- proaching a point when it will become unsalable, from the enormously enhanced purchasing power of gold. Then the distress, like some virulent and infectious disease, had a well-defined and local origin BAD TIMES. 3 and spread like some terrible plague, till it has encircled the globe with a girdle of commercial panic, which of late has assumed a chronic, and apparently perman- ent, character. The wave of commercial disaster first struck the city of Vienna (where the writer of these pages was then residing), in the spring of 1873. It was preceded there, as elsewhere, by years of prosperity absolutely marvellous. Men grew rich, they knew not how, over night. Enterprises utterly foundationless became, while they lasted, mines of wealth to their owners. An international exposition of unrivalled costliness and beauty was on the point of being opened, when without warning, from no apparent cause, a panic struck the city. Securities fell to a fraction of their value in a single day, and to this hour a v^ry pall of financial gloom hangs over Austria, from B 2 4 FIVE YEAE8 IN MINNESOTA which there is little sign of recovery or hope. Eastward and westward, slowly, yet surely, spread the destroying wave. It has engulfed in partial ruin almost every country of Europe, and covered the States of the Union with the wrecks of bankruptcy. I suppose these premises may be assumed without fear of contradiction. But while it is no part of the chapters which follow to attempt to thread the mazy labyrinth at which the most advanced thinker on poli- tical economy may well pause, or to offer any probable explanation of the causes,, much less of the remedies, for bad times, they have yet a very definite object in view. If I am unable to offer any material contribution towards the solution of the great and pressing problem of the age I believe that years of thoughtful observation spent-in the New World, as well as in the BAD TIMES. 5 Old, the battle of life fought on bctli sides of the Atlantic, enable me to show to indi- viduals at least how want may be exchanged for plenty, the hopeless struggle of an im- possible competition for elbow room in the world, where energy and industry and thrift will lead to success, and not leave men, as is but too often the case in Europe, trodden down, beaten, and helpless, amid the struggling crowd. A book with a purpose is, I know, but top often the bane of much of the literature of the day. I shall not, however, like many authors, beguile my unwary readers into a discussion of some favourite theory or hobby of my own, under the thin dis- guise of pictures of American life, which, if they have no other merit, will, at any rate, be true to nature. The object of these pages is to show to many classes in England that, so far as they are concerned. 6 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. emigration is the remedy, and the only remedy, for bad times — that whatever may be the ultimate industrial future of England, her agricultural prospects are,. I had almost said hopeless, at any rate gloomy in the extreme.* Perhaps I may * Should the opinions expressed above appear ex- aggerated, or inconsistent with facts, I quote here in extenso two remarkable articles on the subject, which appeared recently in well-tnown London journals. " The prevalent belief as to the severity of the depression existing in English agriculture will be confirmed by the figures recently produced before the Devizes Union Assessment Committee. The room in which the committee sat is stated to have been crowded with farmers anxious to obtain a re- duction of their assessments on the ground that their rents had been lowered. Of this they produced incontestable written evidence — evidence which showed a most remarkable state of things. Thus, one landlady owned two farms occupied by the same tenant. The rent of one was £600 (it had now been reduced to £400), and of the other £350, which had been reduced to £250. This lady's income therefore from her landed property has suddenly decreased from £950 to £660. In nine other cases rents had been reduced from £680 to £445, £868 to £760 £358 BAD TIMES. be thouglit to take a sombre view when I express my adherence, even in the case of England, to Adam Smith's great dictum, to £250, £300 to £240, £450 to £400, £580 to £530, £225 to £180, £110 to £80, £200 to £165. Eoughly, the reduction seems to have averaged about a third. Such a sudden loss of income cannot hut seriously interfere with the usual expenditure of the owners of land ; and that again will react upon trade, already suffering by the decrease of farmers' custom. It would be extremely interesting if some member of Parliament would call for a return of the assessments thus lowered throughout the country. A deteriora- tion in the value of land to this extent, if it is at all general, is a question of national concern." — PaU Mall Budget, April 25, 1879. " Down on oub Luqk. — The hope of a revival of commercial prosperity which has recently been raised, and which has found expression in several quarters, is, we fear, so far as the present and the — immediate — future is concerned, doomed to dis- appointment. At any rate, we fail to imagine how a revival of trade can possibly ensue upon a generally deficient European harvest. In Great Britain, the harvest is now certain to be one of the worst on record, not only in respect of corn, but also in the cases of hay, roots, and other feeding crops, hops, and potatoes. In France, the wheat crop 8 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. that "agriculture is the foundation of every nation's wealth " ; though her far- reaching commerce, as contrasted with her is expected to be only two-thirds of an average, and the hay has been spoilt to a great extent by wet weather, as in our own country. All other conti- nental countries will produce a crop more or less below average, including Eoumania, with respect to which reports, a few weeks back, were very sanguine. Only on the American continent is a good crop of wheat expected, and even there the yield will be lower than that of last year, and it is only an in- creased acreage which promises to make up for the deficiency. In the Australian colonies the harvest has been one of the worst ever known, and from India we hear no very favourable reports. The loss in great corn-producing countries alone will amount to hundreds of millions of pounds, and it is a dead loss which nothing can compensate for. A com- mercial crisis, which has resulted from over-produc- tion, rash speculation, an inflated credit system, or extravagance of living, may be tided over by the reversal of the conditions which produced it, though thousands of individuals maj' be ruined in the mean- time ; but a general deficiency in the natural pro- ductions of the earth is a loss for ever, and nothing can even partially compensate for it, unless it be a consequent alteration in the conditions under which BAD TIMES. limited agricultural area, may introduce modifications wliich it is not now my province to follow. Perhaps the meridian agriculture is carried on, wliicli may in the future be for the world's henefit. " It is impossible to estimate with any approach to accuracy the loss which the world will sufifer from a deficient harvest. Even if we take the United Kingdom alone, we can give nothing better than a good guess at our loss. According to Mr. Caird, the average value of our agricultural produce, exclusive of hay, straw, wool, poultry, and eggs, is £230,237,600. Now, as the crops which are consumed by live stock, and go to produce meat and dairy produce, are quite as far short of the usual yield as the corn crops are, it is probably a very favourable estimate to state our total agricultural produce at 20 per cent, below average. Allowing, then, a comparatively small sum for the commodities not included in Mr. Caird's estimate, and dividing the amount by five, we get at a loss of £50,000,000. We fear this is much below what our agricultural loss for the current year will be ; but it is easy to see that, if other European countries are losers to anything like a proportionate extent, a general revival of prosperity is at present quite out of the question. " In these days of gigantic manufacturing and 10 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. of her national prosperity is already reached, and the period of depression through which she is now passing may commercial sys tems people are apt to forget that, after all, the soil is the fountain-head of all our wealth, and that if the spring is low then general impoverishment must inevitably result. The gener- ality of people fail to realise the truth of abstract doctrines of political economy, and it is easier for them to comprehend the limited results of general causesintheirown countries. Even these are far from obvious to people who are absorbed in the commercial whirlpool of great manufacturing towns and cities ; but they are brought clearly and painfully home to country people, including tradesmen and professional men in ordinary provincial towns. These people are, generally, distributors merely — whether it be of com- modities or knowledge — and they can only deal with each other in proportion to the profits which they derive from those who either produce or possess the proceeds of previous production. Landowners, farmers, and farm-labourers, who derive their means of living from the soil, are the principal supporters of these middle- men. After a bad harvest, these producing classes haxe comparatively little to spend on anything but the necessaries of life, or what have come to be regarded as such.' At any rate, when they have BAD TIMES. 11 but mark the years of transition from vigorous manhood to old age and de- crepitude. At any rate, thus much may received less than usual, they must spend less, or they will soon be ruined, and so have nothing to spend at all. We have had already four more or less deficient harvests in succession, and country trades- men have found their business decreasing, and, what is worse still, their bad debts increasing. They, in their turn, have been poorer customers of manu- facturers, and 'worse pay' too. The process, of course, does not stop here ; but it is not worth while to follow it further, as any one can see that it ramifies amongst all classes of the community. We have before us a harvest far worse than any of the four which have preceded it, and we fear that the result will be disastrous in a degree and to an extent of which few have any conception. Thousands of farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy ; and as nothing but a good harvest could have saved them, and that is not forthcoming, therfe is only one result possible with them. Not only are they in arrear with their landlords and overdrawn at their banks, but our dear friends the usurers have been busy amongst them this year, and they are as sure in- dicators of ruin as vultures are of death. When the farmers become bankrupt they will be like the first 12 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. be assumed as true, that a nation's decay- dates generally from the decay of its agriculture. In England, perhaps, more ninepins that fall, knocking down others as they roll over; the latter, in their turn, doing likewise. With a bad harvest in this country alone we must have expected a winter of disaster ; and now that we find most other great agricultural countries are also in for bad harvests, it would be idle to build our hopes upon that revival of prosperity which sanguine people have lately been promising. " There is one more consideration which aggravates the evils of a situation already sufficiently serious. The greatest amelioration to the period of depression under which we have for some time suffered has been the low price of bread. Upon that we can no longer reckon. There is, fortunately, a surplus of last year's crop of wheat in Eussia, and the American exports will be abundant ; but there will be so many competitors for the extra produce of these countries in the coming winter that we shall certainly have to pay more for our bread-stuffs than we paid last year. We shall have no scarcity ; but we must have higher prices for food. Thus the cost of production all round will be enhanced, and the spending fund diminished."— TAe World, Aug. 13, 1879. BAD TIMES. 13 than in any country of Europe, the healthy balance which should be maintained be- tween the town and agricultural popula- tions has of late years been seriously disturbed. Country districts have been drained heavily by great cities. And it is certain that England is the greatest sufferer by the present depression, and the United States, where the balance between town and country is more strictly maintained, the least. I have studied the English journals carefully during the last five years, and have seen the painful and ill-concealed secret of distress among all classes slowly, and reluctantly, creeping out, till at last it stands almost confessed that the agri- cultural industry of England must succumb before the growth and settlement of such countries as the Western States of the Union, which can hopelessly undersell the British farmer. I do not wonder that in 14 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. these dire straits men have begun to turn their thoughts back to the long-laid-aside armour of protection, in which England's European and American neighbours are arrayed cap-a-pie. Facilis descensus Averni, dijicilis sed revocare regressum I To look this state of things plainly in the face, to follow the undeniable facts to their inevitable conclusion, is, I confess, an appalling task. What are they ? The land of England is owned, practically, by a small non-working class, known as the landed gentry — though the phrase jars somewhat on my republicanised ears. The rent paid by the tenant-farmer re- presents their income. Their money has been inyested for them by their forefathers, or they have themselves invested it in the " broad acres," producing a very low return in interest, for the twofold reason of their supposed security and the social considera- BAD TIMES. . 15 tion such possession carries witli it. But if the. British farmer is, in the future, to be hopelessly handicapped in his com- petition with America by a high rent and a tithe rent-charge, which, by a cruel piece of irony, stands at a high premium over the commuted value, though wheat has fallen one-fourth in price since the date of commutation — why, to use an expres- sive, if perhaps vulgar^ Americanism, the bottom must quickly drop out of Debrett and Burke. For the theory that, failing wheat-raising, English farms could be profitably converted into vast grazing meadows is totally fallacious. Cattle and sheep can be exported to Liverpool at less than they can be raised for in the Mid- lands ; and a trade now in its infancy is likely to assume ere long enormous pro- portions. Within the next three years lines of fast ocean steamers, built expressly 16 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. for the cattle trade, will probably be plying between American and British ports, and then cattle-breeding and sheep-farming, aa well as wheat-culture, must be given up in England, I hear of a reduction in rent, say of 25 or 30 per cent., suggested as a solution, of the difficulty. I wish some of those gentlemen who have faith in this remedy would cross the Atlantic and travel over the single State of Minnesota only. It has an area nearly as large as that of France, a soil of the most marvellous fertility, capable of raising in profusion every kind of grain or fruit adapted to the temperate zone. The natural herbage of the prairies is unrivalled for grazing purposes. The soil is practically self-draining, and for twenty or thirty years to come it will show, under constant cropping, no signs of exhaustion. And these lands may be BAD TIMES. 17 had by any who will cultivate and im- prove them, if not for nothing, yet on terms which enable an industrious, prudent man to pay for them in good times out of the surplus profits of a few years. Remote as this State looks on the map, nets of railways intersect it in every direction ; and though on the very verge of the western tier of States, fifteen hundred miles from the nearest eastern sea-board, everything the British farmer grows can be raised there and placed in the English market at a price less than that at which he can produce it, and the development of this country is year by year making rapid and gigantic strides. Seen from the western side of the Atlantic, the occupation of the British farmer is gone. The landowner must submit to the inevit- able fate of the investor whose securities *' shrink " in his hands. For the tenant- c 18 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. farmer, if trade or commerce does not suit his means or capacity, emigration is the only prospect open — emigration, with all the available capital he can gather together, with his trained skill and experience, and labourers whom he knows and can trust to follow him across the sea. For him there is thus an assured and prosperous future. The case of the agricultural labourer, as a class, is, I confess, a dark and difficult one, and I leave the question to be discussed by others more able to cope with it than I am. My object is not to assume the role of the political economist. It is to give a lifelike and graphic picture of one of the American States, in which five years of my own life have been happily spent, and to demonstrate beyond all doubt the possibility of a prosperous future on its fertile plains, for those to whom such a future seems hopeless and impossible at home. BAD Tums. 19 As I writ© these lines the Soytkia is steaming with myself on board out of New York harbour. In an hour or two the New World will have folded front rue for ever- more* And now thfitthe hour of parting has Qome, it is not without a feeling akin to pain that I bid it farewell. To have seen New America, to have studied carefully its political and social life, is to have gaiined a new light in trying to solve some of the problems which distract men's minds at this moment so painfully at home. I shall carry with me into the stiff, conventional life of the Old World something of the genial,, buoy ant, free, energetic spirit of a young people. The pen of the journalist will run with a freer play when it has once been accustomed to ply its, calling among men where the only social superiority recognised is that of the power of intellect or of money. The pages which follow will c 2 '20 FIVE TEAES m MINNESOTA. be written at intervals during the home- ward passage, on neutral ground, as it were, undisturbed by the surroundings of either the Old World or the New. They will help to relieve the tedium of an ocean- voyage. And if they present to my readers views of American scenes and of American life and manners which are perhaps new and unfamiliar, and if I can set before them in strong relief the realities of an emigrant's life among their " kin beyond sea," and help them to solve success- fully the problem — no easy one, by the! way — of a happy and prosperous exile, if exile it must be with any — then shall I not in vain have left these " Footprints on the sands of Time." ( 21 ) CHAPTER II. " OUTWARD BOUND. The change from the civilisation of old historical lands to what in imagination appears the wilderness is one which can only be realised by those who have made the experiment. To leave the culture, the society, and all the delightful associations of a great capital for life in a distant state, removed hardly by a generation from an Indian hunting-ground, is a step which, however powerful the reasons which urge to it, can never be taken without grave and serious thought. I confess I know no sadder moment for the man to whom books and cultivated friends and all the associa- 22 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. tions of life in cities have become almost the necessities of his nature, than that in which he decides upon the final plunge into the dark and unknown stream of an emi- grant's life. Never do the old surroundings seem so dear as in the busy days when the outfit is being got ready,. the passage across the ocean arranged for, the farewell letters written, the farewell visits paid. The pain of parting can never be absent, and I should not augur well for the future of any man who, with undimmed eye or unmoved heart, could see his native land fade from him for evermore. The voyage across the Atlantic has been so often described that it might seem, to most readers, almost as familiar as the trip across the Straits of Dover. And yet to me everything appeared so new and strange that I may, perhaps, be pardoned if I think it worth while to write down "OUTWARD BOUND." 23 my own recollections of the long journey of more than three thousand miles of watery way which separates the Old World from the New. The eventful morning came at last, after weeks of anxious preparation. The hall was full of boxes ; cabs stood ready before the door, breakfast was strangely silent, and tears would rush unbidden to some eyes. The farewells were said ; the parting messages given ; the promises made to write from the new home; and we were fairly on our way to the New World. The bustle of Euston Square station — the long string of railway carriages — the curious glance of strangers at our baggage, and the train was whirling fast through the dear familiar counties of Old England. How peaceful looked the pretty villages, with their grey church towers and weather- beaten roofs nestling in woods fresh with 24 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. the tender green of early spring! The startled sheep turned, as we flew by, to look us a mute farewell. Frisky colts in their pastures galloped mockingly at our side. It was our last sight of the sweet, well-known fields, and but little was spoken on the journey as we gazed wist- fully at the old scenes we had loved so well. But now the smoke of the great northern sea-port, the tall masts of its shipping standing clear against the sky, come in sight. We are glad to rest one quiet night more at the Adelphi. What curious thoughts cross one's mind, strained at such times to a pitch of unnatural ex- citement ! . I remember thinking that this was, perhaps, my last glass of " sherry and bitters," and almost blushed at the idea of the pretty barmaid reading possibly my guilty thoughts. "OUTWAED BOUND." 25 Our boxes are gone to the tender, a hurried breakfast is over, and with friendly wishes from our host for a safe and happy- voyage we stand soon among a crowd of strangers, exiles like ourselves, on the vessel's landing stage ; and in a few minutes the waiting tender brings us to the Egypt's side. Her steam ip up; the parting bell rings ; handkerchiefs wave from the shore ; last words are Iqst in the noise; and then the shore fades away by degrees, and we are putting out at racing speed to sea. We try to make all snug in our cabins — wonderfully tiny they look too — and stagger up the " companion " on deck to take our final look at Home, and make acquaintance with our fellow- voyagers. Pleasant companions were many of them, and with more than one among the number we parted at last on the shores of the New World with feelings 26 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. saddened by the thought that we should meet them never more ! In a day or two we got our " sea legs," and I remember how the welcome " bells " used to strike a chord of responsive joy in our heart — or pericardium. What a de- lightful time it was ! No letters to answer, or to write, No postman's knock. No tax-collector to pay. No income-tax paper to fill up. No newspapers to read. No one to worry us about unpleasant busi- ness — duns and bores, and dinner-parties and evening dress, and all the dreary shackles of civilisation on land, we had escaped from them for a few brief, glorious days on the blue waters of the mighty Atlantic. The steerage passengers, about four hundred in number, were a strange and interesting sight, and to some extent a saddening one too. It was but the old "OUTWARD BOUND." 27 mother-country "casting forth the children she was unable to nourish at her bosom to seek a new home and a new country on a foreign shore. Many were apparently agricultural labourers, driven out by the distress even then making itself felt in rural districts. Some were broken-down mechanics who had failed evidently in life. Old people were there, fast tottering into the grave, emigrating too late to take root on a fresh soil ; swarms of little children, to whom the home of their birth would be, in after-life, but a dim, impalpable tradition from their elders; young girls seeking service in America, but likely enough to be swallowed up and lost in the whirlpool of vice in its great cities. Many seemed to have no settled notion of where they were going beyond New York, and would, in all likelihood, drift aimless and helpless, like some log before the wind, to remain in the 28 FIYB TEARS IN MINNESOTA. New World as poor and shiftless and miserable as they had been in the Old. Perhaps the sight of these guideless wan- derers sowed in my mind the first germ which has borne its fruit in these pages, and turned my thoughts to a practical stu(it of the great question of emigration to the Western States, where that knowledge which is power in a new land robs it of many of its dangers, and most of its diflSculties. The voyage was a fair one, and unevent- ful, but for an Atlantic gale which lasted a couple of days. At night we used to feel the great ship stand still and tremble on the crest of the giant waves ; and the sight when morning broke on the troubled sea can never be forgotten. The great ocean billows were as high as a London two- story house, and there can be no more thrilling sensation than the rush down "OUTWARD BOUND." 29 of one wave into the sea's boiling trough, to be swept instantaneously up another — presuming always one has a well-ordered istomach ! It seemed strange, with all one had heard of the ocean highway and the dangers of collision, that we sighted but half a dozen vessels on our way out. Near the Banks of Newfoundland we saw, a mile or two off, some huge icebergs glittering like monster diamonds on the sapphire sea. Once water spouted high into the air some distance away told us the leviathan of the deep was near ; and almost every day shoals of porpoises gambolled at the ship's side. A couple of days from New York, and the pretty-sea gulls hovering round uneasily and following in the ship's wake were welcome messengers heralding the approach to land. And then the pilot boat Jbove in sight, and we knew that the voyage^ 30 FIVE YEAKS IN MINNESOTA. was fast drawing to an end. A lucky bet on " No. 14 " — the boat's number printed in large black letters on a white sail— made me the fortunate and happy winner of a bottle of champagne. Instead of a fierce piratical-looking seaman, as I had fondly imagined a pilot to be, a small middle- aged man with a game leg and the aii of a journeyman tailor stepped on board, and shaking hands phlegmatically with our good captain took charge of the ship. Dancing on deck in the bright moon- light nights, almost as light as day, bowls of punch in the saloon, more bowls in: "somebody's" cabin with the key-hole- stopped up, and ulsters hung across the.. door to keep tbe secret of the lights, till early one breezy morning, after ten days-' at sea, we steamed slowly into New ' York harbour. There we parted, fellow- i "OUTWAED BOUND." 31 voyagers who had wandered together across the wide ocean, then but to part again for ever, and be swallowed up in the illimitable vastness of the New World. Day after day, year in year out, the Old World pours this mighty living freight on the shores of the New. The pressure at home seems never relieved, while across the sea are lying millions upon millions of acres waiting only for the plough of the husbandman to be driven through their fertile bosom to become new homes, which can furnish present plenty, and ultimate wealth, to countless myriads. New York, with its magnificent haven, is a wonderful sight. Crowded with great transatlantic steamers, and gay with a countless fleet of ships from whose mast- heads are floating the many-coloured flags of all the nations of the world, it is an 32 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. entrance gate worthy of the great and varied territory on to which it opens. The hills around the city were bright with the fresh green of early spring. The country houses of New York's merchant- princes, embosomed in their shady gardens, and the English-looking steeples of New York's hundred churches, would have re- minded one of home, had it not been for the sky of brilliant, dazzling blue which spread overhead, instead of the~ smoke and fog-laden pall which canopies London. But the city, divided as it is picturesquely by the straits which cut it with their watery ways into three separate pieces, is in some respects disappointing. There is a crowd and bustle and hurry not seen in London even in the busy times before underground railways relieved the traflSc of the streets. Business seems to be the beginning and end of all things. There "OUTWARD BOUND." 33 are no loungers to be seen ; no boulevard fl&neurs ; and not many pretty coquettisbly dressed promenaders, bent on nothing more serious than shop- window inspection. Not a uniform brightens the streets. The clank of the sabre and the jingle of the spur, so familiar in European capitals, are unheard in New York. The carriages in this republican land have few liveried servants, except here and there a negro coachman ia sombre blue. Broadway is imposing from its very length, but a street of ten miles composed of the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, . the Eing at Vienna, Oxford Street and Pall Mall, Eegent Street and Whitechapel, with the London Docks as a distant background, is a somewhat incongruous medley. Here too is the apotheosis of advertising. Telegraph wires span Broadway from the house-tops, on which will be swung a gigantic boot D 34 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. or gun or stove-pipe hat as the case may be. Flaming placards cover every vacant space, and a city which has one of the grandest situations in the world leaves upon a stranger, at the first glance, the impression of want of taste. But a more intimate acquaintance with New York soon dispels the passing illusion, and a few days spent in one of its princely hotels, such as the "Windsor or the Brunswick on Fifth Avenue, which dwarf gilded palaces like the Grand at Paris, or the stately structures which front the blue Mediterranean at Nice ; or wandering in its magnificent Central Park, where Young America airs his high-bred "trotters"; or lounging in the Man- hattan, or New York Club, most hospitably opened to passing strangers who have the advantage of introductions, soon teaeh one that New York is one of the finest capitals " OUTWARD BOUND." 35 in the world. Elevated railroads carry from place to place with more comfort and fresh air than on those dismal voyages by the "Underground," whose smoke and blackness recall one of the fabled " circles " of Dante's ' Inferno.' Plethoric ferry-boats, monster editions of the old Oxford pleasure barges, in which I sailed on the placid bosom of the meadow-bound sedgy Thames, "in the days long since [alas!] gone by," carry one across the broad watery roads which separate New York from Brooklyn or Jersey city, with more freedom and safety than by the via dolorosa of London Bridge or Southwark, wedged often in one solid string of omnibuses aud cabs. Thirty-six hours' travel in a "Pullman," where luxurious meals were served in the hotel car, just like a miniature restaurant, and luxurious beds enjoyed at night, a D 2 36 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. complete toilet made in tlie morning, with clothes brushed and boots cleaned by an obliging "darkey " — so we rushed, at ex- press speed, through the " black country " of Pennsylvania, the rich farming lands of Ohio, and the swamps and forests of Indiana ; on to the " Queen of the West," Chicago. It seemed impossible to realise that fifty years ago this beautiful city was a little fishing station on Lake Michigan, with a population of but seventy souls. And though within the last twenty years desolating fires have twice almost reduced it to ruins, it has yet risen each time from its ashes grander and more imposing than before, and stands now without a rival as the great industrial and commercial capital of the New North-West. Here was re- newed a friendship formed ten years before in dear old papal Eome, with its Catholic bishop, a genial Irishman, who, as we "OUTWARD BOUND." 37 wandered together in the shady gardens on the Pincian Hill, and watched the gorgeous Italian sunsets on the dreamy Campagna, had often bade me welcome to his " little Vatican " beyond the sea. Another day and night's travel by the shores of mighty Lake Michigan, and through the " Badger State " of Wisconsin, and we reached the pretty town of La Crosse, on the great Mississippi, its yellow waters flowing sluggishly along between bold, sandy hills. We strolled down to its banks as the May sun was slowly settling down to rest, like a huge disc of fire, beneath the dark forests of pine. Here was a crowd of Winnebago Indians, some squatting on the earth, others striding along with the slow, stealthy tread which distinguishes the red man, the women clad in dirty red blankets, and looking as though they had made an impromptu 38 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. toilet with the bedclothes. A little Indiaii boy made friendly advances to a little flaxen-haired lad of our party. "One touch of nature," childhood's instinctive love of sport, bridged over in a moment' the long interval which divides savagedom from civilisation, and made them "kin." The Indians' "birch bark" canoes, narrow as an " outrigger," were moored to the river's bank, and after a while the men seated themselves in the bow and lit their red-clay pipes, from the famous Pipestone Quarry, which are Indian chic, while the ungainly looking squaws balanced them- selves skilfully, and seizing the paddles rowed away silently into the gloaming, and proved to my eastern mind that they had at any rate learned to " Paddle their own canoe." The Mississippi here divides the State of Wisconsin from that of Minnesota, which "OUTWARD BOUND." 39 latter was our destination. The " outward bound" journey had been safely accom- plished. In the chapters whick follow will be given to the reader the impressions of the succeeding five years* 40 FIVE YEAPS IN MINNESOTA. CHAPTER III. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. In the exact centre of the North American continent, at the point which the wave of advancing civilisation^ rolling in un- ceasingly from the Atlantic coast, has but lately reached, lies a country nearly as large as France, with every variety of scenery which distinguishes the most favoured regions of the temperate zone. By its eastward boundary sweeps the broad and majestic stream of the Mississippi, which rises in one of its northern lakes, and continues thence its long journey of more than two thousand miles, till, among almost tropical growths, and beneath a southern MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 41 sky, the mighty river falls into the Grulf of Mexico. To the north lie the possessions of the British Crown, and to the south the vast grazing lands of Iowa. To the west, heyond the fertile valley of the Bed River, is a region rich in agricultural and mineral wealth, not yet embraced within the sister- hood of States, and from which the red man must ere long be driven to reser- vations more distant still. This favoured and beautiful country is placed near the outermost limit of the great Far West. Its name, in the language of the Dahkotahsj the wild Indian aborigines who for long generations inhabited this romantic region, is Minnesota, land of the shy-tinted water. And it is the youngest of the western States of the Union. A vast table-land, some two thousand feet above the sea-level, it has many of the characteristics of a mountainous district, though to the eye its 42 PIVE TEABS IN MINNESOTA. general appearance is that of a wide park region, dimpled with wood-girt lakes, which dot in every direction the undulating plains of green which stretch away in endless' vista to the far-off horizon; or tracked by broad timber-laden rivers or shallow streams, which wind like silver threads through the rich river bottoms, flanked on either side by bold hills, clothed with luxuriant forest foliage. Here in the summer time the pelican fishes in the streams. The crane and the heron sweep with slow majestic flight at sundown to their nests on the banks of the wooded lakes. Wild-fowl, from the wood-duck with his gorgeous plumage, and the far- famed canvas-back, to the humble snipe and teal, sport on their surface. The wild geese, with their restless cry, fly in great flocks overhead. Prairie chickens start up in countless coveys from the long prairie MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 43 grass. Sly reynard, and tlie little light- brown prairie wolf, may sometimes be seen scudding along by a hillside, or watching with curious eyes the strange sights of an unknown civilisation. Northward the tree- partridge, or pheasant, whirrs up suddenly beneath the horse's feet, and the antlered deer bounds away to the shelter of the deep glades. The great timber wolf and the black bear of the North American con- tinent still linger among their old haunts in the vast primeval forests, and the stately moose and elk roam sometimes in lonely grandeur beneath the giant oaks and elms. These were the old hunting- grounds of the Sioux and Chippewa In- dians. Now iron roads intersect them in all directions, along which thriving towns are springing up everywhere ; and stretch- ing away on either side one sees neat homesteads, around which wheat-fields 44 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. wave their golden ears in the summer wind, as it rustles through the towering maize. Herds of cattle are grazing peacefully in the river meadows, by the lake banks, and on the green rolling plains of the old Indian prairie, and flocks of sheep dot in every direction with fleecy spots the wooded hillsides. The rich alluvial valley of the Mississippi brings the great logs from its pine forests to be carried by the mighty stream to the " city of the laughing water," Minneapolis, where are some of the largest lumber mills in the world. This fertile country is capable of supporting an agri- cultural population of 5,000,000, not crowded together as in older countries, but on farms half a mile square.* With only * Laud in Minnesota is divided into townships of six miles square, which constitute an election district for local government and taxation. These are sub- MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 45 700,000 inhabitants, it raised in 1877 forty million bushels of the finest wheat in the world, and in 1878 near fifty million. The climate of Minnesota presents those features which might naturally be looked for in the northern belt of the temperate regions, and at the great distance which it lies from the sea-board. The summers have an almost tropical character, which forces vegetation with a rapidity and luxuriance unknown in our own island home. The winters are characterised by a clear bracing cold, an atmosphere still and transparently cfear, a sky unclouded, except by occasional snow-storms. Lakes and streams freeze up towards the end of November, sometimes divided into sections one mile square, and these again into quarter sections of half a square inile (commonly called a " farm "), which may again be divided into "eighties" and "forties." The lines of division correspond with the points of the compass. 46 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. to a depth of several feet, to open again at seasons varying from February to April. Severe as is the cold at times, the ther- mometer ranging often under zero, and registering occasionally 20° to 30 below for a day or two at a time, the stillness of the air, and the entire absence of damp, render one little sensible of its effects. Spring bursts forth almost instantaneously on the approach of May, and autumn is often prolonged late into November by the lovely " Itidian summer," a season of almost magical beauty and sweetness, when dreamy days of summer heat alternate with nights of frost, Arctic " sun-dogs," huge fiery rings, sometimes double, which encircle the sun in the severest days of winter, are meteorological phenomena of strange ,and striking beauty, while on sultry summer nights the moon shines with a power and brilliance unknown to our own regions. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 47 The climate of Minnesota is, perhaps, one of the most healthy in the world. Con- sumptive patients are constantly sent there, to recover strength and vigour, with a rapidity which might only be looked for among the orange groves of beautiful Florida, which meets under a southern sky the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Grulf of Mexico. In its woods are growing in wild profusion the fruits which flourish in English gardens. Yines, with giant stems, trail their beautiful tendrils over the forest branches. Plum-groves put forth their blossoms of snow in the spring- tide. The wild raspberry and gooseberry and currant are found among the under- growth of every forest, while the earth is carpeted in summer with beds of the tiny wild strawberries which nestle in sheltered nooks among the A-ips of Swit- zerland and the Tyrol. Each month, from 48 PIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. spring to fall, the green prairie is covered with a succession of wild flowers, all strange to us at home, which dimple its face with spots of ever- varying beauty. The traveller who passes for the first time through a newly settled country like the southern and western parts of the State of Minnesota, or the northern portion of Iowa, is struck insensibly with the contrast between the magnificence of the scenery, the rich agricultural capabilities of the soil, and the apparent poverty of those who are engaged in its cultivation. He seems to be wandering through some vast and stately park of Nature's own laying out ; and the eye turns half expectantly to the grand sites which meet one here and there on lofty hillsides, for the country mansion with its gabled roofs and hoary walls, and its muUioned windows throwing back the dazzling reflection of the evening MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 49 sun. But instead, nothing is seen but here and there, at uncertain intervals, a rude log-cabin and a straw cattle-barn, with a few acres of the surrounding land under the plough, which seem like incongruous blots on the beautiful landscape. Let a farmer's eye but examine for a moment the dark rich soil, almost as black as the fens of Cambridgeshire, and he will tell you in a moment that this must be one of the finest agricultural districts in the world. Why, then, are the results seen on every side apparently so small ? The explanation is simple enough. In little more than a century, an area of country extending over a distance as great as that from London to St. Petersburg in breadth, and from London to Naples in depth, and comprising the eastern half of the United States, has been settled up by a process similar to that now going on in new States which, twenty or E 50 PIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. thirty years ago, were Indian huntmg- groutds, hardly trodden by a solitary white. In each State, as the advancing wave of civilisation opens it up, the government lands are offered to settlement under what is known as the " Homestead Law."* As spring opens you will see caravans ' of what are known as " prairie schooners " — waggons covered with canvas stretched on hoops, drawn commonly by oxen or cows, -and occasionally mules — wending their slow way westward, carrying the family and * In Minnesota or Iowa 160 acres of land may be " entered " (as it is called) beyond ten miles from a line of railway, and 80 acres within those limits, and a residence of five years, and certain improve- ments made, entitle the settler to a government deed at expiration of such five years' residence. And throughout these States 80 acres of land, including the homestead buildings, with certain stock, etc., are exempt from execution for debt. Very little land open to " homestead entry " is now available at this date in Minnesota, and what there is lies north ; in Iowa, as far as my knowledge goes, none. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 51 modest household goods of the new settlers to their distant home. In this waggon they camp out, like gipsies, till a hut and barn are built, a well dug, etc. Indeed, there still exists in the State houses, nearly underground, covered with a roof of thatch, the whole not appearing more than a foot or two above the surface of the earth, and known as " Gropher-holes," which were the habitations of the earliest pioneers of settlement, principally hunters and trap- pers. Yisit such a country in five years, and you will see neat farmhouses, luxuriant groves, sheltering securely from the prairie winds, good frame barns, and a general air of thrift and prosperity. Come again in five years more and you will find probably another generation of settlers. The land ha? been fenced, and divided into convenient fields. Pastures of timothy and clover have displaced, round the homestead, B 2 52 ITVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. the wild grass of the prairie. Spacious farmhouses with their vast barns and out- buildings meet you on all sides. Herds of cattle are grazing in the rich water- meadows, and flocks of sheep dot here and there the shady hillsides. Towns and villages, with their mills and manufactories and steepled roofs, and pretty houses in their trim gardens, have blotted out the lonely wilderness you remember ten yea,rs ago, and you look in vain for the old landmarks. At the head of the navigation . of the Mississippi, on one of the most strikihgly beautiful sites in the world, lies the capital of Minnesota, St. Paul, and ten miles higher up the stream the great " lumbering and flour- ing" city of Minneapolis, which possesses in the picturesque Falls of St. Anthony the largest water-power in the North-west. Together these two cities^ with a popular. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 53 tion of about 54,000 each, form the twin- capital of the State, rivals in beauty, in enterprise, in wealth, and in all the elements of material prosperity. Year after year the interval between them is being gra- dually filled up by human habitations, and, judging from their marvellous growth in the past, they will form, in a few years to come, but one vast metropolis on the banks of the Grreat River, the peerless, queenlike, capital of the great North-west. It was a beautiful morning in May as I ascended the Observatory on Summit Avenue to see the bird's-eye view of the "saintly city" which lies in the broad valley of the Mississippi. Beneath me was a richly wooded landscape, probably forty miles in diameter, the foliage of the trees, and the soft, yielding turf, of a rich, vivid, lustrous greeii I never saw equalled in Europe, not eveh on the fair plains of 54 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. Lombardy, viewed from Monte Moro, the stately background of Lago Maggiore. Winding through it by a very devious course stretched the tawny stream of the Mississippi, some half a mile in breadth. On either side were broad meadows dotted with houses and mills and churches. These had evidently once been the river-bed. In the glacial period it must have flowed a gigantic stream several miles in breadth, between the cliffs of pure white limestone which now peep out here and there in dazzling contrast to the dark olive-green of the woods, which have almost covered them like a protecting mantle. In the centre of the stream lies Baptist Hill, a huge pile of rocks and boulders and gravel and sand, now almost covered with foliage, and forming a pretty island, which must have been deposited there in some far-oif age by a whirl or eddy of the wild waters MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 55 and icebergs. In the river valley is the modqrn city, its streets gradually stretching up their long arms towards the surrounding cliffs. The towers and steeples of stately churches break the uniformity of the buildings below ; huge warehouses, crowded with furs from the icy regions which lie to the north, or with the tropical fruits borne thither on the river's broad bosom from the fair southern lands which line its banks, flank the quays. Fairy-like iron bridges, which look in the distance like the delicate tracery of lacework, span the river in several directions. Here too converge from all parts of the mainland a dozen lines of iron road. On the river huge rafts of logs are floating, the harvest of the great pine-forests which fringe its head-waters, waiting for a flood-tide to carry them to their destinations in the south.- Steamers convey the traveller from this point over 56 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. the long two-thoTisaDd-mile course of the Mississippi through every variety of climate and scenery till it reaches its outlet in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most ro- mantic and delightful excursions in the world. Upon the cliffs, which, rise in lofty terraces, tier upon tier, above the river valley, are the princely houses of the men who have grown rich side by side with the mar- vellously exotic growth of this new country- Nestling in parks, where the primeval oaks and beeches still stand in their old grandeur, are country mansions, which might have been designed by a Scott or a Pugin, some built of the dazzling white limestone of the surrounding cliffs, others of a delicate pink stone found in a neighbouring quarry, with roofs of variegated slate, and picturesque dormers, and lordly stabling, and model dairies, like nothing I have ever seen but MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 57 such places as Strawberry Hill, or some of the villas whose velvet lawns stretch down near Richmond or Twickenham to the banks of Father Thames. But forty years ago, and from the same spot you would have looked upon one vast wilderness, untrodden by the foot of civilisation. It was a lone Indian hunting-ground, where the only sign of human existence was the thin blue smoke of the redskin's wigwam, curling upwards in the clear air ; or now and then his long narrow canoe of " birch- bark " might have been seen gliding silently down stream. Where huge warehouses now stand, and a dozen Hnes of railway converge from all parts of the Union, and a hundred trains go and come daily, was one vast swamp, inaccessible from the dense jungle and tall yellow canebrake which encircled it, and covered with the queer houses of the musk-rat and the beaver. On the site of the 58 PIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA- great Merchants' Hotel, with its busy crowd of strangers ebbing and flowing continually from every part of the continent, wild-fowl swarmed, and the only sound whicb broke the deathlike stillness was the crack of the Indian's musket. In the openings in the great woods above the river the wild-deer and the buffalo browsed peacefully in count- less herds ; and on spots where stately country houses lie embosomed in their shady gardens, and croquet and lawn-tennis are played in the latest Paris costumes^ the great she-bear reared her cubs, and the lynx and the wild-cat sought their prey. The only sign of this not far distant past in the beautiful streets of the modern city is an occasional squaw shambling along with the quick shuffling gait which distinguishes the Indian race. In the shop windows, among high-heeled Parisian boots of the latest modern cut are lying embroidered MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 59 moccasins, or Indian bows and arrows ; or on the side-walk, an Indian canoe, much used by American sportsmen for duck- shooting. By the side of fat Lincolns are hanging in the butchers' shops in winter half a dozen great black bears ; and elk and cariboo are sold by the pound like beef. Forty years ago the first log-cabin was built in St, Paul. It was erected by a half- breed Canadian coureur-des-hois, who had been expelled from Fort Snelling, the head- quarters of the Indian agency, for selling whisky to the soldiers and Indians. He was a coarse, ill-looking, low-browed fellow, with but one Cyclopean eye. The exiled M. Parrant, coming down stream^ sighted a spot at the mouth of a creek which flows out of " Fountain Cave " that seemed likely to suit his purpose. It was near the river, where the Indians and others could paddle to his very door ; and 60 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. there too he could get his supplies easily, and if necessary dilute "the article" properly by a judicious admixture of the unfailing stream flowing out of the cave. Thus was this beautiful city " founded "— by a one-eyed retailer of whisky. The site of the future capital of the New North-west was determined, not by the commanding and picturesque bluffs, not by the broad and majestic stream which at this point is the only entrance gate to the trade and commerce of the rich countries which stretch southwards on its banks for more than two thousand miles, but solely as a convenient spot to sell whisky, without the pale of the law ! At the close of the year 1838 nine cabins graced. the future city, inhabited by a motley group of half-breed Canadians and Swiss French, who, true to the example of their founder, drove a brisk trade in the illicit sale of whisky to Indians. MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 61 In 1841 the first church was erected in St. Paul by the piety of the Catholic Mission at Dubuque. It was a rude log- hut of tamarac-poles, roofed with bark, and surmounted by a simple cross, and so poor, wrote the new priest. Father Galtier, that " it reminded one of the stable at Bethlehem." Such was the first "chapel of St. Paul." Not far from the spot where it stood has been built lately, at an immense cost, de- frayed by the piety of the G-erman colonists of St. Paul, a stately Catholic church, on the model of a well-known basilica at Munich, whose peal of silver bells, as it sounds sweetly, week after week, through the primeval forests, proclaims through all time the victory of Christianity and civilisation over heathenism and savage- dom. Twelve years after the foundation of the city, in the fall of 1850, the dis- tinguished Swedish authoress, Frederika, 62 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. Bremer, visited St. Paul. She says in her entertaining book, ' Homes of the New World ' :— "Scarcely had we touched the shore when the Grovernor of Minnesota and his pretty young wife came on board and invited me to take up my quarters at their house. And there I am now, happy with these kind people, and with them I make excursions into the neighbourhood. The' town is one of the youngest infants of the (xreat West, scarcely eighteen months old I and yet it has in a short time increased to a population of 2000 persons, and in a very few years it will certainly be possessed of 22,000 ; for its situation is as remarkable for its beauty and healthiness, as it is ad-^ vantageous for trade. " As yet, however, the town is but in its infancy, and people manage with such dwellings as they can get. The drawing- MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 63 room of G-overnor Eamsey's house is also his office, and Indians and workpeople and ladies and gentlemen are all alike admitted. In the meantime Mr. Ramsey is building a handsome, spacious house, upon a hill a little out of the city, with beautiful trees around it, and commanding a grand view of the river. If I were to live on the Mississippi, I would live here. It is a hilly region, and on all sides extend beautiful and varying landscapes. '^The city is thronged with Indians. The men for the most part go about grandly ornamented, with naked hatchets, the shafts of which serve them as pipes. They paint themselves so utterly without any taste that it is incredible." If Miss Bremer could visit St. Paul again to-day she would find Governor Ramsey, now United States Secretary-at-War, still living, in a green and vigorous old age, 64 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. comfortably housed in one of its stateliest mansions. The Sioux and the Chippewas who camped in its streets, and even, invaded the office drawing-room of its chief magistrate, have long been removed to distant reservations, and before another generation has passed away their very existence will be but a dim and indistinct tradition, misty and impalpable as the existence to ourselves of the skin-clad savage who hunted deer in the forests of ancient Britain, or assisted at the mystic heathen rites whose only record are the stone-circles and monoliths of Stonehenge. In the Old World, with its slower growth and more gradual development,, the highest, civilisation is a work of centuries. In that New World, which none who have seen it and studied thoughtfully its social and intellectual life, and sought to fathom the depth and breadth of its boundless and MINNESOTA AND ITS TWIN CAPITAL. 65 inexhaustible material wealth, can doubt is destined to be its successor in the near ages to come, life beats with a quicker pulse, and moves with a step more vigorous and rapid, and the work of an ordinary nation's lifetime is often accomplished in a few brief years. The Hon. W. H. Seward — a name well known on both shores of the Atlantic — in a speech delivered at St. Paul in 1860, used the following striking language : — " Here is the place, the central place, where the agriculture of the richest region of North America must pour out its tri- butes to the whole world. On the east, all along the shore of Lake Superior, and west, stretching in one broad plain, in a belt quite across the continent, is a country where State after State is yet to arise, and where the productions for the support of 66 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. society in their old crowded states must be brouglit forth. "I now believe that the ultimate last seat of government on this great continent will be found somewhere within a circle or radius not very far from the spot on which I stand, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi River." ( 67 ) CHAPTER ly. "ON THE prairie" AN ENGLISH COLONY, Some twenty years ago a dashing yonng captain of cavalry, proceeding southward on a government mission, stopped with his little troop of soldiers at Fairmont, then the only inhabited spot in the beautiful lake district of Southern Minnesota. But two settlers, both of whom are still true to their early love, were then living in this fair but lonely wilderness. Their rude log- cabins nestled in the grand primeval woods which encircle the two picturesque lakes lying to the south of the present village, and which, in memory of those old pioneers of Martin County's early civilisation, are P 2 68 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. Still known as Budd's and Hall's Lakes., The rough and hospitable welcome of th« frontier was generously given to the strangers, and the memory of a portly demijohn offered by those early settlers of the Far West to the weary and thirsty travellers still lives as a " thing of beauty " in the memory of at least one of the party. As they mounted their horses at day- break, and said farewell to their hosts, naught met their view, as they stood on the green knoll which is now the centre of the flourishing county seat, but one vast prairie, sweeping as far as the eye could reach, broken to the north only by the dense woods which encircle Lake Buffalo, overtopped by the " lone cedar," whose giant limbs towered aloft above his fellows on a bold promontory stretching out into the water, a landmark and a beacon for many a mile around, and memorable as the "ON THE PRAIRIE" — ENGLISH COLONY. 69 spot where the last Indian camp was held. To the south the green ocean stretched away to the horizon, with nothing visible on its broad bosom but the distant woods of East Chain, like some great ship pur- suing its lonely way to a far-off port. Twenty years have gone by, a period which, in older countries, sweeps placidly over the face of hamlet or of village, and leaves hardly a trace behind. But here, in the Far West, it seems as if some magician's wand had done in a moment, by a touch of enchantment, what it demands centuries of the slow and labouring steps of ordinary progress to effect. These lonely regions, then an untracked wilderness, where the buffalo still ranged and the red man hunted in the woods, have changed beneath the fertilising wave of immigration into rich farming communities, where the prosperous homestead meets the eye on every hand; 70 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. and fields of golden grain and yellow maize are gradually displacing the wild prairie of the Indian ; and flocks of sheep and herds of lowing cattle make the air musical in the beautiful summer-time with a voice that tells of wealth, plenty, and prosperity. The buffalo has gone, and the only trace of his existence is in the whitened bonee which the lake waves sometimes throw up. The red man has disappeared, driven into an ever remoter wilderness, thougK some- times the plough disturbs his crumbling bones in their shallow grave, or brings to the surface his stone pipe or flint arrow- heads. But the gay and gallant captain of cavalry, with whom my story opened, still lives. Peace reigns over his country. He has exchanged the sword for the toga, and the arena of arms for that of political war- fare ; and but a short time ago he returned, erect, manly, and handsome as ever to " ON THE PEAIEIE " — ENGLISH COLONY. 71 greet his old friends of the frontier, and preside as judge of assize in all the glory (figuratively) of judicial ermine, on the spot from which he had once looked, a young soldier of fortune, on the pathless wilderness. Here, on the shores of a soft inland sea, fringed to the water's edge with majestic timber, at a spot which tradition points to as a favourite hunting-ground of the un- tamable Sioux Indians, I made my trans- atlantic home. A pretty white cottage of wood, with its broad verandah sheltering from the fierce summer sun of those northern latitudes, overlooked an Eng- lish-like lawn, dotted with clumps of cedar and oak, sloping down to the pebbly shore, strewn with the stone arrow-heads of the wild savages who roamed there in the ages long since gone by. Nothing more eventful than the commonplace 72 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. occurrences of country farm life disturbed , the even tenor of my days. The seasons came and went, year after year, in all their changeful beauty. With each springtide returned the myriads of wild-fowl which had fled at winter's approach to more southerly lands. The mourning doves uttered their plaintive notes in the neighbouring woods ; the wild geese flew in flocks of hundreds over the housetop, uttering their shrill cry within easy rifle-shot; and in a clump of gnarled and weather-beaten cedars by the water's edge the great blue cranes made their nest, and reared their young year after year undisturbed, and sacred from harm by eager sportsmen. Here have been found long-sought rest for an overworked brain, time for quiet study, leisure to digest the reading and travel of bygone years ; while before me, as in. some moving drama, have passed "ON THE PRAIRIE" — ENGLISH COLONY. 73 across the stage of life beyond the sea some of the most stirring and momentous events of the century. On my way back . now, to take my old place in the ranks of literature in the busy world of London life, I turn a grateful thought to these scenes, which stand. out like a peaceful idyl in the midst of an active life, and devote the rest of this chapter to a picture of my home surroundings in the New World. Martin County lies on the extreme south-western boundary of the State, on the confines of Iowa, and is remarkable, not only for its rich alluvial soil of great fertility, but as being the lake district, par excellence, of Southern Minnesota. It is intersected by three parallel chains, running from north to south, and connected by narrow winding creeks. They vary from a few roods to several miles in extent. Some are bordered only by the green 74 ' FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. verdure of the prairie. Others are fringed with woods of oak, beech, walnut, and occasionally of cedar. They abound with fish, and in the season are literally alive with myriads of wild-fowl, ducks, geese, herons, and cranes, and sometimes wild swans, which return, year after year, from more southerly lands to make a summer home on their banks. In looking at the future of a country — for this is a question which should always enter more or less into considerations which influence a settler's mind — it should be remembered that just as rivers or great inland seas are necessary for the foundation of large cities, so a great watershed, whether it be confined in one broad volume of water or broken up by the configuration of the land into streams and lakes, has always been a necessary element of all agricultural, and more especially of pastoral, prosperity. "ON THE PEAIEIE" — ENGLISH COLONY. 75 from the times when Lot and Abraham grew too rich in flocks and herds for the land to hold them both, and Lot, to whom the choice fell, turned his eyes to the fertile plains of the Jordan and chose them for his dwelling-place, because they were " well watered." On the banks of these beautiful lakes, said to be upwards of seventy in number in an area of less than thirty miles square, there are hundreds of farms adapted to successful stock-raising, with its necessary accompaniment, mixed husbandry, which can hardly be surpassed in any part of the world. And the soil is so even in its richness and fertility that the presence of the charming lake may of itself be well left to decide the choice. It is strange that in the early settlement of the country so many should have chosen the open prairie, did we not remember that comparative 76 ' FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. want of means put stock-raising out of their reach. Rut we may still be thankful that to this fact we owe the many picturesque groves which dot the prairie in every direction, and seem gradually to be temper- ing the rigour of the winter storms. But a lake district in every country which has reached a certain stage of civili- sation has a money value of another kind, which may well enter into a settler's estimate. Take the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; the lochs of Scotland ; the glorious inland seas which in Switzerland and Italy lie bathed in sunlight and warmth, within view of the snow-clad summits and gloomy glaciers of the Apennines and the Alps. All these are rich pastoral countries. And they are countries which also derive a source of wealth almost exhaustless from the picturesqueness and beauty which attract to their shores travel- "ON THE PEAIRIE "—ENGLISH COLONY. 77 lers and health-seekers from regions more commonplace and uninteresting. Such a future is destined, doubtless, for this district of Minnesota, when a few years more have filled its every corner with prosperous homesteads and well-tilled fields. When the twin capital of the State shall have merged into one vast city, past which the mighty " Father of Waters " rolls his giant stream, and what are now tiny hamlets shall have sprung up beneath the magic tide of immigration into prosperous centres of commerce and industry, then must this lovely country take its natiiral place as the spot where the tired man of business or the weary brain-worker in great cities, and the throng to whom the possession of money opens, with all other good things, the charms of Nature's beauties, will flock for recreation and for rest. The bailks of these lovely inland seas will be dotted with 78 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. villas, nestling in their leafy woods of green. The tiny sail-boat, with its snow-white plumage, will dance gaily on their silvery bosoms, and the crisp breezes which cool the burning summer air will be the health- giving draughts for which the dwellers in the smoke and dust of cities will be glad to pay. The early history of this county does not differ from that of a frontier county gener- ally. The " homesteader," that true pio- neer of all civilisation, has been gradu- ally reclaiming, with "the muscles of his brawny arms," acre after acre from Nature's grasp. The log-cabin and the straw-bam, and the little grove of maple- or cotton- wood, have sprung up everywhere. Yet this county would, perhaps, have been no further advanced on the road to prosperity than the sister counties near it, but for the impulse given by a large English iramigra- " ON THE PRAIRIE " — ^ENGLISH COLONY. 79 tion, commenced some years ago, and which deserves, perhaps, more than a passing notice* • In the Western States there are numerous colonies to be met with, and of varied nationalities — German and Swedish " settlements " as they are called — and they are some of the most thriving com- munities, receiving continually fresh aooessions from the old mother countries. In central Minnesota, Dr. Ireland, the admirable coadjutor bishop of St. Paul, has made a most successful experiment with Irish Catholic colonization. Large tracts of land are being settled up by his efforts ; and it is worthy of remark that at whatever disadvantage Irishmen may sometimes appear at home, in the "West they are some of the most industrious and thriving of farmers. Most of these settlers came into the country with very limited means, some almost penniless, and it speaks volumes for Minne- sota that at the end of a few years they are to be found with farms of their own, neat, houses and bams, and a fair amount of stock — free, independent men, instead of the mere hinds and serfs they were at home. Of course such an end has only been attained by dint of hard work, thrift, and sobriety. Land may be bought both in this- country, or on the spot, from any of the railway companies of Minnesota, with certainty of fair dealing. But I 80 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. There are, of course, many English colonies in the States, but they are mainly composed of the class of English labourers. The colony at Fairmont prides itself on being, on the whole, a colony of gentlemen, though I fear, as regards some of its members at any rate, it cannot lay much greater claims to such a character "than its should recommend intending settlers to avoid private land-jobbers, who can only afford to sell land at greatly enhanced prices, and to deal, if not direct with the railway companies, with corporations of known standing and respectability in this country. The price of land varies, of course, materially with locality, nearness to towns or railways, and the amount of settlement in the immediate neighbour- hood. £1 to £2 per acre is about right to-day for unsettled land in western and south-western Minne- sota, or in the north-western part of the adjoining state of Iowa. Close to towns or intended towns, which often spring up in a few months, the land commands more. The railway and government maps and surveys, which describe accurately the precise character of every individual foity acres, enable a purchaser in this country to ascertain with certainty what he is buying. "ON THE PKAIEIE" — ENGLISH COLONY. 81 compatriot colony on the classic shores of Boulogne. It certainly embraces within its ranks nearly every phase of English society. Oxford and Cambridge are each represented by a graduate. There are officers of all branches of the service — artillery and cavalry, navy and infantry, clergymen and journalists,' stockbrokers and architects, sailors and engineers, grocers and millers, drapers and brewers^ would-be country gentlemen and speculators, private soldiers and policemen mounted and on foot, merchants of all kinds, and clerks not a few ; and but two whose profession was that of farming. Among the ladies are a Bavarian countess and an Austrian baron- ess, who hold brevet rank among their English sisters. Most, if not all, of these English settlers are engaged in farming pursuits, and, allow- ing for total want of experience, they have G 82 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. done very fairly. The most successful bean- grower was a London journalist. One of the most enterprising sheep-farmers, and a luminary of the Prairie Farmer, was a London stockbroker, who, true to the instincts of his kind, went in heavily year after year, on the prospect of a European war, or some other eventuality, for a rise in wheat or wool. Some combine the tillage of the soil with mercantile pursuits. Three were partners in the Bank of Fairmont — alas ! at this writing gone into liquidation. Another is the owner of a general store, and of Albion Hall, and also partner with, two other compatriots in a new ten-thousand-dollar grist mill, loyally christened the "Yictoria." The Fairmont brewery was owned by an enterr prising young Britisher, who bade fair to command the trade of the neighbourhood, with his " genuine English ale and porter/' "ON THE PKAIRIE" — ^ENGLISH COLONY. 83 and to be the death of old King Lager. But he too has followed the example of his beer, and " liquidated." True to the tra- ditions of their native shores, others have gone into the " public line." A clergyman's two sons are running a flourishing saloon. Another is kept by a sailor and a miller. One of the most popular and genial hotel- keepers is an ex-London policeman. The United States mail is driven and horsed by Euglishmen. Some have achieved the Frenchman's ambition, and rejoice in being petits rentiers on their ample ten per cent. Indeed the county is in danger of being thoroughly, anglicised, if things go on at their present rate. Englishmen " run for ofiSce" as eagerly as any true-born Yankee. One is president of the village council ; another is a justice of the peace ; a burly young ex-lieutenant R.N. is village marshal : while another young gentleman, whose G 2 84 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. position at home was behind a counter, aspired here to parhamentary honours, and the year before last ran a bad second on the democratic nomination and in the " whisky interest " for the State legislature. The English colony has piously carried its household gods across the Atlantic, and a neat Gothic church, lately consecrated by the Bishop of Minnesota, forms a pretty object in the suburbs of the village. An English colony would be incomplete without its " sport." Some of its members are but too well known on the neighbouring racecourses. They have introduced into Minnesota, for the first time, genuine English "hurdle-races," which are very: popular with the Americans. At the last State Fair in St. Paul the " Britishers," in their red coats and top-boots, flying amid clouds of blinding dust over four-foot hurdles, divided the honours with President "ON THE PRAIRIE" — ENGLISH COLONY. 85 Hayes and the celebrated trotter Earus, who did his mile in 2 min. 13^ sec. One young Englishman, resident near, keeps a small pack of foxhounds at his own expense, and a large " field " is sure to be attracted by the " meets," which are duly chronicled in the county paper. Though the ''hunters" are not always in "hard condition" or " fit to go," and cannot be safely " warranted up to fourteen stone across a stiff country," and there is, now and then, a suspicion of having seen some of them in front of a plough or hitched up to a farm waggon, yet it is presumed by a polite fiction that every gentleman " keeps his hunter." Eed coats (made of flannel by the village tailoress !) are de rigueur ; and a sprinkling of ladies comes out on fine days, among whom are one or two capital horse- women, who don't want a " lead " over a fence^ 86 . FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA: Wolves still linger in the northern .part of the county, but a wolf-hunt here is an excitement in which only the hardiest of riders can indulge. One run of thirty miles in three hours, where. the dead-beatdn wolf swam the Watonwan Eiver — thfe huntsman after him, swimming with one arm, Sind steering his jaded mare with the other — only to be knocked on the head with the hunting-qrop on the opposite bank, would be memorable even in the annals of the Pytchley or the Quorn. But the transplanting of Englishmen from the parent soil into one whose ten- dency is rather to bring out original wild growths, and to reproduce the Briton of a bygone period, untamed by the softening influences of civilisation, has not always been, a happy one in its results. I have observed- that the "muscular Christian" and the devotee to athletic sports have here "ON THE PEAIRIE "—ENGLISH COLONY. 87 displayed a dangerous development to- wards rowdyism. • Freedom has sometimes become licence. The keen capacity for business, the cleverness at a trade, the Yankee "smartness" which is the indis- pensable element of success among men trained to take every advantage in their dealings with, others, because experience has taught that every advantage will be taken of them, have in 'prentice hands re- duced some to the doubtful borderland which separates honesty from dishonesty, a clever " do " from a clumsy swindle. Steady old-fashioned English ways of doing busi- ness I have seen to fail pitiably, and a commercial enterprise on the old time- honoured system learnt at home become the gtave of a competent fortune in a country where " when to trust " and " whom to trust " are the secrets of successful trade, only learnt by such an insight into human 88 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. nature as becomes, by long practice, almost a faculty of second-sigbt. But thougb there are in this colony many honourable exceptions of Englishmen "who have worked hard, held their own, and made money, yet with too many of it3 younger members intemperance has been the fatal rook on which every hope of suc- cessful emigration has been wrecked* A writer who proposes to give a picture of American life and manners at all true to nature must not only touch upon the great question of intemperance, which there assumes an importance unknown at home, hut he is almost compelled, by an observation of the disastrous effects of drink in America, to take a decided side against the use, much less the abuse, of alcoholic stimulants. Personally I am not what is called a " temperance man." The crusade against strong drink carried to the "ON THE PRAIRIE "—ENGLISH COLONY. 89 extreme and fanatical limits it is in America appears to me absurd and irrational. And yet I am unable to disguise from myself the fact that " drink " is fatal to success in every walk of life in a way quite unknown at home ; that it carries with it a social stigma there unfelt in anything like the same degree. And I have come to the conclusion that the extremely dry and ratified atmosphere of these northern latitudes has something to do with the pernicious effects on the system of an amount of alcoholic stimulant which would be comparatively harmless in our own more humid climate. The class who drink malt. liquor alone with impunity, like the sober beer-drinking Bavarian or German, is in America almost unknown. Instead of the orderly Biergarten, where the mechanic or the tradesman can sip his Lager under the shady trees, accompanied often by Frau DO FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. and Kinder, there is nothing but the rowdy, disreputable saloon, where gambling and fighting are every-day occurrences, and into no one of which, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, any woman can enter. Fiery Bourbon and rye whisky are the habitual drinker's beverages, and are a short and rapid " Road to Ruin." I shall recur to this subject in anothet chapter, and will here only record it as my deliberate opinion that "bad whisky" lies at the bottom of the failure of many members of the English colony of which I Write, which certainly bore within it some of the germs and elements of successful Settlement in a foreign land.* * It is, perhaps, only fair to tliis colony to add that most of its members purchased their land through an American land-johher at an advance of nearly 200 per cent., from the want of such information as to its actual value as is given in these pages. ( 91 ) CHAPTER T. It was four o'clock in the morning, the air still and frosty, giving promise of another day of beautiful Indian summer^ the full October moon shining with a brilliance known only to these northern latitudes, upon the wood*girt, inland lake on which I live, its bosom unbroken by a ripple, and glittering like polished steel ; not a sign of life, except the plash of some wakeful fish dying away silently in circling eddies, or the rustling of the undergrowth as d startled rabbit darts into the woods ; the giant oaks cast their Jong shadows on the. whitened lawn ; over the slumbering 92 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. prairie are dotted the little homesteads of the settler, the groves of maple or cotton- wood standing out still and ghostly in the moonlight. A brisk hour's walk and the day is beginning to dawn on the remote frontier county of Martin, where the exiles of England, like " the children of Penn," have found " a home and a country." The white houses of Fairmont stand out bright and clear against the sky, the lurid fire of the railway-engine gleams fiercely in the distance, and its shrill whistle shrieks impatiently as I approach the railroad station. Sleepy travellers are hurrying to the train. The city omnibus drives up with its freight of " runners," as at half past five I ensconce myself comfortably in the baggage car and light my morning pipe. I am about to penetrate the G-reat Unknown ; to leave the land of lake and prairie for the deep "IN THE TIMBEE." 93 woods and murmuring valleys of the distant county of Fillmore. Let me suppose, then, that we have breakfasted at Delavan, and dined to our heart's content at Spring Valley, with the ample twenty minutes' time for comfortable digestion allowed by the, in this respect, ad- mirable American custom ; that we have had the pleasure of being introduced on the cars to a live Congressman, an ex-governor of a territory, and a railway manager--^that our " mind has been a little further mystified as to the relative merits, of resumption, green- backs, and fiat money ; and that soon after noon we have arrived at the little wheat- compelling station of Fountain, in the centre of Fillmore County. A drive of ten: miles, over a road full of long hills, brings us to our destination, the pretty town of Chatfield. A gre^r contrast to the level or rolling prairie country left behind can hardly be 94 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. imagined. The dark alluvial loam has given place to a warm rich soil overlying the limestone rock. Beautiful valleys, carpeted with green, and girded by lofty! hills clothed with magnificent forests, take the place of the prairies, now dead-looking and broyp^n, with their mantle of auturnn.^ At our feet ripples that fine tributary of the Mississippi known as the Eoot River, winding its devious course over a clear pebbly bed, so shallow that we cross it more than once on our journey without getting up to the horses' knees. On our right, over against Chatfield, is ,a large flouringrmill, driven by a splendid water-power; and' then a turn in the road brings us in full- view of the charming valley in which stands- the town itself, with its neat white houses nestling in their lawns of green, its steepled' roofs, and all set in a frame of lofty hills, clad in their autumn garb of olive ;and "IN THE TIMBER." 95 russet and gold, with overhead a sky of such depth and beauty as surely can be seen nowhere else but on the sunny coasts of the Mediterranean. Chatfield looked so new and fresh and bright that I heard with surprise that it is the oldest town of. one of the longest- settled and most prosperous counties in the State. But five-and-twenty years ago Fillmore County, with a population now approaching forty thousand, was an Indian hunting-ground. The red man fished -in its streams, and stalked the wild-deer in its forests. Its only roads were Indian trails ; and over a country now studded thickly with prosperous homesteads and splendid farm-buildings, with busy towns and, mills and manufactories, the only sign of human habitation to be found was the solitary wigwam of the children of the desert. With the spread of civilisation westward, 96 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. the present county, embracing others, farther east to the Mississippi Eiver, was organised by the territorial legislature in 1853, and now ranks third in population ; and, until the twin capital rose on the banks of the Great Eiver, had the largest of any in the State. It has been settled mostly from the New England States and from Scandinavia, to which may, perhaps, be attributed the thrifty and industrious character of its inhabitants. To a stranger nothing can be more striking than the contrast in climate and natural configuration of this up- ■ land district to the prairie country left behind. It forms a vast table-land nearly five hundred feet above the sea-level, broken up into hills heavily timbered, and valleys watered by fertile streams. On the prairie the grass was dying and the groves were^ almost leafless, while here "IN THE TIMBER." 97 the woods were just changing to their rich autumn tints, and the river meadows, alive with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, were covered with a sward green and fresh as in early spring. The soil appeared to be of "a -warmer char9,cter, and better •adapted to winter wheat-culture than, that of the prairie. The sheltered situation, and the heavy timber breaking the keen winds which rush unhindered across the open plains, causing spring to burst forth weeks earlier, and autumn to linger for a longer time in its valleys, with a natural draihage rendered almost perfect by the geological formation, all combine to make this a very paradise of the agriculturist and the stock- breeder. Much of the fertility of Fillmore County is due to that beautiful tributary of the Mississippi which intersects it in every direc- tion. To this river are due also the magni- H 98 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. ficent water-powers which have already made this county one of the richest in the State, and must in no distant future render it conspicuous as one of the most important seats of manufacturing industry in Minne- sota. In every direction the traveller comes upon a pretty waterfallj often of many feet in depth, which here, in sensible, matter-of-fact America, is used to work a grist-mill, and not to be a mere peepsbow for the tourist. I learned that there are no less than thirty flouring-mills scattered all over the county, capable of working up two and a half million bushels of wheat in the year, more than a twentieth part of the far- , famed crop of the State itself; affording a ready and convenient market to the farmer not surpassed in any country in the world. And now let me introduce to my» readers my host and cicerone among the beauties, of Fillmore County, not only because he is "IN THE TIMBER." P9 personally a remarkable instance of what can be accomplished by energy and enter- prise, combined with an extraordinary capacity for business in a new country, but because to him I am indebted for any in- formation which may render this chapter of interest, or be the means of directing atten- tion in my own country to certainly one of the most favoured portions of this Queen of States. " Familiar in our ear as household words,'' here in Minnesota, is the name of the great " railroad king," who lives at Chat- field, who has the enviable reputation of being the richest man in the State. I say Chatfield, though you are just as likely to meet him on Broadway, or to run across him in the vestibule of the Palmer House ^t Chicago, or the Metropolitan at St. Paul, or find him one of a solid road of railroad men, prospecting in a democrat-waggon for H 2 100 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. a new line of road beyond the utmost bounds of western civilisation. Nay, you may drop into one of the dozen banks he controls, scattered all over Minnesota, and imagine that his daily life is spent in nothing else than cashing cheques, and striving to keep well in mind the combina- tion of the safe-lock. Or you may light upon him, perchance, in some great com- mission-house in Milwaukee or Chicago, ready to sell or buy for you any commodity dealt in in the four quarters of the globe : and as to land, he can always accommodate you with a few thousand acres. Come to Chatfield, and he will let you into the mys- teries of dairy-farming, and you may learn from him a great deal as to the relative merits of Durhams and Shorthorns, Cots- wolds and Lincolns. Indeed, I believe he finds relaxation from the severer labours of railroading and banking, like Cincinnatus at "IN THE TIMBER." 101 the plough, in running two or three large farms in the Eoot River Yalley. More than twenty years , ago he settled, then comparatively a poor man, on the spot where now stands the thriving and pros- perous town of Chatfield, but five years after the first white settler had come into the county. There was a " town site," but the handsome streets, • the prosperous business houses, the charming country seats which stud the valley, were in a far-off future. Land worth then practically nothing is worth now thirty to forty dollars an acre. Chatfield's first hotel was still standing, a little log shanty, fifteen feet square, covered with bark, the only resting-place for the occasional traveller. The growth of Ghat- field, the prosperity of the magnificent county of Fillmore, has progressed side by side with the prosperity of the " Celebrity at home " to whom I will now take leave to introduce my readers. 102 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. Somewhat back from the village street stands a pretty white villa, low and spread- ing in form, half hidden with vines and creepers, and surrounded by a velvety lawn. A man's home is often a very faithful reflection of himself. It is so in this in- stance. To begin with, it must have been a mere cottage ; but a room has been added here, a wing thrown out there, a porch built on, then a conservatory, the roof broken by picturesque dormers, till at length it has .grown into the very per- fection of a country house. Every room looks homelike and full of comfort, and intended to be lived in. And every room tells you that you are in the house of a lover of Minnesota, who has a watchful eye for its beauties. In the entrance-hall you are struck with a large case containing a complete collection of Minnesota's smaller birds, from the great white owl to the tiny humming-bird. You are looking at theij-. "IN THE TIMBER." 103 gaudy plumage, and wondering how it is possible that these bright rich colours can belong to this northern climate, when the hrtst comes out to meet you. A tall, broad- shouldered, well-preserved man, who carries his fifty years lightly enough, welcpmes you with a warm grasp of the hand. There is. a wonderful amount of animal vitality about him; a keen, penetrating eye, hair but slightly tinged with grey, a fresh, healthy complexion born of the breezes of these northern valleys. He is at leisure ; but for all that you feel, somehow, that he is not idle for an instant. Dinner is scarcely over, and you have sat down in a^ comfortable easy-chair to smoke a cigar with him — for, like all hard-worked, suc- cessful men, he is a great smoker — and he maps out the whole time of your visit like a book. You discuss with him finance, free trade, western railroading, sheep-. 104 FIVE YEARS m MINNESOTA. farming (you beg to be let off on the " resumption question ! "), and are glad to find that the opinions of men bred under free republican institutions are, after all, not so very wide apart from those born under the monarchical regime of older lands. Meanwhile he has planned out your time to an hour ; and as to to-morrow, you feel very much like being put through a course of sheep-farming, combined with a little stock-raising, not forgetting the manage- ment of a dairy, and some lessons on forestry and trout-culture, with some slight incidental information on the maple-sugar industry. The sun rose next morning, Sunday, in a sky of cloudless beauty, the air warm and balmy as a spring day in Italy. After my host, more Americano, had been shaved by the village barber, we went to morning service in the pretty village church, new "IN THE TIMBER." 105 and fresh, and bright, like everything in this young country. The floor was covered ^ith a gay-looking carpet, while here and there suggestive spittoons of gleaming metal were placed at convenient intervals along the aisles. In an apse at the east end— if east it were— stood, on a raised, dais, the minister's desk, of polished rose- wood, with a couple of charming bouquets flanking a large gilt-edged Bible. Beside it was a luxurious-looking morocco loung-: ing-chair, all giving a comfortable flavour of "religion made easy." Soon appeared the minister himself, a young man with fashionably cut whiskers and moustache, clothes of the latest New York style, a, white waistcoatj and the air of a dandified bank clerk. He commenced the proceed- ings with a complimentary address to the Deity, I presume not unlike those to which the Prince of Wales has too often to 106 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. listen from provincial mayors. The sermon followed, a sort of schoolboy essay such as' might have been composed by some youth- ful disciple of Socrates. At intervals, the audience, for they seemed nothing more, were amused by the part-singing of a choir composed of some young ladies charmingly dressed, and with hats that looked to me fresh from the atelier of some Parisian modiste. They were assisted by some of the gilded youth of the village; and the party filled up their intervals in the pro- gramme by a violent flirtation inter se.' The congregation retained a sitting posture through the whole affair, and I hope they all went home to as good a dinner and as good a bottle of still hock as I did, with an approving conscience. From circumstances beyond my control, this vras my first and only visit to a church in America. My host, very considerately to me, proposed a "IN THE TIMBER." 107 second edition of afternoon service, but (much to his relief, I thought) I suggested a -drive instead. We sallied forth then in a comfortable buggy drawn by a pair of clever greys, on an exploring tour of the woods and valleys of the neighbourhood, and of some of what I may justly call the model farms of Fillmore County. To the north of Chatfield stretches a valley about a mile in breadth, shut in by lofty hills, covered with dense forests, the Root River winding along broad meadows at their feet. A drive of half an hour brought us to Maple- wood Farm, so named from the fact of the sugar-maple growing there extensivelyi Some five hundred trees were, I was informed, " on tap." This strikingly beauti- ful estate, of between six and seven hundred acres in extent, lies on both sides of the yalley. The river bottom is a vast meadow 108 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. of three hundred acres, level as a bowling- green, laid down to tame grasses, through which the Root Eiver winds a very devious, course, forming here and there a pretty island. Overlooking this is the homestead^ a house which reminded me of an English shooting-lodge — huge barns two hundred feet in'* length— a dairy with all the latest modern conveniences, its milk troughs able to be flushed at any moment by the ice- cold water of a neighbouring spring. From the sheep-folds, sloping gently to the west, you look upon a vast belt of forest which stretches along this chain of valleys for more than twenty miles, and varying from one or two miles to six in depth. Behind the homestead are hills, broken into knolls and hollows, which have the makings of a splendid sheep-run, when the underbrushing now going on is completed. Above these hills, and approached by a steep, winding "IN THE TIMBEE." 109- road, stands, on a lofty plateau, the arable land of the farm, already turned over- by the plough. Here and there, on the surround- ing hills, were patches of open meadow, just like the Alps of Switzerland and north- ern Italy. Sotne had been brought into cultivation, and fields of ripe yellow maize stood out in bold relief against the rich autumn tints of the encircling woods. Here I was shown a magnificent flock of sheep, the best I had yet seen in Minnesota; and where some interesting experiments in grading have been tried. It is the fashion in this country to cross almost exclusively with the Spanish merino, as best adapted to the northern winters. But in this flock, Cotswold, Lincoln, and Leicester bucks, had been introduced with great success, and it is intended to make the further experiment with South Downs, from which my experience of that breed_ in 110 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. England leads me to augur very favourable results. None are so highly prized with us as fine mutton sheep, and it has often struck me that in western she^-farming the growth of really fine table mutton might be made as profitable as that of wool. Nothing could show more clearly how admirably adapted is this country for sheep- farming than the fact that the clip in the flock of a thousand averaged eight pounds of im washed wool. The short fine herbage of the hills, the varied under-growth, the shelter of the deep woods, the entire absence of damp, the constant access to clear running water, convinced me beyond a doubt that while the prairie, with its rich pasturage, is unequalled for stock-raisings the more undulating and sheltered tracts of country like Fillmore County can nowhere be surpassed for sheep industry on a large scale. "IN THE TIMBEB." Ill The farming land and stock duly inspected and admired, we drove across the river and entered the sombre depths of the "forest primeval." I am used to going anywhere on the back of a horse ; but to be driven across gulleys two or three feet deep, and jolted over huge fallen logs which obstiTicted the path in a light " top buggy,'' is to me, who have reached that terrible dnquantaine, rather nervous work. Forests such as Nature made them have all but died out in England^ or been transformed into cultivated parks. None but those who see them for the first time can realise all their romantic wildness and beauty. As we drove slowly along the narrow forest road, partridges whirred up under our horses' feet, and snipe and woodcock were seen in abundance. In winter the wild-deer come down into the valley from the deep woods above, and on still nights the watchful 112 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. shepherd in his hut of logs can hear the timber-wolves howl and make night hideous with their hungry cry. Time would fail me to describe other farms I visited. On one I saw a very in- teresting experiment in trout-culture going on. The young fish, some five thousand in number, seemed healthy and lively enough in a large artificial fresh-water pond. I should think the Eoot Eiver, which I am told never freezes, except in spots, would be well adapted for trout. In just such streams, and in a climate more inclement in winter, they are found in many parts of the Austrian Tyrol. I could not help wishing, as I looked at this charming country, with its healthful climate, its rich and fertile soil, its wonder- ful capabilities for mixed husbandry and stock-raising, not to be surpassed, even if equalled, in any part of England, that some " IN THE TIMBER." 113 painter could reproduce its living picture for a moment at honie. There are hundreds of young men of good family, who must make a start in life with a few thousand pounds at their command. They are fond of country pursuits, are good sportsmen, and have, perhaps, gained some insight into farming on the paternal acres. Emigration offers for them by far the best and freest life in the world. To go to the Australian colonies requires, to do any good, a large capital, and is simply banishment to some lone sheep-station, hundreds of miles up the country, with no society but the hands on the " run," or the occasional visit of sorae passing traveller. These Western States have attracted crowds of the labouring classes, who have exchanged servitude and poverty for freedom and comfort. But the districts only newly settled and still un- tra versed by railways seem to me at present I 114 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. not SO well adapted for the men with fair capital whom I refer to. But Fillmore County, and indeed the entire tier of the southern counties, are equal in every respect to the finest agricultural districts at home. And it seems strange that the. discovery has, apparently, not yet been made in England, that, in the midst of high civilisation, good society, railroad com-, munication, easy reach of great social and mercantile centres, like St. Paul and Chicago, and but fourteen days from, home, farms may be had for a few thousand doUats which it would take a considerable fortune to purchase at home, and which are prac- tically out of the reach of any but the rich.. With a farm of five or six hundred acres such as those I saw in the Root River Yalley, with a comfortable house and buildingsi, and capital to farm properly — too often left out — an intelligent, educated man might make "IN THE TIMBER." 115 a handsome competence, and at the same time live like a prince. Why, the yefy privilege of shooting over such a forest as stretches to the west of this valley, stocked with deer and almost every variety of wild gajne, would be gladly rented in England at an annual cost of five to ten thousand dollars. Some I know in Scotland not so good have commanded the fabulous sum of fifteen thousand dollars a year. But then the exclusive Btitish aristocrat always needs about ten square miles of country to render him safe from the vulgar intrusion of the common herd ! Night was approaching fast, and my host drove me rapidly homewards to see the sun set from a spot where he talks of one day building a new mansion. If he did not show me from thence "all the king- doms of the world in a moment of time," he at least showed me a panorama of unsur- I 2 116 riVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. passed magnificence. Beneath us was the pretty village with its snow-white houses; the river winding like a thread of silver through the broad green meadows ; the forests gay with their wealth of autumtr tints ; and, far as the eye could reach, wooded hills and rich pastoral valley§,- gently interlacing each other in an endless embrace, while the sun sank majestically beneath the dark foxest wall in a sky ablaze with colour, where faintest rose melted into rich sombre purple, and violet clouds, their edges fringed with molten gold, seemed to float in a sapplaire sky. It was rather a violent anti-climax, after communing with the spirits of the woods in the forest primeval, and listening to the silvery murmur of rippKng brooks,, and watching the autumn sunlight as it danced on green meadow and dark hillside, when my host pointed with his whip to the. "IN THE TIMBER." IIT railway-grade lying half concealed beneath us. I fancy it looked to him the most beautiful spot in the landscape. To become a " railroad town " seems to be the summit of all earthly blessedness in America. The valleys round Chatfield will lose something -of their charm and romance, perhaps, and the wood-nymphs be startled from their fabled haunts, as the iron horse with its wild screech rushes past. Yet will Chat- field's ambition be crowned with success, and as a full-fledged " railroad-town " I salute and bid her adieu. ( 118 ) CHAPTEE VI. " AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS " AN INDIAN RESERVATION. A GLORIOUS autumn evening in mid- September, the sun shining from a ^sky of cloudless blue upon Minnesota's beautiful capital, the outline of its gabled roofs and airy steeples softened by the faint pui^le mist just rising from the tawny Mississippi; deep umbrageous forests stretching away in broad billows to the far-off horizon, like some mantle of glossy green fringed with its border of snow-white cliff. The 5.40 express of the Northern Pacific is waiting in the station. The engine snorts im- patiently, like some mettled steed eager for "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 119 the start. A moment or two more, and the train steams slowly away on its dis- tant journey north. I am about to follow the red man to the remote home to which the resistless wave of advancing civilisation has swept him back; to observe the methods which a paternal government is adopting to civilise the wild children of the desert, and to mete out even-handed justice and mercy to those whom con- siderations of public policy no longer permit to roam at large over vast tracts of fertile country, capable of supporting a dense agricultural population. The views which may be incidentally expressed in the course of this chapter are the result of an observation entirely unprejudiced. I have no preconceived theories or opinions on the much-vexed " Indian Question," and my only desire has been to inform myself, if possible, by personal observation how 12.0 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. far tbe Indiau, fresh from the plains and forests of the great AmericaD Continent, is capable of acquiring modern civilisation ; and next how far the ' reservation ' system adopted by the United States Government may be regarded as a successful solution of the great and anxious problem which so often meets civilised races, viz., "How to deal with the aborigines of a country acquired either actually by conquest or virtually by the gradual migration of settlers to its shores." The narrative which follows is intended to reproduce faithfully the impressions made upon the writer's mind by a visit of several days' duration to an extensive Indian re* servation in the northern part of the State of Minnesota, and to offer, in doing so, some satisfactory answer to these im- portant questions. In the grey light of early dawn I wake "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 121 up from a fitful slumber at the little town of Detroit, some two hundred miles north of St. Paul. A good breakfast at the comfortable American House, and I start out behind a couple of Indian ponies with the intelligent and obliging " farmer " of the Indian reservation, for a twenty-two- mile drive to White Earth Agency. Across grand rolling plains, dotted with park-like clumps of oak and silvery lakes, the fringe of the great woods which stretch away eastward in unbroken chain tq the shores of Lake Superior, we are here in that delightful bprder-land which embraces the beauties of lake and forest and prairie. Here is found ready formed by the hand of Nature one of the most perfect and beauti- ful agricultural districts in the world. One can hardly believe that these sweeps of deep green sward and these majestic clumps of forest timber, lit up at this 122 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. season with patches of brilliant crimson, ^nd these lakelets throwing back from their placid bosoms the soft, fleecy tints of the autumn sky, are not the long, laborious work of man, but a picture fresh from the great Master Hand. On all sides are neat farmhouses of hewn logs, trim fences of tamarac and oak, stacks of yellow grain round the homestead, and sleek cattle grazing in the meadows. But for an occasional Indian, or half-breed, met on the road, or a white birch-bark wigwam peeping out among the trees, there is nothing to tell that you are not in the heart of an ordinary well-settled farmings district. The crest of a hill is passed, and you look down into a charming valley. Dotted on rising ground, round the shore of a pretty lake, with a background of forest and water, are buildings of dazzling white, neat fencesj herds of stock. This "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 123 must be some Agapemone, whose members have chosen this Promised Land in which to hide themselves, and live a peaceful j, idyllic life, far away from the strife and toil and dust of the outer world. It is the White Earth Indian Agency. I alight a,t the hospitable schoolhouse, which is to be my headquarters, and where, during the greater part of the year, more than a hundred Indian children are fed and clothed, lodged and educated gratuitously at the expense of the Grovernment, with a degree of material comfort which leaves nothing to be desired. The sun is just setting as I arrive, over a mighty purple plain which stretches to an horizon forty miles distant, broken but by two solitai'y lakes glittering like discs of polished steel on its surface. I stroll round the village in the evening, for village it is, with its steepled churches, its stores and workshops, 124 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. its- comfortable houses with their trim,, neatly fenced gardens, and drop into a building inscribed " Police Headquarters," and have a pleasant chat with the new " force," established by the present Govern- ment Agent,. Major Euffee, about a year ago. It is composed entirely of Indians and* half-breeds, about thirty-two in number, all looking smart and soldier-like in their dark-blue uniforms. One Indian who had just joined still wore his hair in long plaits, ornamented at the end with otter fur. The officers reported an almost entire absence of crime of every kind throughout the reservation. From thence with Paul Beaulieu, the interpreter and general good angel of the Agency, I visited the two la,rge schoolrooms, turned for this occasion into exhibition-halls for the agricultural and industrial products of the reservation. The fair — the first ever held since the "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 125 establishment of the reservation ten years ago— was to commence next day, and the last finishing touches were being given. The rooms were decorated in admirable taste with dark evergreens, lit up effectively with patches of the brilliant crimson su- mach, and bright red-and-yellow berries of some wild species. Mottoes in evergreens adorned the walls — " None but the Brave deserve the J'air ! " " There is no Bukeda * here." The harmony of colour was not forgotten in the arrangement of fruit and vegetables. Was it possible that this was the unaided work of Indians — as I was assured — of a race so incapable in some people^s eyes of civilisation that their transfer to the War Department is urged in all seriousness ? The- place was so like an English schoolroom prepared for a village festival that I looked round half * Chippewa for hunger. 126 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. expecting to see the ritualistic young curate and the bevy of fair young girls, whose clever hands had got ready this pleasant surprise for the humble villagers, On long tables and stands was arranged with exquisite taste an exhibition of agricultural products, not only creditable to, a remote Indian reservation, but which I never saw surpassed at any village fair, either at home or in Europe. On this reservation, extending over thirty- six miles square, and of which upwards of three thousand acres are already under cultivation, have been raised this season 25,000 bushels of excellent wheat, which averaged eighteen bushels to the acre... On some farms twenty and twenty- five were obtained. Nearly two thousand bushels of oats,, a thousand bushels of splendid barley, and nearly two thousand bushels of maize, or Indian corn, and all "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 127 grown by Indians in that supposed im- possible region outside the Great Corn Belt^ more than two hundred miles north of St. Paul. One stalk was on view which measured twelve feet in height. There were also raised twenty thousand bushels of the finest potatoes I have ever seen in any part of the world. A small acreage was planted this year to amber sugarcane, and I saw a crushing mill busily at work just outside the village. There were six varieties of beans, and several of .peas, two of wild cranberries, four of apples, grapes, tomatoes, wild dates, rhubarb, celery, • splendid specimens of onions, carrots, turnips, beets and garlics, cabbage heads weighing twelve to fifteen pounds, cauliflowers, the hearts about a foot in diameter, and endless gigantic varieties of the melon tribe, whose size and weight were beyond my guessing powers. And I must 128 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA, not forget to mention the delicious wild rice on exhibition, which gives promise of a very productive industry in this region. In another schoolroom was a display of Indian beadwork and embroidery, which for delicacy of design and perfection of execu- sion reveals an art culture of a very high order unsuspected among the Indian race. In the same room were Indian household products, butter, bread, jams, pickles, pastry, and several grades of capital maple sugar, all looking as wholesome and in- viting as could be found on any English farm. There were in all 1520 entries for competition at this fair, 500 dollars being allotted by the Government for prizes, a sum which I believe will be found in the issue to be worth ten times its actual amount to the reservation. The whole agency embraces the entire north-western part of the State of Minnesota "AMONG THE CHIPPBWAS." 129 above the line of railways and county organisation, where moose and elk still roam in the great forests, and includes, besides the principal reservation of White Earth, those of Red Lake, Leech Lake, White Oak Point, and Mille Lacs, con- taining a scattered population of 6300 Indians, spread over one of the finest tracts of country in the north-west, several millions of acres in extent, and stretching for two hundred miles north to the Canadian border-line. At White Earth are at present about 1600 full-blood Indians and half-breeds. On the nearest reserva- tion, eighty miles distant, at Red Lake, a magnificent sheet of water sixty miles in length, are already brought under cultiva- tion 800 acres of land, and a large deputation of blanket Indians from that region was present, regarding with curious interest and admiration, which the Indian's K 130 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. proverbial reticence could scarcely hide, the rapid strides in progress made by his brethren at White Earth. The history of this fair will spread like wildfire through every wigwam in the most distant reserva- tion, and the Indian sitting by his solitary fire through the long nights of the coming winter will be pondering on those problems of home politics on which he must ere long make his decision, agriculture versus the chase; the comfort and security of the reservation versus the wilderness. The day broke next morning with a cloudy sky which threatened rain, but towards noon the sun burst through the mist as a salute of three mortars, the entire artillery of the agency, woke the echoes of the slumbering valleys, and announced the arrival of a distinguished party from St. Paul, who had come as the guests of the agency, to do honour to this interesting "AMONQ THE CHIPPEWAS." 131 occasion of the first fair ever held among the Indians in Minnesota. Among them was of course good Bishop Whipple, known throughout the tribes as "the Indian's friend," United States Senators, judges of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and of course a bevy of ladies. Accom- panying them was a large delegation of the St. Paul G-reat Western band — ^^all Grer- mans but one, and he was a Frenchman — who generously offered their services, and undertook this long journey to do honour to the great Indian fair. They broke the stillness of those distant valleys, for the first time in their history, with waltzes from Strauss and familiar airs from Offenbach and Gounod, and did their best to spread the H.M.S. Pinafore mania among the wild children of the desert. After a capital dinner at the school- house, which, by the way, boasts a grand K 2 132 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. piano, we all proceeded to the formal opening of the fair. White Cloud, the chief of the Chippewa Indians, dressed in a pepper-and-salt coat, black trousers, and beaded moccasins, with a billy-cock hat to complete his costume, delivered a speech of welcome. He is a natural orator, and, judging by Paul Beaulieu's interpreta- tion, a man of considerable powers of eloquence as well as sound good sense. He carried in his hand a highly ornamented affair, which I supposed was his official badge of chieftainship, but which turned out, on examination, to be his pipe. Short addresses by the Bishop and the other State dignitaries followed, to which, as they were translated to him. White Cloud gave an approving grunt, and then the chief declared the fair open. The Indians at White Earth have, as a rule, thrown aside their blankets and "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 133 adopted the garb of civilised life, a neces- sary step in their moral and material progress, though in looking at the wonder- fully picturesque costumes of those from the distant reservation of Red Lake one could not help feeling sorry that these dresses of strange barbaric splendour must soon be things of the past. Some of the younger bucks must have been engaged from early dawn in completing the elaborate toilets in which they appeared. One chief, Hurricane of Red Lake, was positively killing in a splendid otter- skin war-bonnet, ornamented with eagles' feathers, symbols of a brave, at their tips, tiny ribbon pennants to which were attached small ermine tips, symbols of a scalp. He had several of these on his bonnet, and a whole bunch were hung on his pipe stem. A bright streamer of cerise- coloured ribbon, known, I think, by young 134 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. ladies of the period as a " kiss-me-quick," completed his headdress. He was highly- rouged, and over each eye had painted a square of delicate white and red stripes. A checked shirt of dark red, a black blanket, and richly embroidered buckskin leggings and beaded moccasins completed his very effective costume. This fine hand- some fellow has a remarkable history. He is said to have tg,ken no less than fifty Sioux scalps. At the time of the Indian massacre of 1862 he followed the Sioux wbo had killed most of the whites in his neighbourhood some five hundred miles up the country, as far as Manitoba, killed and scalped the man and his whole family, from the double motive of gratifying thie whites, with whom the Chippewas have always been friendly, and taking vengeance on his hereditary foe, the Sioux. For this brave conduct he was, through some red- "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 135 tapeism, imprisoned by the Commandant at Fort Pembina, and beld there for more than a year by an order of the War Department, and only released at length by representations of the Indian Agent, who knew the facts of the case. Eouging and painting the face seems to be reduced to a fine art among the Chip- pewas. But the effect is, as a rule, hideous or grotesque. Here is a gentleman with one eye painted a brilliant blue ; another, with a face of the purest old G-reek type, with a dark blue square on each cheek with white spots on the blue ground, I think he must have commenced with the intention of ornamenting himself with the Stars and Stripes, and been compelled to leave out the stripes for want of room. One had painted his face brick-dust colour, over one cheek a stripe of deep red, and over the other one of deep blue, with a border 136 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. of white spots. Another had painted in " beauty spots " of bright red all over his face, giving the effect of some skin disease. A third had produced a ghastly effect by a green colouring under the eyes. One old gentleman had painted in a complete blue beard, which rather surprised me, as the Indians are a beardless race, from the practice of pulling out the roots of the hair in early youth. Suddenly I encountered an aged Indian standing moodily alone amongst the crowd. His sphinx-like, in- scrutable countenance, the dark hair fall- ing in ringlets over his forehead, was the startling image of a face familiar enough in St. Stephen's. He was wrapped in a long white blanket robe, "mystic, wonderful." None seemed to know his name or whence he came. Can it be that the great minister who gave " peace with honour " to his country, and raised himself to the "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 137 ermined purple of a peer, has anticipated the dissolution of Parliament, with the acces- sion of the People's "William, and, disappear- ing from the gilded chamber he adorned so much, has joined, in the remote wilds of the Far West, the Semitic race from which he sprang? On the stem of his long pipe the aged Indian carried a bunch of ermine tips, symbolical of many scalps. Can these be the trophies of the bloodless conflicts in which he was so often a victor, carried off as mementoes from the heated arena of political warfare he has now abandoned for ever ? The Red Lake Indians were decidedly one of the great attractions of the fair to strangers, and afforded much amusement, both by their varied costumes and by their national game of La Crosse, somewhat resembling the English game of football, played, instead of the feet, with sticks 138 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. furnished at the end with a half-globe made of wire and wood to catch the ball, and in which they display immense agility and skill. Their chiefs had a grievance which they asked permission to air with the United States Senator who happened to be of our number. I shall never forget the sight. Dinner was laid in the village schoolroom for a large party. At a small table was seated the senator in question, recently a judge of the Supreme Court, with an Indian treaty blue-book open before him. The Indians, all with one or two exceptions gay with feathers and paint, sat around in a circle, or squatted on the floor in the doorway. The old chief Med-wa-ghe-no- nins was the first speaker. He is one of the Bishop's converts, and wore an old episcopal coat given him by the latter for his confirmation. But he still retains his "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 139 Indian leggings and moccasins. He is of immense stature, and upon a head which might have been the model for Michael Angelo's Moses, with its grand mane of iron-grey locks and powerfully marked intellectual features, had perched a small stovepipe hat. He shook hands with the senator and myself, and then in a voice of thunder, and with a majesty of diction and action which might have become one of the old Homeric heroes in council, related his fancied wrongs in Chippewa. To him followed Little Rock, the second chief of the tribe, an aged man of gigantic proportions. His thin grey locks were twisted in narrow plaits, and he wore a light pink checked shirt over his leggings, which cover literally but the leg, and leave at times painfully visible a hiatus valde defiendus of red skin. If the group could but have been repro- duced by some_ master-hand in all the 140 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. wonderful details of its gaudy, barbaric colouring, and its background of modem civilisation, it would be the picture of the season in the roonas of the Eoyal Academy. The success of the experiment to reclaim the Indian from his nomadic life and accustom him gradually to the pursuits of agriculture, cannot be doubted after a care- ful study of the results accomphshed on the White Earth reservation. The Agency was established about ten years ago, and after varying success and change of officers it has to show at White Earth sixteen hundred Indians adopting the habits and manners of civilised life, large numbers of them mem- bers of the Catholic and Episcopal Churches; while on the more distant reservations, land is being brought under cultivation, and native missionaries and native school- masters are at work. The Indians are furnished by the Government with the "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 141 ordinary farming-tools, the more expensive machinery being lent to them. They receive instruction in farming from ex- perienced persons appointed by the agency, have their wheat ground at its expense at the Grovernment mill, and obtain occasioaal donations of clothing, and a treaty annuity of seven dollars a head. Crime or disorder of any kind is practically unknown, owing in some measure, perhaps, to the severity of the United States' laws on the subject of selling liquor to Indians or introducing it into a reservation. And they might well be held up as a model community, whose example could be followed with advantage by many villages which have never been absent from the influences of civilisation. The present large schoolhouses are becom- ing inadequate to the demands made upon them, and a splendid new school-building, on a commanding site outside the village. 142 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. is rapidly approaching completion. Its cost will be about seven thousand dollars, thte equivalent of as many pounds at home, and it includes thirty spacious rooms. From its upper windows spreads a glorious view over the reservation, and of the distant pine-woods, in which no less than in the wonderfully prolific soil so much of its wealth consists. The lumber for this fine building was all obtained from these pineries, and sawn and planed by Indians at the reservation saw-mill eighteen miles up the country. The religious education of the Indians on all the reservations is carried on entirely without Government help, and depends, till it can become self-supporting, on the piety of Christian persons outside. The Episcopal mission was established in 1853 by the Eev. T. L. Breck, called in England " the Apostle of the wilderness." He was joined a few years later by two other "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 143 clergymen, one a full-blood Indian, and to whom the success of the mission is largely due. In 1862 the mission house and church at Grull Lake were destroyed by the Indians. For the next few years the mission was homeless, but each year the good Bishop, accompanied by the Indian missionary Johnson, travelled through the country on foot or by canoe, preaching to the Indians, and urging them to begin a civilised life. The latter has now a large number of converts and a frame church at White Earth, and six other churches are scattered over the more distant reservations, presided over by young Indian converts who have been ordained deacons by Bishop Whipple.. When the White Earth reservation was secured, the Indians refused to go to it. They thought that, as they said, it was "the first march to the setting sun." The chief threatened any of the tribe 144 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. who slaould remove ; a few brave men, with Johnson at their head, decided to go. They proved to be the advanced guard of a civilisation whose ultimate effects for good upon the Indian race can yet be but dimly discerned. A hospital for the Indians, capable of accommodating forty patients, was built some years ago by the bounty of a Connecticut lady now deceased, and en- dowed with ten thousand dollars. For this benefaction they have no doubt to thank the exertions of their untiring friend the good Bishop. The hospital is in charge of a young graduate of a German university, who is an enthusiast in his profession, and came here from his desire to benefit the Indians. At the present moment he has not a single patient, such is the glorious climate of Minnesota ! The Catholic mission is under the care of Father Aloysius, a youthful German priest — ein gemuthlicher "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 145 Schwab — of the Benedictine order, aided by two sisters of mercy. He seemed to me to have the affections of his people, and to be doing, as far as I could learn, an excellent work. He adds to his other accomplish- ments a knowledge of medicine — :a great assistance in his missionary labours. The jealousies and rivalries of Protestant and Catholic appeared not to have invaded the peaceful valleys of this remote reservation. It speaks highly for the humane and benevolent character of the United States Government that vast sums of money have been spent, and patient and persistent efforts made through successive administra- tions, to ameliorate the condition of the Indian races, whom the pressure of advanc- ing settlement has compelled it to dispossess to a great extent of the lands of which they had been for so many years the undisputed lords. If these efforts have to some extent L 146 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. failed, it has been owing more to corruption in the channels through which the Grovern- ment bounty passed than from any want of good intentions on its part. The White Earth and appendant reservations have been a most successful experiment in deal- ing with that diflBcult problem " The Indian Question." Upon them are settled peace- ably about six thousand of the Chippewa Indians, who had wandered in scattered bands over the plains of the Mississippi Valley, as Bishop Whipple expressed it, "hopeless and helpless, like men looking for a grave." And to me it solves con- clusively the question whether the red man is capable of civilisation. That the faith and traditions of centuries can be suddenly uprooted by any system of religion or civilisation, no thinking man will believe. But the comparison of the White Earth Indians, where the agency is but ten years "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 147 old, with their painted, feathered, and blanket-clad brethren, of Eed Lake, still much as they were when wandering over the Mississippi plains, shows how much has already been done. Let another generation pass, and their children may worthily claim and enjoy the rights of citizenship. It seems to me a strange anomaly that many of those I saw at "White Earth do not enjoy it now, when we remember that the ignorant negro of the South, an infinitely lower type of intellectual being than the Indian, or the brutahsed peasant from the bogs of Ireland, or the steppes of Croatia or Eussia, whose filthy dress and habits betoken little more acquaintance with the usages of civilised life than those of the red man, has but to plant his foot on the shores of the New World to become in a few months a " free and independent voter." Much of the present success is due to the admirable L 2 148 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. choice made by the Government in the selection of Major C. A. Ruflfee as its Indian agent at White Earth. A Canadian by birth, he was for many years a trader in these districts. Thoroughly famiHar with Indian customs and Indian character, he k nows how, in dealing with them, to clothe the mailed hand with the silken glove. While he has gained the respect, and even afifection, of the Indians, his word is law through every part of his wide command. The system adopted on the reservations is a modification of the American " Homestead Law." The lands are open to settlement by Chippewas and half-breeds, or by any whites marrying half-breed or Indian women. The cultivation of ten acres entitles to a grant of forty, and so on in like proportion up to one hundred and sixty acres. The " Consolidation Bill " now before Congress proposes to move, by their •"AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 149 consent, the Indians on the outlying reser- vations to White Earth, disposing of those lands for their benefit ; to give them, at the expiration of twenty-five years, the right in fee-simple to their lands, subject to a provisional extension of the period of probation. This length of tirae^ — almost a generation — ^will ^'ive the influences of religion and educp.iion, and the peaceful pursuit of a settled agricultural life, time to tell upon the Indian character. At its close, if not long before, his claims to en- franchisement cannot be denied ; and the American nation will add to its other triumphs in the cause of civil and religious liberty this the noblest of all — that it foimd upon the fertile plains of this vast continent a race of heathen savages, whom it civilised and christianised, and raised to an equality with its own people, instead of following the fatal policy of 150 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. extermination whicli has stained witli blood and wrong the onward pathway of many another nation, which claims the religion of the Cross as its guide and the universal brotherhood of man as its political creed. The moment of parting came at last. The carriages drew up at the schoolhouse door, and again honoured by a salute, and escorted a mile or two on our homeward journey by the entire squadron of mounted Indian police as a guard of honour, we started once more on our long drive to Detroit. I had the pleasure of being the good Bishop's travelling companion. No one can doubt his apostolic zeal^ his single- ness of purpose, and purity of motive, in aU his efforts to benefit the Indiani. To him must be attributed much of the credit of the success which attends the agency system on these reservations, as opposed to the cruel and barbarous plan of turning "AMONG THE CHIPPEWAS." 151 the Indians over indiscriminately to the tender mercies of a second lieutenant with his squad of soldiers, and the moral persua- sion of a fort. The structure of justice and mercy, at whose foundation he was a builder, has passed now into a stage in which the missionary must work in sub- ordination to the civil power. To civilise the Indian and make him a good subject is the Government's first duty, while it must be grateful for, and give all the protection in its power to, the self-denying efforts of missionaries who are seeking to make religion walk hand in hand with civilisa. tion in the regeneration of the savage- Gradually, we cannot doubt, they wiU learn to relinquish the shadow for the substance ; the mere power to roam as hunters over a vast tract of country for a limited territory of their own, which bears within its fertile bosom the unfailing means of support ; the 152 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. petty privileges of a tribe for the citizen- sliip of a great republic ; the religion of the medicine man, with its impure rites, for one of mercy and justice and truth. We stand at last on the railway platform at Detroit, almost sad at heart to think that our pleasant excursion is over. The 10.8 up-train steams slowly into the station, and " lower berths all taken" greets our ears as we enter the " sleeper." The spectacle of Bishops and Senators, Judges of the Supreme Court and Members of Congress, climbing nimbly to those elevated roosting-places "top berths," disturbs the beautiful harmony of nature, and our sense of the eternal fit- ness of things. So we draw the curtain over their well-earned slumbers. ( 153 ) CHAPTEE VII. SPORT. As an old paper-stainer I have long ago come to the conclusion that half even of the successful books in the world > are written by men who know nothing of their subject till they set to work to get it up. In this chapter I will candidly confess to " cram," and, like a debutante on a " first night," throw myself on the kind indulg- ence of my sporting readers. My "coach," at any rate, was all that could be desired, being one of the best-known sportsmen in the North-'west, and from his position as forester of a railway company, with the charge of over a million acres of timber 154 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. lands in Minnesota, able to give a great deal of information on matters of sport not to be learnt from books. At eight o'clock, then, one bright May morning, I mounted with my friend an ensrine of the St. Paul and Manitoba Rail- way, bound for a hundred-and-fifty-mile run towards the north-western boundary of the State. An American engine is not the open affair we are accustomed to see at home, where the unhappy driver and stoker are exposed to the pitiless draught and blinding dust, or drenched by every passing shower. It is a colossal affair, with a huge iron sweep in front, known as a "cow-catcher," in reality a monster snow- shovel, resembling in construction the radiating fenders in our drawing-room stoves at home. The " cow-catcher " has a little platform a couple of feet from the ground, on which adventurous sportsmen SPORT. 155 are sometimes allowed to ride and shoot the buffalo, occasionally found in such numbers as to compel the train to stop. The engine itself is inclosed at the front and sides with plate-glass windows to open or shut at pleasure, has comfortable cush- ioned seats, and is more like the deck cabin of a steamer than anything I can think of. Instead of the ear-splitting steam whistle, it is provided with a musical bell, which the driver tolls from time to time " Like a sexton ringing the village bell Witli meaBured beat and slow." All through the breezy spring day we flew with the single track before us, like two threads of silver stretching away into endless space, along the broad valley of the Mississippi, with an horizon thirty miles away, bounded by forest foliage ; then for hours together through dense belts of heavy timber, where the rude log-cabins 156 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. of the " lumberman's camp " were the only signs of human habitation, till we reached the half-mountainous region of beautiful Otter-Tail County, with its hundred lakes and clumps of forest timber, and swiftly rushing streams rippling musically over their shallow pebbly beds, and broad natural meadows of brightest emerald green, looking, after the wide expanse of placid prairie left behind, like a tempest- beaten sea of verdure suddenly petrified by some magician's wand. Not in field or forest, then, by broad lake side or babbling stream, did I learn what little I know of " sport " in the new North-west — but on an engine, chatting pleasantly with an old "shootist," as the Yankees call it, who was pleased to fight his battles over again for my information — more especially when he learned they were for the ultimate enlightenment and SPORT. 157 edification of the "Britisher." I saw a look of incredulity on his face when I told him that among that game-law be- ridden people a Government tax of three guineas a year is levied for the privilege of carrying a gun at all, and that a rent of about a shilling an acre is one of the bar- riers imposed by a bloated aristocracy on the landless lover of field sports ; while the grimy stoker quietly ejected a quid of "Jackson's Best," in a way that plainly intimated he did not believe a word of the story. But to my tale. All over the western prairies the " prairie chicken," or " ruffed grouse," is found in great abundance. Americans are, as a rule, luxurious sportsmen, and seldom think of tramping many weary miles after their " birds." In the " chicken season " you see them "hunting" (as they call it) in pairs, in a light "top-buggy," with a 158 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. hamper and a bottle of whisky under the seat, and plenty of cigars. When the dog " points," one descends from the buggy and takes a leisurely shot. The same dog is usually trained to " retrieve " and " take to water." In the woods the tree-partridge, here called the pheasant, and the pin-tailed grouse abound, as well as snipe and wood- cock. Flocks of wild geese, often number- ing hundreds, can be met with in spring, while the lakes and sloughs are alive with an almost endless variety of waterfowl. The white crane and the blue heron, better eating than a turkey, are common, and you may often see a pelican fisherman wading up to his knees in some shallow lake,, and busily devouring his finny prey. The wild turkey and the wild swan are scarce ; but wild pigeons are met with in immense droves, and buzzards. Hawks of different kinds, with the black and bald- SPOET. 159 headed eagle, are to be seen commonly enough. One of the quaintest sights on the prairie are the houses of the amphibious musk-rats in the shallow sloughs. A large winter trade is carried on in trapping these animals, for whose skins there is a great demand. I remember one very cold morn- ing last winter finding one of these gen- tlemen quietly sitting on my verandah, whither he had wandered, I suppose, in a fit of " aberration of mind," or possibly to escape the jars of domestic discord ! Musk and otter are indigenous to Minnesota and neighbouring States, and are found in great abundance in the northern parts of the former. Of larger game, deer and bear are the most common, and they are met with more or less in all the woods north and north- west of St. Paul, Four men will drive the deer off two thousand acres on to their 160 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. " runway," and afford sportsmen stationed there capital sport. A heavy breechloader with buckshot is generally used. Venison is worth about six cents {3d.) a pound in St. Paul market, and a deer averages about ten dollars in value. My friend the Jdger told me that in the season of 1864 he killed 130 head, and 96 in 1866. After " figuring it -up," I came to the conclusion that " deer- stalking " was iiearly as profitable, and certainly more agreeable than " leader- writing" in close gas-lit rooms. Early in the season a " still hunt " is usual. One man follows the track in the snow on each side of the " runway," and when the deer springs one or both are sure of a good shot. If only slightly wounded, the dogs are set on. These are usually pointers who must be broken to the work, as the bucks es- pecially will fight fiercely. Later in the season, when the deer are in herds, sports- SPOET, 161 men ride after them, circling round them nearer and nearer, till close enough to shoot. Elk and cariboo are still found in Minne- sota 150 to 200 miles north-west of St. Paul, on the head of Snake and Two Eivers, in Kittson County ; and moose may occa- sionally be met with on the head of the Rozeau River. They often weigh as much as four thousand pounds. Bear-hunting is capital sport in Minne- sota. Though found in all the woods to the north and north-west, the best places are west of the Mississippi, on Swan River and Little Elk River, or sixty or seventy miles north-west of St. Paul, on the St. Croix River. This game is hunted with dogs, who find the scent, and start up the bear from his "den" in some tamarac- swamp, or in long reeds and grass sheltered from the wind, or sometimes in the hollow M 162 FIVE YEARS IN MKNESOTA. trunk of a tree. Away goes Bruin, the dogs after him. He will sometimes " tree " in a mile ; but a run of eight or ten is by no means uncommon. He is shot in the tree. If only slightly wounded, he will descend in a hurry, and then sauve qui pent is the order of the day with hunters and dogs. Cases sometimes occur where both have been killed by a too friendly hug. The common black bear is that usually found ; but the cinnamon bear ranges fix)m the head-waters of the Mississippi and Rozeau and Two Rivers, and weighs often as much as seven hundred pounds. Wolves, both timber and prairie, are common in many parts of the State, and are occasionally destructive among sheep. In the county where I resided, the mem- bers of the hunt essayed once or twice a run of twenty miles after a prairie-wolf SPORT. 163 in tlie far distance, the result being gener- ally but a sensaticoial paragraph in the county paper. Only seventy miles from St. Paul four timber-wolves chased a farmer last year for a couple of miles, and killed both his dogs. But this was during a season of extraordinary cold, and the wolves were driven desperate by hunger. Foxes are plentiful everywhere, and the lynx and wild-cat are found in many parts. The common rabbit swarms in every wood, and on the prairies are found what is here* called the "Jack-rabbit," about the size of a hare, and which turns white in winter. Their scent is very strong, and they con- stantly throw off hounds in full cry after a fox or wolf. My Jiiger friend told me that he was once hunting deer at Cannon Falls, but thirty miles from St. Paul, and while sitting down to eat his lunch he heard the brush rustle behind him. On looking back u 2 164 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. he saw two large timber-wolves taking a quiet observation of bim. He fired both barrels, saw one wolf run, but on going into the bush discovered five lying dead. He had killed the she-wolf and her four cubs at two shots. ^ I confess that sounded to me like rather " tall " shooting. Antelope can be found 250 miles west of St. Paul, and buffalo about 300, in Dahko- tah Territory. Their run is beyond the head-waters of the Mississippi to Texas and Colorado. The lakes and streams of Minnesota abound with fish. Pike, pickerel, bass, and buffalo are found in most lakes. Trout, though not particularly plentiful, may be had on Sun- rise Eiver, and other streams in the eastern and northern parts of the State. The Musca longa, weighing from twenty to fifty pounds, is found in the Mississippi ; also the wall-eyed pike, resembling a fresh- SPORT. 165 water salmoD, which is considered one of the greatest delicacies of the finny tribe. Spearing buffalo, when the fish are " run- ning," is a favourite sport on inland lakes, enjoyed usually at night, with a powerful light fixed to the head of the boat to attract the fish. Fishing in winter through a hole in the ice, over which is built a little wooden house, is, even to an angler wrapped up in buffalo-robes, rather a questionable amusement, with the glass generally a long way below zero. Mud-turtles, often of very large size, are found in all lakes, and make capital soup ; while the little land- turtle, its belly marked in gaudy colours, is found wandering in summer all over the prairie. The smaller wild birds are met with in almost endless variety, and of beaxitiful plumage. Wild canaries and the tiny humming-bird are plentiful, and the 166 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. Minnesota robin is a glorified edition of his smaller and humbler British brother. The woodpecker is of several kinds, and most gorgeously marked, while blackbirds, with bright red or yellow spots on their wings, and red or yellow topknots, take the place of the common hedge-sparrow. Mourning-doves fill every wood with their plaintive notes. In the northern forests timber-squirrels, of iron-grey and black, and occasionally white, as large as cats, may be seen bounding from tree to tree, while south the pretty little brown squirrels we know of remind one of home. Gophers are here such a pest to the farmer that Minnesota has been called the " Gopher State." Among them is a curious variety, known as the " pocket gopher/' with an external pouch. There is a State bounty for the destruction of these little grain-pilferers, as well as of SPORT. 167 wolves, on whose unhappy heads a standing price of three dollars is set, as " contrary to the peace " if not to " the dignity of the State of Minnesota, and the statute in such case made and provided," as runs the legal legend! ( 168 ) CHAPTER VIII. PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. Life under Republican institutions has a tendency to infect insensibly with repiiblican principles, l^o one could have landed on American shores, not only with an utter want of sympathy for, but a deeply-rooted abhorrence of, government by the people, manhood suffrage, and everything which is the distinguishing characteristic of the Republic of the United States, than I did. My old university training ; long years spent under the constitutional government of England, and later under the more imperial rule of Austria, which almost became to me a second country, had made PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 169 me a believer almost in the " divine right of kings." But looking back now to five .years spent in America, I am compelled, in spite of myself, to confess that there is more personal freedom, less of the galling ine- quality of class distinctions, more actual prosperity for the greatest number, than in lands ruled by king or Kaiser. The pos- sibility to every man of a step in the social ladder, if he is but endowed with the brains or business capacity to press to the front, makes, in the western hemisphere, the mere accidents of birth practically im- material in the great race of life. The personal share which every man possesses by his right of citizenship in the govern- ment of his country creates a manly inder pendence of character in those whose condition of life would render them mere hinds and serfs at home. This is gained, of course, at the sacrifice of the impassable 170 FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. line which in Europe separates "gentle" from " simple " blood. In America every man is a " gentleman," though, as we under- stand the word, no one is a " gentleman." I do not mean that the fine tone of feeling, the delicate instinct which we call good breeding, is altogether wanting; but the grain is coarser, and the insensibly ex- pressed deference of a man in a lower station of life to one in a higher is here altogether unknown. The feudalism which leavens all European society is entirely absent, because no one is conscious of social inferiority, and the avenues to the highest offices of State, as well as to affluence and power, are seen to be open and accessible to all alike. A. rail-splitter and a tanner successively in the Presidential chair, the latter of whom was the hero of the Great War of the Rebellion, and the commander of the victorious armies of the North, are PHASES OP POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 171 facts which have a tendency, if not to level all men to the same standard, at least to a self-assertion in every man which implies that he is unconscious of any disquahfication in the great Battle for Pre- cedence among his fellows. This is the im- pression left upon a mind prejudiced by old and deeply-rooted associations, and which approached the study of a republican form of government with almost a foregone de- termination to condemn it, I have been con- vinced, I must admit against my will, that the enormous burdens of taxation necessary to support the cumbrous state of royalty, for instance, the laws affecting land-tenure in England, church establishments, an here- ditary legislature, and the denial of the fran- chise to the class who till the soil, can only be thought reasonable or right by those who have grown up with such a system, and have no experience of the working of any other. And yet a form of government which 172 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. seems to secure so admirably individual freedom and independence, and by whicb a country nearly as vast as Europe, and as diverse in climatic differences as tbose which mark the distinctions between men living amid the snows of northern Eussia and the sunny slopes of the Apennines or the Alps, is found, when its " true inwardness " is known, to be as full of corruption and abuse as the political system of England in the worst days before the passage of the Reform Bill. This argument is of course a strong one in favour of republican institu- tions; for out of gear as the machinery undoubtedly is, it yet works in practice better than one of a different construction, which is supposed to have been improved by the experience of centuries, and to which some corrective or repressive power is being continually applied. There is more actual misery and want, more crying social abuses, more oppression of individuals, PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 173 less freedom for the expression of public opinion tlirough the press, in countries like England or Germany or Russia, where the " powers that be " have been sitting for centuries as a perpetual Committee of Public Safety, than exist in the United States under republican institutions theoretically perfect, but which in practice are known to be very sinks of corruption and jobbery. The electoral franchise is in theory sup- posed to be free. The ballot-box protects each individual vote from the intrusive gaze which might open the way to intimi- dation or coercion. And yet the whole system of voting is as little the faithful expression of the popular will as the stock market, rigged by astute and unscrupulous speculators, represents the actual value of the securities quoted. Caucuses, conventions, and professional politicians — a flourishing and lucrative trade in America — control 174 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. practically every election. " Packing " has reached the perfection of a fine art. A " Ring" rules despotically, in most instances, the particular " party candidates " to be put forward for the popular choice at the ballot^ box. To " bolt the ticket," or vote for any man who ventures to come forward as an " independent candidate " — a sort of political " dark horse " — is considered a desertion of the " party " ; and to " vote the straight ticket, " which means the " Ring's " no- minees, is the straight and narrow way to political salvation for the free and independ- ent elector. The law of compensations is worked with as much subtle nicety as a quadratic equation. Politicians " trade off " their respective candidates, and both in the^ Senate and at the ballot-box gain a vote they wish for some particular candidate or measure by giving one elsewhere in a way which suits somebody else's book. PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 175 The vox populi would seem reduced to an absurdity when to it is left the selection of the highest judicial offices. The judges of the Supreme Court of each State, who sit in banco as a Court of Appeal, as well as the District Court judges, answering to our common-law judges, are chosen by popular vote for short terms of eight and four years respectively. The result is often a parody of justice, and sometimes a grave scandal on the judicial bench. In the judicial district where I resided, a judge, who was a notorious bon vivant, was one year "elevated" more or less on the bench the whole term of court. In the intervals of adjournment he betook himself to a low saloon in the town, run without a licence, and whose very proprietors were indicted by the grand jury, and subsequently tried by him. And yet though justice leans almost dangerously to the side of the 176 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. accused, and the " rights of a citizen " are stock arguments with which every jury is plied by counsel, crime is practically pun- ished, and the majesty of the law upheld. The only wonder is that this happy-go-lucky system affords any security at all for life and property, the reason, I suppose, being that if the sovereign people find things going too far they have the remedy in their own hands. " Steals " and "jobs," " land grabs " and oflScial nepotism, are the order of the day in every department of State. "When every representative of the people is paid, from the United States Senator down to the humble representative in the State Legis- lature, with numerous perquisites of office besides, we cannot wonder that politics become a regular and organised profession. The appointments to clerkships in the public departments are, by a sort of un- written law, the perquisites of Senators and PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 177 Congress men. I saw, not long ago, an angry correspondence between a youthful gallant who sits in Congress, I think for Louisiana, with the Secretary of State, because the latter objected to appoint the gay Congress man's mistress, ' who could scarcely write, to a situation in the Mint. A change of Grovernment means a clean sweep of every servant in Government pay, from the heads of departments at Washing- ton to the possessor of the smallest village post-office. Every man's ambition is to "get an office," and put his hand in the public till. Only recently a bill passed the United States' Senate enabling soldiers of the Northern Army who had been injured in the Civil War, and who had not applied for pensions before, to do so now. The result is a mighty legion of " old soldiers " who have suddenly bethought themselves, after fifteen years, o-f some long-forgotteii. N 178 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. and perhaps imaginary, injury, and the disbursement of millions of dollars fromi the public treasury. There seems to be a kind of feeling that it is "all in the family," and there is no sort of compunction or shame in putting the hand into Uncle Sam's pocket, when the smallest pretext offers for a quiet " steal." The result of this is, as a matter of course, a virul- ent political animus and a fierce and unscrupulous personal abuse of political an- tagonists on the platform and in the public prints, which seems utterly discreditable and disgraceful to one accustomed to the amenities of party warfare at home. The deep and bitter animosities of North and South are still unallayed. Dominant republicanism in the North is panting to crush the hated democracy of the South, just as fiercely as in the old days of the War of Secession. And the rising cry of PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 179 a " solid North " against a " solid Soutli " seems to show that the tide is drifting slowly and dangerously to a new and per- haps bloody conflict. The proud Southerner still disdains the polluting contact with the faintest tinge of African blood. A dis- tinguished Southern Senator, who lately married a beautiful octoroon, though re- ceived with his wife at the White House, and effusively called upon by Northern Senators and their wives, yet found his house shunned like some leprosy-tainted spot by his Southern brethren. In this generation at least the South will never forgive the bitter wrong which it conceives the North inflicted in the uncompensated liberation of the slaves. One reason why the glaring abuses of political life do not inflict the harm which might be expected to follow them is owing perhaps to a freedom in the expression of N 2 180 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. public opinion, of which, even in England, no idea can be formed. A distinguished American journalist once remarked to me that this was the only court to which an American was amenable. The sting of the editor's pen, the ruthless dragging into the public gaze of his most private affairs, the certainty that the eye of political opponents is blazing fiercely upon his doings like some electric light, is the restraining power which takes the place of conscience among public men. The conduct of a judge upon the bench, the guilt or innocence of an accused prisoner, are discussed, with the same ingenuous freedom and absence of all possible g^ne as the acts of a political adversary. And, as might be expected, the press has an importance and a magni- tude of field in America unknown in other countries. The twin capital of Minnesota has, besides weeklies, five English and one PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 181 Grerman daily, and yet its population is not much over a hundred thousand. The principal daily, as large as the Standard in its earlier days, has a circulation of over 10,000, and is equal in editorial ability almost to any London journal, and in variety and amount of news and excellence of arrangement far in advance of them. There are published in the State itself, with a population of hardly 800,000, not less than 120 daily and weekly newspapers. The principle of personal freedom and independence is the subtle element which gives its tone and colour to every phase of social life in America. To recognise its presence is the first step a stranger has to make in studying the social aspect of the New World. When once he has mastered this, much that se^s to him at first sight exaggerated and incongruous falls into 182 FIVE TEAES IN MINNESOTA. keeping and harmony. The colouring of the picture is louder, its tints are fresher ; some of the effects of light and shade are of startling novelty. But the ^irawing is bold and free, the handling of the subject vigorous, and the taste insensibly beconaes trained to look upon some of the " studies of still life " at home as tame and unin- teresting in comparison. The first im- pression is generally one of disgust; the last, of irresistible recognition that much which long habit and familiarity had trained one to regard as right and proper has here been improved upon to decided advantage. I am afraid a few years' residence in these Western States has a decided tendency to unfit people not only for the conventional restraints of modern society at home, but it disturbs their old- fashioned notions of the propriety of many social distinctions,, and makes those who PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 183 were firm believers in the social code, as held in the "Shires," social free-thinkers. I fear I should now have a rather uncom- fortable feeling as I walked up the street of some country village to see poor Hodge, with his bent back and slouching gait and patient look of imcomplaining endurance, doff his hat to me respectfully because I happened to wear a good coat, and seemed to him to belong to that higher order of creation called "gentleman," I think I should be tempted to stop and shake hands with him, and get into a discussion on the relative merits of Western and Midland- shire farming; I should, perhaps, be socialist enough to propose to accompany him to his poor cottage, where perhaps the very garden and the pig are favours graciously permitted him by some higher order of village being. And when the poor housewife-drudge made her best 184 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. curtsey, and dusted tlie chair for me to sit down upon, and bade her shy, open- mouthed little ones, who were hiding behind her skirts, remember their manners to the " quality," I think I should feel a burning sense of indignation at a social system which reduced any one class of men to a hopeless serfdom such as the lot of the English agricultural labourer implies. And when I returned to the snug, ivy-clad rectory, sleeping dreamily on its mossy lawn, and the sleek parson — possibly some old college friend — showed me his pet rosery, on which the best efforts of his feeble brain are employed, and bragged of his '20 port and his connoisseurship of good wine, I believe I should begin' to display nihilistic as well as socialistic tendencies which would make him hold up his plump white hands in pious horror at the brutalising effect of life under re- PHASES OP POLITICAL Am) SOCIAL LIFB. 185 publican institutions. I should be very likely to tell him that I was for disestab- lishment, root and branch ; that I believed tithe and glebe were a robbery of the poor tiller of the soil, which made his lot still harder than it might be; and that the puny efforts of his vegetating intellect dribbled Sunday after Sunday broadcast and aimless over the poor, tired, worn-out sons of toil he called his " parishioners," never reaching their dull souls, made duller still by hard work and harder living, leaving all unsolved for them the dark and terrible enigma of their own weary lot, were glaring abuses that cried to a just and merciful Heaven for redress. No doubt his wife, whose comfortable conscience purrs with an approving murmur as she walks condescendingly from cottage to cottage, distributing eleemosynary doles of food and clothing, weighted with the inevit- 186 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. able " tract of the period," and taking the poor household slave to task for untidy house and dirty children, or Hodge's non- attendance at church, would shake her head with the dear rector in pious sorrow over the dreadful levelling opinions I had imbibed in America. I expect the invita- tion to prolong my stay in this village Eden would be a cool one, and I should find myself jogging along behind the fat rectory pony to catch the up-train which would carry me back to the Bohemia in which alone I was now fitted to exist. Hat-touching, curtseying, and chair- dusting for one's betters (so called) do not exist in America. There are ho social grooves, in which each man is born, and which he must follow to his grave — a prize or a blank drawn, as the case may be, at the start, in the lottery of human life. But while this is so, I cannot deny that the PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 187 opposite extreme which prevails in the United States has its inconveniences and its drawbacks, and assumes, at times, a form which is grotesque, and shocks that innate sense of propriety which is the birth of liberal education. In a Justice's Court, for instance, it would be very difficult for a stranger to distinguish magistrate from counsel, or prisoner from witness, or spec- tators from both. A little more decorum is observable in the higher, or district, courts, but even there the atmosphere would seem strange indeed to those accustomed to the grave propriety of Westminster Hall. I had myself the honour of being a magistrate for the county in which I resided, and I remember very- well the last case which came before me, which was one of sheep-stealing. The attorneys on both sides perched their feet on my judicial table, 188 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. and the prisoner, a notorious young thief, remained covered during the hearing, which ended in his committal for trial at the coming sessions, when he will prohably be sentenced to three years' States prison, unless the "Britisher" he robbed, who is now in London, is unable to recross the ocean in time to " put him through." The spectators smoked and wore their hats at pleasure, laughed at any witty sally in a witness's evidence, and comported themselves as they would in listening to an amusing farce. I recollect once sitting down to supper (as the Americans call the six o'clock evening meal) at the same hotel table with the sessions judge, the leading counsel, the sheriff, and a burglar, an old " crook," who was sentenced next day by the first-named of the party to seven years' States prison. The sheriff considerately took off this gentleman's " bracelets," and I must admit PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 189 he behaved with perfect propriety, and affably took his due share in the general conversation. Of course I am here speak- ing of a somewhat remote "Western State, and the lines of social distinction are more sharply cut farther east. Over Minnesota, at any rate, might be written with truth, " Who enters here leaves servitude behind." The " hired man " and the " hired girl " as they exist there were, I confess, too much for my moral digestion — and I latterly dispensed with them as far as I could. I have groomed my own horses, milked my own cows, fed my own pigs! Fine ladies and fine gentlemen, it is wonder- ful how artificial are many of our wants, and how easy it is to learn to do without servants ! The " hired man " does not con- sider his employer in any sense of the word his " master." You must suggest to him how you wish the work done. To order him 190 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. about will inevitably result in his leaving you and collecting his wages (if you a,]ce good for it) up to that day. In fact he receives no wages, but charges you so much for his work. On Sundays he will perhaps go through the form of telling you he intends riding one of your horses a few miles to see his " girl." To find out what is " a day's work " is about as difficult as to determine the unknown quantity in an involved equation ; and if " found " a,nd " made a note of," is best got out of the average " hired man " by working steadily side by side with him and regulat- ing the pace, his amour propre forbidding his being beaten, even at work, by the " boss." The "hired girl" helps the lady of the house with her work, and she expects to do no more than her share. You would be treading on a social volcano if you hinted that " no followers " was the rule of your PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 191 house. She must have full liberty to receive her guests just as you have yours. She will very likely, if a forwa,rd party, expect you to introduce her to your visitors ; and pray bear in mind she is Miss So-and-so, and not " Mary." When guests arrive, and her curiosity may happen to be excited, she will leave the cooking-stove and join the party in the sitting-room; and rocking herself lazily to and fro in one of the easy chairs which abound in every American house, will join affably in the conversation, or be a silent listener, as may suit her passing mood. She will borrow your wife's saddle for a ride, and possibly expect to be allowed to borrow what she may choose from her wardrobe for a "dance." Her wages are about eight or ten shillings a week. She " breaks " on the average about an equal amount. Her style of dress is usually a train, and her coiffure, dishevelled 192 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. locks streaming to ter waist, and slie generally stays about five or six weeks in a place. I never heard of sucli a thing as a " character " being offered or asked for. I doubt if the "hired man" or the "hired girl" of the Far West would understand what is meant, and if they did I do not doubt they would consider it an outrage on freedom and personal liberty. The higher social consideration in which women are held, especially in the newer and more western States, cannot fail forcibly to strike those who are accustomed to see the drudgery and hardship and even personal ill-usage to which they are subject in overgrown and overcrowded civilisations. Field work, as a rule, is seldom, if ever, performed by American women, even when hands in the hayfields or at harvest time are difficult to be obtained. Scandinavian and German PHASES OP POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 193 settlers keep up their home customs for a time, and the women may be seen at first hoeing in tlie potato-field, or following the plough; but they soon learn to leave these labours to their liege lords. In the higher walks of life, every avenue of profitable industry which, women can fill is freely opened to them. They can take their degrees at many universities ; and they are eligible indiscriminately with men for election as teachers in commori schools. The " sweet girl-graduate " and the " school mar'm " are well-known types. The postal atod telegraph offices are filled with lady clerks and operators, and they threaten inconveniently to crowd the male sex in the eager competition for Govern- ment positions in the departments at Washington, which by an unwritten law are in practice the perquisites of Senators, who have all, of course, more thaif onfe o 194 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. " lady friend " they wish to oblige. Ameri- can ladies make admirable " lobbyists," and more than one important measure of late years has had its fate determined by the soft blandishments of some charming and mysterious " widow," from parts un- known, in the pay, presumably, of' a corporation or railway company, which adopted this effectual means of influencing in its favour the votes of the impression- able elderly gentlemen who had the honour of seats in the United States Con- gress. Favourite members may be easily recognised from the " strangers' gallery " by the number and choiceness of the hot- house bouquets which adorn their desks. Is it any wonder that their intoxicating scent brings back sometimes to the stoniest- hearted of legislators, in the very agony of some critical decision, the seductive memory of soft perfumed hair, the con- PEASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 195 fiding whisper of rosy lips, the tender, im- ploring pressure of soft jewelled hands, and turns a vote in spite of better judgment ? Lady M.D.'s practise in New York and many large cities with success, and half a dozen " lady lawyers" have been " ad- mitted to the bar " of different States, and some practise before the Supreme Court at Washington. At present but one or two elderly ladies, with grey fronts and gold spectacles, have reached the sacred " inner circle " of the law's majesty. Into a court where questions of international law, in- volving perhaps issues of peace and war between the United States and other nations, sweet sirens of seventeen, " learned in the law," have not yet insinuated their way, or the elderly lawyers who sit there in high places might find a new and fatal element of difficulty introduced in arriv- ing at their judgments. I made the 2 196 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. acquaintance of one charming young "attorney and counselloress-at-law," who came on a lecturing tour to the town near which I resided ; and I am sure that had I been on a jury addressed by her I should have held out in favour of a verdict for her client, to the last sole of my boots. Women in America can hold and acquire property after marriage independently of their husbands, and carry on business, as though a feme sole, on their own account. Indeed a husband cannot make a valid title to any landed property without his wife's signature to the deed ; and a purchaser neglecting to secure this only obtains a property on which the wife. and her heirs have a claim of one third for ever. This law places a wholesome restraint on spendthrift husbands, and prevents many a man from making " ducks and drakes " of his property. PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 197 As might be expected in a country where marriage is regarded more as a mutually beneficial partnership, with yet separate interests distinctly defined, the nuptial tie sits lightly and easily on women. A case of wife-beating, for which a drunken brute at home would get no more than " three months " from a bench of enlightened county magistrates, even though leavened by a strong clerical element among its members, would in America be a sufficient ground for divorce, and the husband might think himself fortunate if his neighbours did not summon him to the hasty shrift of Judge Lynch's Court, Habitual- drunkenness in the hus- band or wife, conviction of any criminal offence, punished in the States prison, are all good and valid grounds for divorce d mensd et thoro. Oh the whole, the standard of social 198 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. morality is, I believe, higher in America than in countries which, for long periods, have been brought under the influence of an artificial and enervating civilisation. I will not assert that that great blot of modern society, the " social evil," does not exist there, but at any rate no such flagrant evidences of it as disgrace Euro- pean capitals, such as London, Vienna, or Paris, are seen in the streets. A sort of compromise seems to be attempted in the larger cities, where certain maisons de joie are permitted to carry on their questionable business under- the eye of the police, very much in the same way as a mouse is allowed to play by a cat. Every now and then the " force " make a midnight raid, and next morning not only the ladies discovered in flagranti, but the unfortunate gentlemen also, are brought up to the City Hall, fined their ten dollars each and costs, and bidden PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 19S> to " go in peace " if not to " sin no more." Of course these are but the crude and awkward efforts of village fathers, not very learned in the dark mysteries of human nature, to compromise with an evil they are afraid to let alone, and fear to coun- tenance. Great cities, as New York, with something of the " wisdom of the serpent " if not of the harmlessness of the dove, are conveniently blind to an evil they know to, be bound up indissolubly with the highest forms of civilisation. Their streets, it is true, present an aspect of decorum to be looked for in vain in London or Paris, b)ut a gilt-edged descriptive catalogue or two, which now and then finds its way to a stranger's hotel, and which may at- first be easily mistaken for that of a picture gallery, but is in reality an Almanach der Schonheit, tells one that in such cities as New York or Philadelphia, Cincinnati or St. 200 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. Louis, and even senatorial "Washington itself, tbere lurks darkly an organised system of vice which is worthy of the phosphorescent decay of' old Imperial Eome. Religion (so called) is fashionable in New America., It is considered the mode for every one to belong to some particular " Church," and the free-thinkingnon-church- going class does not, as a class, exist to the same extent as in Europe. Generally- speaking, among Protestants the affair resolves itself into a sort of Sunday concert, flavoured with about as much religious sentiment as an Oratorio in Exeter Hall. Part-singing and solos are the usual style of vocal music, and white neckties and lavender kid gloves are so usual amon^ the gentlemen of the congregation that the , idea is irresistibly suggested to a stranger's mind that they are paying a ceremonious PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 20 1 morning call upon the Divine Being. Church " Sociables," with " tea and muffins " in the well-warmed church " parlours " in winter ; and " strawberry- cream festivals " or " picnics " in summer, to which only the " elect " on the church's muster-roll are admissible^ afford the younger members of the flock oppor- tunities for pious flirtation, of which they are not slow to avail themselves. A very successful way of wiping out a church debt is a bazaar with lady stall-keepers. At these it is not uncorjamon to charge gen- tlemen a " quarter " (about a shilling) for the privilege of kissing one of the lady members of the flock. There is usually a tremendous " run " on one or two favourite beauties, and it is edifying to see the Christian meekness and submission with which they offer themselves as a sacrifice on the altar of their church. 202 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. But if in religion all classes agree harmoniously to differ, Catholics andProtest- ants mingling in friendly intercourse in a way unknown to us at home, the great question of temperance divides them by lines intensely marked into opposite and hostile camps. No one who has not lived amongst it can realise the bitterness of the contest. The subject becomes not seldom one of the most important elements oh a political platform. The question of " licence " or " no licence," or the opening or non-opening of public drinking saloons, is decided annually by popular vote in every town and village. And strenuous efforts have been made in Congress by the advocates of " women's rights " to permit of their voting on this particular question, which, in the majority of instances, would result in the closing of public drinking places throughout the country. A few PHASES OP POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 203 years' residence in America will convince the most sceptical that underlying- an apparently wild and unreasoning crusade against strong drink there is a substratum of sound common sense. It is an undeni- able fact that, whether from the poisonous character of the national beverage — whisky — or from some climatic influence which renders excess harmful there in a far higher degree than in more humid climates, intemperance makes a man a social pariah, is a sufficient ground in law for divorce, and leads inevitably to failure in every career. So strongly is this felt that I'ailway employes, among others, are for- bidden to drink on pain of dismissal — a law, I suspect, "more honoured in the breach than in the observance." Selling intoxicating liquors to minors, or without a government "licence," or in a non-licensed town, is punishable by imprisonment in the 204 FIVE YEARS IN MINNESOTA. county jail ; and selling liquor to Indians is a States prison offence. Railway travelling in America, though it provides at a very cheap rate the greatest amount of comfort to the greatest number, yet lacks the charm of privacy so dear to the insular Briton. The long American car, with its constant ebb and flow of passengers ; with its ever-present conductor, who is a person of importance, and usually gives you to understand that it is he who is " bossing " the train ; its peripatetic news- boy, who lends you books to read, and goes away afterwards with an injured air if you decline to purchase them, and bores you at irregular intervals with apples, and peanuts, cigars, and figs, which he retails at fabulous prices — all these are not conducive to the dreamy comfort and enjoyment of travelling to be found in an English " first class," to a^quiet nap or a tender flirtation. The PHASES OP POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 205 smoking-car is generally an inferior one, and the roughest and dirtiest of your fellow-travellers seem, by some unwritten " bylaw," to filtrate into this tobacco- infected region. But on trains which run through the night, the ordinary " sleeping car," converted into a drawing-room by day, or the more luxurious " Pullman," afford all the comfort, if not the privacy, one need wish for, at an extra charge of about a couple of dollars a day. The American hotel system is the most perfect thing of its kind in the world ; and it is an open question whether life in an hotel is not more economical, as it is certainly far less troublesome, than house- keeping. An " extra " of any kind what- ever absolutely does not exist, and " service " is not charged in the bill and then levied again as " black-mail " by an importunate crowd of waiters, chamber- ,206 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. maids, and errand-boys. Boot-cleaning only is not included. This is "farmed" in hotels by one or two " darkies," who generally expect ten cents for a "shine." Even stationery is provided freeof charge for the use of guests, and the daily news- papers lie on the '' oflSce " counter for their reading, while the spacious, well-lighted office itself, a large entrance hall, with its writing-desks and easy-chairs and great central stove, makes a capital smoking- room, and a common and convenient meeting-place for men of business. The living is luxurious. Three capital meals, with a couple of hours allowed for each, are served during the day. The rooms and passages are warmed throughout in winter with hot air, and all this can be had in most large cities (excepting perhaps such places as New York and the larger southern cities) for about eight and six- PHASES OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. 207 pence or two dollars a day. I cannot better conclude ttis chapter than by the dinner bill of fare I happened to bring away from my hotel on my last visit to the capital of Minnesota, and will beg the reader who is doomed to oscillate from "chop" to "steak" and from "steak" to "chop," like some unhappy living pen- dulum, to " read, mark, learn, and (in spirit) inwardly digest the same." WINDSOH HOTEIa, ST. PAUL. S TJ IT 13 Ji- "Sr, layC-A-TT 2 5- DINNER, SOUP. FuK^E OF Green Peas. FISH. Soiled Halibut. Sauce Hollakdaise. COLD. Roast Beef. Beef Tongue. ^OBNED Beef. Fhesh Salmon. Loin ot" Pokk. SUGAK-CURED Ha3I. HSLiISHSS.. } Lettuce. Cheese. Chow-Chow. Olives. 'Worcestebshiee Sadck. Halford Sauce. BOILED. Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce. Corned Beef. Sugar-cured Hah. Beef Tongue. Tomato Sauce. An Sxtra Charge will be made for Pniit, Kuts, etc., \ carried from the table. EISTTREES. Bbiseet op Laub, Beeaded. Gkeeh FeA3. English Pancakes with Currant Jeilt. BLAIfQUETTE OF TeAL, A LA ClARBMOHT. Baked Pork and Beans. ROAST. Turkey. Loin of B^ef. Pork, Affle Sauce. Bib of Beef. Laub, Mint Sauce. Saddle of Mutton. TEGETABLES. Lima Beans. Stewed Touatoes. Boiled Potatoes. Mashed Potatoes. Asfaraous. Boiled Bice. Boiled Onions. Brown Potatoes. x^Au i. xiY . Steamed Fruit Pudding, Brandy Sauce. Bhubarb Pie. Genoise Cake. Cream Lady Fingers. Affle Pie. Iced Delicate Cake. Sfonge Drofs. Cream Pie. French Kisses. CocoANUT Cake. DESSERT. Miked Nuts. Lemon Jelly. Sherry Wine Jelly. Orange Ice Cream. Tea and Coffee. Apply to Head Waiter for Wine Iiiat. 210 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. CHAPTER IX. THE EMIGEATION QUESTION. The question, to emigrate, or not to emi- grate, is one which must be finally answered by each individual for himself. I confess it seems to me one of the most momentous which can present itself in the life of any man, and should never be decided iipon rashly, or in haste. All I shall attempt in these concluding pages is to present fairly and impartially the arguments for and against ; to paint in their true colours the light as well as the dark side of emi- gration to the lands beyond sea with which I am alone personally familiar, and then leave to each the easy task, as THE EMiaEATION QUESTION. 211 it seems to me, of making a decision for himself. I must acknowledge to so much patriot- ism as to assume it as a principle that every man owes himself to his country ; that given moderate means of existence in his station of life, reasonable prospects of comfort for declining age, and an assured future for his children, and some favourable chance of their gaining a step in the ladder of social life, to such the question of emi- gration does not, in my view, seem one which should enter the arena of discussion. Indeed, why should such a man expatriate himself at all ? I will go further, and admit my utter want of sympathy with the mere fortune-hunting emigrant. For him these pages are not written, and he will find there no suggestive hints of possible bonanzas beneath the Stars and Stripes. The preceding chapter will have taught p 2 212 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. those who are seeking a new home in another land that the English tongue is practically all that is English in America. The political as well as the social atmosphere is as different as that of Germany or France. The prejudices of education in favour of what is known as constitutional govern^ ment, the Briton's instinctive reverence for an hereditary nobility, and for class distinctions resting on any other basis than the success which each man can carve out for himself in the eager, competing struggle of life, either by the command of money, or an intellectual ability, or an education beyond his fellows — all these will be rudely trampled under foot on the free republican soil of the New World. This is one of the reasons why Englishmen so often fail as emigrants to the States. Insular prejudices and insular exclusiveness are too deeply rooted to allow of their accommodating THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 213 themselves readily to a new state of social life, without which one of the principal elements of success is wanting. I have observed^ not seldom, that it is the second generation which succeeds, and rises to fortune, warned partly, perhaps, by the example of their elders' failure, and fitted partly for a new country by a process of social acclimatisation which is the slow tind gradual work of years. These may perhaps be thought discouraging hints at the thres- hold of a life in America which it has been the object of these pages to recommend. They are meant only as social buoys, warning off rocks and quicksands which may lead to disaster and wreck. " To do at Rome as Rome does " is a motto nowhere more needful to bear in mind than in the States of the Union. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to warn the intending emigrant against the ex- 214 FIVE TEARS IN MINNESOTA. aggerated pictures of every American State tinted in gaudy colours by the baleful brush of the land-jobber, which are sown broadcast by interested parties in every quarter where it is thought the bait may prove attractive. To read these sensational descriptions, one would imagine that each State only differed from its neighbour in the perfection of its climate, the fertility of its soil, and the advantages which make it a surer and more rapid road to fortuoie. My experience of America is this, that, as contrasted with England, it offers in trade and commerce an atmosphere where confid- ence is slowly but steadily reviving, credit growing more stable, and new avenues of industry and enterprise continu- ally presenting themselves to those who have the ability and the tact to take advantage of favourable signs in the times, and so to trim their sails as to catch the THE EMIGEATION QUESTION. 215 first breath of the rising wind of prosper- ity. Unhappily the reverse of all these conditions of successful business, for the present at any rate, holds good in England, and the most farseeing are unable to fore- cast the period of a reaction to better times. To the agriculturist — and to the man of limited capital and limited experience, this is practically the only field open — the advantage which America possesses over England is more decided still. Although every State has its disadvantages and draw- backs ; though a succession of good harvests can nowhere be relied on with certainty ; though for several years a locust scourge desolated many of the Western States, and seasons in which blight or drought or hailstorms destroy suddenly the fairest prospects of the husbandman are not un- known, yet, on the whole, the balance is decidedly favourable to the tiller of the soil. 216 FIVE YEABS IN MINNESOTA. The three classes which in England live directly from it, the landowner, the tenant- farmer, and the agricultural labourer, are here reduced practically to one — the hus- bandman himself. The fee-simple of the soil cos.ts less than the annual rent of similar land in England which will produce no more, while the burdens of taxation are trifling in comparison. The soil in the North-western States of America contains unexhausted fertilising powers, which will last for a generation to come without resource to artificial means of improve- ment. The mere necessaries of life are cheap and easily obtained. These are the favourable points of the case. On the other hand, labour, as a rule, is perhaps higher in price than at home, and the owner of land will find it expedient to work with his men: looking on from the back of a horse will not answer in the West, what- THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 217 ever it may do in the Midlands. " Grentle- man-farming " is the most dangerous reef on the whole transatlantic coast, and is strewn with the wrecks of many a modest fortune, which prudently used and properly economised might have led to competence, instead of leaving its possessor in a year or two penniless, with nothing to show for the money he has lost but a dear experience bought too late. If all this looks discouraging, I can only reply that Emigration, as I view it after some years spent in studying the subject under circumstances very favourable to arriving at genuine information, seems to me only the lesser of two evils. If existence be impossible at home, and all the associations which add so much to its charm must be severed, then T will not say the possibility but the absolute certainty of a life beyond the reach of want, and the prospect of. children growing up to pros- 21fi FIVE YBAES IN MINNESOTA. perity, and perhaps to wealth, with the ever- advancing progress of a young and vigorous country, offer inducements to the emigrant sufficiently powerful to decide his choice in favour of a new home beyond the sea. But it must not be forgotten that the causes which have led to failure in an old country operate to the full as strongly in a new one. Work is the only element of success in America, as work is the only element of success in England. The simple difference is that in America there is work for every man who will bravely put his hand to it. And a capital which would open no avenue of successful industry at all at home, and itself be insufficient for the simplest wants, may there, if judi- ciously utilised, become the foundation of competence, if not of fortune. The class of English emigrants which has come specially under my notice in America has belonged almost entirely to the middle THE EMIGEATION QUESTION. 219 ranks of society. On the whole they have not been successful, but the causes of failure are in many cases so obvious that I have ventured to use them as warning beacon- lights to any whose thoughts may be turned by these pages- to the subject of emigration to the Western States. In new countries such as Minnesota, agriculture is necessarily the chief, if not the only, pursuit open, though business opportunities for men of suiEcient capital, or clerkships in mercantile houses for young men who are crowded out by competition at home, are more easily obtainable there than in England. The rule of noblesse oblige applies with very light force in America. It is no uncommon thing to find officers who have held high commands in the army, or men who have even been United States Senators or Governors of States, engaging in such occupations as law practice, hotel 220 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. management, or store-keeping. All this is thought right and proper in America, though it would seem strange at home to find an ex-M.P. behind a ' counter, or a general on the retired list the obliging host of an hotel. But these are, in my opinion, occupations in which Englishmen emi- grating to America would only excep- tionally be able to engage. The genius loci is difficult and treacherous, and it takes a lifetime, as the Americans express it, to " learn the ropes." To settle on a farm, where farmwork must be learnt as a business, and made the occupation of one's life, to be content with an existence of a somewhat simple and primitive character, this is to the emigrant of small and limited capital practically the only choice open. Larger means have this immense advantage, that they enable a man to make his home in older and more THE EMIGEATION QUESTION. 221 settled districts, where tte social advan- tages and the means of education leave little to be wished for. The mistake which too many who have come under my notice have made is an investment in land far beyond their means, the result being, in a year or two, a mortgaged farm at ten or twelve per cent., foteclosure, and beggary. The possession of land so impossible at home, and so easily obtainable in America, is the ruinous snare into which too many fall, to their cost. Capital is as necessary to successful farming in Minnesota or Iowa as it is in Lincolnshire or Norfolk ; and the man who starts by overbuying, ends gener- ally by losing all he has bought. I should recommend no one, even a single man, (unless a mere labourer), to emigrate to America with less than £500 ; and then not to attempt to purchase or work (unless he is a practical farmer) more than 80 acres of 222 PIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. land, or to invest more than a quarter of his capital in such purchase. And perhaps I need hardly add that to haunt a billiard- room, and to loaf round a saloon bar, and even to indulge overmuch in the too seduc- tive pleasure of shooting in a country where there is no game-licence and no preserving, are easy and rapid roads to ruin. Such causes as these have blighted in more than one' instance the fairest prospects of English colonists in this State. They have Iqgt all they had, and either sunk to menial posi- tions there, or drifted away to hide them- selves through very shame in othef and distant States. For family men with sons growing lap to manhood, able to accommo- date themselves to the ways of a new country, willing to work, and not to be ashamed of any kind of work, which brings no discredit in America, emigration, with a capital of one or two thousand pounds THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 223 oflfers a far better and more assured future than can possibly be boped for at home. I bave seen tbe once Adonis of a crack cavalry regiment following tbe plough, and doing a piece of work which would be no discredit to a ploughman in the Midlands. He laughs philosophically sometimes over aching bones, and takes bravely and man- fully what the gods have been pleased to give. He has a pretty house, a clever mangling wife, who has fortunately a little settled income of £150 a year, and from this and the produce of their eighty acres of land they can keep their large family of eight children, aififord a man and maid, and have all the comforts and enjoy- ments which farm-life at home would afford. Indeed, nowhere is the advantage of a small settled income greater than in the case of the middle-class emigrant. What at home would be a mere pittance, hardly 224 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. sufficing for the payment of rent and taxes, becomes in the Western States a stronghold which, at any rate, affords its possessor a shelter where absolute want is unable to reach him. -It is more my object to offer general principles for the emigrant's guidance, by following which he can work out for him- self favourable results, than to enter into details which can only be effectually learnt by experience. Calculations given of the profit which may be expected in farming are, I have found, as a rule delusive. They lead to false expectations, and end oftener than not in disappointment. In America, as at home, a paying farm depends for its success more upon the owner's individual care and attention, upon his industry, his skill, and the capital employed in propor- tion to what he undertakes, than upon favourable averages, however vouched for THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 225 by the stamp of official authority. It may be enough to say' that the business of fanning in America, prudently managed, and carried on with sufficient capital, is one of the most successful ventures in which any man can engage. Compared with the difficult science which farming at home means, it is a simple and easily learnt business, and demands, beyond a reasonable capacity for work, no more than average attention and ability to learn. And it may safely be asserted that in all calculations other than land-buying a dollar may be warranted to do all the work a sovereign would accomplish at home, while the free- hold price of land is about equal to its annual rent there. I am speaking now of the times preceding the present serious fall in the value of landed property in Eng- land. As regards climate — a vital point for Q 226 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. the emigrant's consideration, to which I have already alluded at some length in another chapter— the State of Minnesota, at any rate, leaves little to be wished for. The winters, it is true, are long, and the cold at times severe, the thermometer standing sometimes for days together as low as 20° to 30° below zero, and in summer 100° in the shade is not very ex- ceptional. But the sky' is nearly always of unclouded brilliance. The air is dry and bracing. The spring and autumn months bring the most perfect weather in the world. The " Indian summer," lasting often till late in November, is a season of still and almost magical beauty, when days of midsummer heat alternate with clear, frosty nights ; and the gaudy colours of Nature's lingering decay are all that re- mind of the near approach of the iron- bound steps of a long northern winter. THE EMIGEATION QUESTION. 227 The most delicate need not fear a climate which, strange as it may sound, is remark- able for its beneficial effect on consumptive patients. And a doctor's bill may almost be left out of calculation altogether. The questions of society and of educa- tional facilities are naturally of serious moment to the middle-class emigrant. I am not sure that a good deal which passes under the name of society at home, and ■*(fhich seems so indispensable, may not be resigned with advantage. And society, except in very remote districts, is accessible enough. Free schools, on the average affording as good an education as national schools in England, are found everywhere within reasonable distance. And for the higher training of boys and young met the high-schools of St. Paul and Min- neapolis, practically free, and the Univer- sity of Minnesota, a magnificent institution Q 2 '228 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. at St. Anthony, between the two cities, with near four hundred students, affords an excellent liberal education, with board and lodging, for about £40 a year, while the Military College for boys at Fari- bault, in the southern part of the State, and St. Mary's Hall for girls, both under the personal direction and manage- ment of the devoted Bishop Whipple; of Minnesota, the well-known friend and champion of the Indian, who bears a charmed life among the very fiercest of their tribes, provide all that a good public school in England would give, for about £60 a year. But with English emi- gration to this beautiful State (as I would fain see it) on an organised system, Avith information which is beyond the reach of suspicion or of doubt as to what can and what cannot be done there, and on a scale and under auspices which practically ob-, THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 229 literate many of the wants which make exile painful and trying, give the colonist -society for himself, education for his chil- dren, and the same religious opportunities he has enjoyed at home, exile — if exile it must be — would lose all the terrors in which an active imagination too often clothes it. Dotted here and there on its beautiful prairies, and by the banks of its timber- belted rivers, and on the shores of the lovely inland lakes which dimple its sur- face in every direction, would be found English communities which had wandered to its hospitable shelter to escape tlie storms of commercial disaster and distress which lower so long and so gloomily at home. They would be New Englands among those who are, after all, their " kin beyond sea," made wiser by the lessons of misfortune, and carrying with them from 230 FIVE YEAES IN MINNESOTA. the old historic ' lands from whence they sprang the germs of future success, aiid perhaps of future greatness, destined to do honour to the English name under a distant sky and under a strange flag. For the present my task is done, and the pen may be laid aside. " The Fastnet Light " — last fading glimpse of Old England —parted from, five long years ago, with somewhat saddened feelings, comes in sight again, casting as of old its friendly, ever- watchful eye upon the dark waste of waters. The great ocean steamer seems to throb with a gladder pulse as its mighty task draws to an end, and with its living freight it nears the welcoming shore. Soon, God willing, the dangers of the vast mysterious deep will be past. The familiar cliffs, from which peep steeple-crowned village and peaceful hamlet, will spread before me like some moving picture of long by- THE EMIGRATION QUESTION. 'AH I gone days. And tten the great world of London, its myriad lights gleaming as far as the eye can wander, will be reached, and I shall enter once again, with new life and new vigour, gained in a New World, the great army of brain-workers who are silently doing the noble mission of right and truth, of social progress and intellec- tual development. APPENDIX. As this work is going to press it has been sug- gested to the author to embody in an Appendix his own experience in Western farming, as a general guide to intending settlers. Some of the reasons why the amount of capital necessary to produce an equivalent result in Western farming is so much less than in British are — 1. The fact that a man can become the owner of the land for about the amount of the annual rent of the same number of acres at home ; while " tithe " and " poor rates " are unknown, and the incidence of taxes is remarkably light. The expense, too, of erecting similar houses and buildings may be estimated in the pro- portion of a dollar to a sovereign, or about one fifth. 234 APPENDIX. 2. The amount of labour-saving machinery employed: a "Self-binder" alone is estimated to save the wages of from five to six men in harvest. 3. The virgin soil of the prairies, a rich, black, alluvial loam, three or four feet in depth, may be cropped, at any rate for many years to come, with highly favourable results, without resource being had to the expensive artificial means of restoration necessary on an English farm. A farmer who would draw, out, every fall, the manure from the amount of stock he ought to have in proportion to his holding, could keep his land in the highest state of fertility for fifty years, and the operation would but give employ- ment to his teams at a time when they would otherwise be little employed. One of those ingenious writers who appear weekly in some of the English journals with a new nostrum for either agricultural or commercial distress writes thus {Pall Mall Budget, April 25, 1879) : " In all the great new wheat-growing regions, crop after crop is taken and exported, while nothing is returned to the soil. Very soon the soil resents this treatment by barrenness, and the farmer has to move to new tracts, more remote or less fertile, and therefore less remunera- tive. ... So rapid is the deterioration that vast APPENDIX. 235 districts in America, where wheat was for a few years grown, are ah-eady given up to the wilder- ness. And the regions where wheat can be grown within reach of profitable transport to the coast are not so boundless that this rise in expen- diture will not very soon tell on prices." Comfort- ing assurance this, if true, for the British farmer ! But so far as the State of Minnesota, with an area nearly as great as France, is concerned, there is not a vestige of foundation for such a statement. And we just quote two examples of what land in that State will do, extracted from tlie pamphlet published under the authority of the State Board of Immigration. " As a specimen of what the soil is capable, it is stated as a fact that the old 'Kamsey Farm,' near St. Paul, has been tilled for thirty-one years in succession by the 'slouchiest' kind of tenants, and has never been known to re- ceive an ounce of fertiliser, and yet last year (1875) it produced 24 bushels of wheat to the acre." "A farmer (one of the pioneers) in the region of Prairie du Chien has gathered excellent crops from his prairie-field near Afton, Washington County, which was first subjected to the plough thirty-eight years ago. He harvested in 1878 25 bushels of wheat per acre on land that was 236 APPENDIX. first sown to that grain in 1843, and has been since continually cultivated, and which in the intervening thirty-four years has received but one light dressing of manure." Although dozens of such instances have come nnder our personal observation, we should be far from advising any one to follow the example of such farmers. But the possibility of such farming with any result at all but failure is the very strongest argument which can be adduced as to the marvellous fertility of the soil. Nowhere does the earth give bacJc a more bountiful return for care and cultivation than here, Instances are reported every year all over the State of yields of 30 and 40 bushels of wheat to the acre, which may generally be traced, upon inquiry, to deep fall' ploughing, early spring seeding, timely harvesting, good stacking, and, not least, plenty of farmyard dung. The object of this Appendix is rather to give general principles to be followed by the English settler on a Western farm, than put before him any cut-and-dried system of husbandry to be rigidly followed. The success of a farm depends far less upon the favourable averages of crops raised in the surrounding district than upon the individual skill, industry, judgment, and capital brought to bear upon its cultivation. And, for APPENDIX. 237 this reason alone, success on a farm can no more be guaranteed than success in any other business. The seasons are uncertain in America, just as they are uncertain everywhere else ; and nowhere can a series of good harvests be relied on with confidence. But on the whole the balance is decidedly favourable to the tiUer of the soil. And the steady and certain and often rapid rise in the value of land, induced by settlement and railway communication, which always follows closely in its wake, sometimes preceding it, amounts in fact to a large capitalised profit, in- dependent of that arising from raising grain or breeding stock. One crucial test of a good farming district in America, as well as in England, is its capacity for growing wheat. The wheat crop of Minnesota in 1877, with a population of about 700,000, was forty million bushels, and in 1879 fifty million, raised on the simple and primitive system of iiusbandry -which prevails there, without any regard paid to rotation of crops, no summer- followinw or resource to artificial fertilisers other than the farmyard, and seldom that. No. 1 Minne- sota: wheat, 64 pounds to the bushel, is the best spring wheat' produced in America, and com- mands a higher price by eight cents than any other wheat: and the flour from it grades con- 238 APPENDIX. siderably higher than any other in the American market. These are facts which can be readily verified no farther off than Mark Lane. The " patent flour " of Minnesota is, in the opinion of many, equal, if not superior, to the finest " Hungarian." The writer, who resided some years in Vienna, a city whose bread has a European celebrity, gives it the decided pre- ference. " From the average of nineteen years, ending with 1877, a yield of 17 bushels per acre may be assumed as the established wheat average of Minnesota. Particular localities, somgtimes em- bracing whole townships, produce frequently an a^^etage of 25 and 30 bushels, while yields ^.ex- ceeding 40 bushels are not nnfrequent in favour- able seasons in nearly every county in the State." — State Pamphlet. From the year 1828 to the year 1853 wheat in New York averaged $1.24, and from 1828 to 1878 the average was $1.46 per bushel. If these things are done in the " green tree," what could be done in the " dry " ? The average of each year is largely reduced by the acreage of newly broken land put into wheat. It is further reduced by shallow ploughing, absence of manuring, and want of thorough cultivation on many iaims. And there can be no possible APPENDIX. 239 doubt that under a more efficient system of tillage the wheat average of the State on " old land" would be increased 40 to 50 per, cent. The cost of wheat-raising in Minnesota may be estimated at $7 per acre. Indian Cobn, or maize, is one of the most profitable, as it is one of the most extensively grown, crops in the State. The average yield of this cereal in 1868 was 37 bushels per acre, and in 1875, a bad year, 25 bushels. The fact established by climato- logista, that "the cultivated plants yield the greatest products near the northernmost limits at which they will grow," receives a striking confirmation in the enormous yields of Indian corn, or maize, in such States as Minnesota or Iowa. The. average reaches 40 bushels per acre, and yields of 60 to 100 bushels are of every-day occurrence, no crop being more dependcMt than this on the care and skill bestowed on its cultivation ; so much so that a good corn yield has come to be commonly regarded as the surest test of a good farmer. A field of maize "in the silk," when the plants have attained their full growth of 10 to 15 feet in height, the broad, bright green If^avep. smooth as satin, the heavy fruit t^heathed 240 APPENDIX. in its glossy case, from which hang pendants which look like dark-brown floss silk, is one of the most beautiful sights that nature can afford. Oats are peculiarly a northern grain, and the adapta- tion of the soil and climate of Minnesota to the growth of this cereal is shown, not only by the large average but by the fact that those produced in this State weigh from three to eight pounds per bushel heavier than those raised elsewhere. The average crop for the last eleven years is 40 bushels per acre, though yields of 60, 70, and even 100 bushels per acre are common wherever a system of thorough farming is pursued. This district is renowned for good Barley. The average of the last five years is 26 bushels per acre. Bye and huek-wheat are useful crops. The " buck-wheat cake," a miniature pancake, is a " Western institution," and, eaten with "sor- ghum," or syrup, is a favourite dish on every American breakfast-table. Potatoes yield in Minnesota 250 to 300 bushels per acre on the average. The "sweet potato" is a sensation worth crossing the Atlantic to enjoy ! Garden vegetaUes of all kinds flourish with a APPENDIX. 241 luxnriance unknown in Europe. Many species of the "melon" tribe attain a size and weight which, were we to relate them, would sound like extracts from Baron Munchausen's travels ! SOBGHUM, OK THE SuGAB PlANT,\ has been grown in this State for many years, afifording a delicious syrup or molasses ; but within the past two years experiments hare proved that at last it is possible to obtain granulation, and consequently the manufacture of sugar may now be added to the list of industries of the New North-west. The "early amber cane," as the choicest variety in the catalogue of the sorghum class is called, is planted and gro\ys almost identically with Indian corn, and is in appearance like this plant, without the pendant cobs. At maturity it is cut with a knife and hauled to the nearest mill, where the juice is extracted by pressure, and then evaporated. The sugar pro- duced is of the finest quality, and it is asserted that the profits arising from this business will, at . present prices, yield the enormous result of £5 to £6 per acre. We cannot too strongly advise new settlers to enter the lists of sugar-growers, believing as we do from personal knowledge that this business R 242 APPENDIX. is preferable even to wheat- or wool-growing. All that is requisite is care in cutting at the right moment, and it is certain that capital will speedily follow in the grooves of this commerce, and be utilised for the purpose of erecting mills. It is believed in the North-west that sugar- growing is now a complete success, and that large fortunes will follow its introduction into the district. Samples of this sugar were shown at the late fairs of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Chicago. Breaking. In opening a farm the first operation is "break- ing " so much of the " sod " as it is intended to put in crop the following spring. For this purpose the higher and more rolling lands should be selected, from the fact of their having an easy and natural system of drainage, and because the more level land is better adapted for hay. The breaking season lasts from about the 15th of May to the 15th of July. After that the roots of the grass will scarcely rot in sufficient time for the land to lose its tenacity, and be thoroughly pulverised by the winter's frost. Breaking is best done with a three-horse sulky (or riding) plough, although where (doubtful) economy is necessary the oldr fashioned four-horse hand-plough will answer the APPENDIX. 243 purpose. Where contracted for, " breaking the sod " can be done for about two dollars an acre prairie, and five dollars brushland. It is common to cross-plough, or " backset," the same season. But if not treated in this way the land must be thoroughly harrowed both before and after seeding. Ploughing for wheat and other small grain should be done in the fall, and four inches is the common depth. For Indian corn, spring-ploughing is usual. To see the plough following close upon the heels of harvest, and the manure-carts just keeping ahead of the ploughman, are some of the surest signs of good farming. The difference in the yield of small grain on fall and spring ploughing is remarkable, and it may safely be asserted that one acre of fall-ploughing is worth two of spring. Winter wheat has hitherto been grown only in the " timber," and but a small acre- age is produced at all in the State. But recent experiments prove the possibility of its culture on the prairie. American ploughs are made of cast steel, and look like toys by the side of English implements. Two horses can average two acres a day with a hand-plough, and three R 2 . 244 APPENDIX. to three and a half acres are only fair work for tliree horses on a sulky. "Drags," or harrows, can be obtained ready- made, or are easily fashioned at the nearest blacksmith's. Seeding wheat should be commenced as early in spring as possible after the frost is out of the ground. Oats and barley follow next. Barley-sowing should be timed so as not to interfere with the harvest- ing of other grain. It will ripen generally by the 1st of July, before the general harvest comes on. Indian com is planted any time from the 1st of May to the 1st of June, according as the season is early or late. It is sown in rows four feet apart, with a space of four feet between the " hills." It can be put in with a small hand-planter (the " rows " being first marked both ways with a heavy wooden " marker "), a man doing five acres a day ; or with a two-horse machine, which will sow with a man and boy ten to twelve acres a day. This machine (costing about $50) can often be hired by the day in the neighbourhood. Indian corn requires to be kept thoroughly clean by " cultivating " either with a (one-horse) " double-shovel plough," or with a team and " cultivator " (four hoes) two acres a day with a hand-plough ; and three APPENDIX. 245 riding or walking. It should be " gone through " at least twice each way, so as to loosen the soil and destroy all weeds which stunt the growth and lessen the yield. Some careful farmers give the finishing touch by hoeing round the " hills "; but this is hardly necessary, and is only practicable in small fields. One man with a " double-shovel plough " can attend to forty acres, and to sixty with a " cultivator." " Corn " is one of the best crops in the State, and is unequalled for fatten- ing hogs, and makes capital food for horses in severe weather. Small grain will require a " Seeder," which can be either " drill " or " broadcast " as fancied. A man and team can " put in " about eight acres a day. Habvesting wheat and oats commences in these latitudes about the last week in July ; barley, three weeks earlier. And from the rapidity with which all grain ripens, it should be cut almost to the day, and too green rather than otherwise. The new American invention, the "Self-binder," will cut and bind into sheaves about twelve acres a day- Two good or three ordinary horses will run it ; and one to two men can "shock" and keep up well. Eeaping-machines, or "Harvesters," arb 246 APPENDIX. considered out of date, and should not be bought unless there are a number of hands to work cheap. The " Self-binder " will cause a revolution in the agricultural labour market. Threshing averages, wheat 5 cents, barley 4 cents, and oats 2 cents per bushel, the farmer boarding the hands, and finding two men and two teams. Haying. Though it is common to put up a small quantity of early or lowland hay before harvest, the prin- cipal winter supply is got immediately after, when the weather is generally settled, and there is little chance of damage from rain. Prairie-land on the average of the State will give two tons per acre. All. the machinery required is a "mower" and " rake " (one-horse). A mower and two horses will cut twelve acres a day. The rake commences about noon, and will leave all cut in windrows. Next day, when the sun is well up, cross-windrowing leaves the hay in cocks ready for the waggon and stack. Its value is generally $2 per ton, and it costs about 70 cents to $1 to put it up yourself. APPENDIX. 247 In calculating the amount of hay to be put up, it may be roughly estimated that a horse requires five tons the season ; a " beef," three to three and a half ; sheep, about a quarter of a ton each. Hay may be either brotight to the yards or stacked in the field, and drawn in in winter on calm days, as may be found most convenient or economical. Husking Coen begins when the stalk and leaf are thoroughly brown and withered, and the corn in the cob hard. This work gives busy employment when the plough is stopped for the winter by " freezing up." The only " trouble " is the depredations of black- birds, cranes, geese, ducks, and prairie chickens, ^vhichmake these fields their "stamping ground" in fall. The crop must be stored in wooden " cribs " of open lattice-work, raised some feet from the ground on wooden or stone blocks to avoid rats, and covered with a shingle roof, or straw. The plough should be kept going till the ground freezes up, varying from November 15 to Decem- ber ], when the year's farming operations may be considered at an end ; though threshing from the stack often goes on till Christmas. While it is impossible to lay down a hard-and-fast rule, it may be estimated roughly that one-half the 248 APPENDIX. acreage at least of a farm should be under culti- vation. Mixed Fakming is one great element of success in Western hus- bandry. We should recommend no individual settler of small capital to put his whole strength into wheat, or give his entire attention to stock- raising to the neglect of grain. A failed crop, or a fall in the price of cattle or wool, may seriously cripple the resources of a man who would not feel the strain if his means had been judiciously divided. As a general rule, oats, barley, and corn grown should all be fed to stock, and a surplus acreage of wheat, beyond what is required for " bread " and " seed," sown, to bring in some ready money. The subjoined tables will show the proportion of stock recommended on each of the different-sized farms, and we shall conclude with a few hints on stock-raising and management. Two or three cows are of course necessary for the supply of milk and butter ; and a " winter cow " should always be arranged for, and will be found a great comfort. But whether cattle or sheep, or both, should be the staple stock of the farm depends very much on its character. As a rule sheep do better on hilly ground, where the herbage is finer, with plenty of undergrowth APPENDIX. 249 and sliade, and easy access to water, running, if possible. On the coarser grass, which distinguishes, the open prairies, cattle do .better than sheep. From the writer's personal experience, preference would perhaps be given to sheep, as easier to handle, requiring less room, and producing a regular annual " dividend " in the summer's clip. But though there is no reason why both cattle and sheep should not be combined on larger farms, it would perhaps be preferable on smaller holdings to confine the attention to one or the other. Shbep-baising, especially for those who are new to the business of a farm, has this to recommend it, that the work is much lighter than with horned cattle ; while our experience tends to the conclusion that the profit is greater, provided of course the farm is one adapted for sheep. The necessary buildings will be described further on. We will here only remark that all that is required in summer will be (if a sufficient pasture is not fenced in) to herd the sheep on the adjoining prairie from May to October, folding them at nighi;. A boy (or even a good dog with a small flock) is all that is necessary to keep them from -wandering too far, and to fetch them up at night. In winter they 250 APPENDIX. should be fed with as much hay as they will eat up clean morning and night, be salted once a week, and have access summer and winter to plenty of fresh water. Snow, the sluggard's sub- stitute, ends in disease and loss ! A handful of grain each (li bushels per head per winter season) once a day will amply repay the extra expense in tlie increased weight of wool and improvement in general condition. As a rule the sheds need only be cleaned out in spring, after the sheep are turned out for their summer's run. This may seem a very primitive system to an English sheep-master ; but on this plan the animals thrive and multiply, and with ordinary care, and regu- larity in feeding and watering, and protection against too much exposure to wet, we have seen flocks in Minnesota and Iowa which would be creditable on the Southdowns or on the wolds of Lincolnshire, and where the " clip," in a flock of lOOO, averaged eight pounds of unwashed wool. The common cross-breed merino, a small animal, is the sheep usually found in Minnesota. They can be bought after shearing at an average price of $2. If large flocks are desired, it is well to cross these with full-blooded merino bucks, obtainable without difBculty from well-known breeders in the State for about $25 a Lead. APPENDIX. 251 This secures the heaviest fleece, and the fine wool thus obtained commands as high a price as any in the market. If it be wished to combine mutton and wool, a cross with a Cotswold buck produces a larger sheep, with a fleece tending to long coarse wool. Lincoln or Southdown bucks may also be used with a similar result. With the Cotswold or Lincoln cross the increase of the flock is larger, from the greater number of twin lambs cast. Care must be taken at the lambing season, especially with ewes coming in for the first time. A careful shepherd will watch his ewes, and not begrudge a few nights spent in the fold at such times. One point on which we cannot insist too strongly is the importance of not letting the bucks run with the ewes before the beginning or middle of December. And ^hey should be shut away from them not later than the first of July. Neglect of the precaution, causing lambs to be cast in the severe frosts of winter, has, in many instances which have come within our knowledge, resulted in the loss of nearl;f all the increase. At this season the ewes have little milk, and many will refuse to own their offspring ; and do what one will, a "pet lamb," mother unknown, occurs somehow or other every year, even in the "best-regulated family." By the beginning of May there is food for the ewes, and the proportion of lambs lost is then very small 252 APPENDIX. indeed. A tame pastv/re can be easily laid down, or even made by sowing timothy or otber grass- seed^ broadcast on the wild prairie, which it rapidly domesticates. This will afford, say, six weeks' longer feed, spring and fall. The climate of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa is es- pecially favourable to sheep, the statistics of disease only showing 1 to 1^ per cent, to be affected. Estimate of Expenses and Eeceicts in a Flock of 1000 Sheep. Expenses. Wages of man by the month., say wages Bio, board ^10 .... ^300 Hay, say 250 tons at Kl ■ • • • 250 1500 bushels of oats (can be raised for 15 c.) 225 Shearing, washing, and salt . . . 100 g875 Beceipts. 5 lbs. unwashed wool at 25 c. (very iSr estimate) 1250 Increase, averaging at least ^1 to ^1.25 on number of ewes, which should not be less than two thirds of the flock 750 K2000 Note. — One good man besides the owner will easily attend to such a flock, with a little help at odd times- APPENDIX. 253 Cattle-breeding may be divided into two distinct branches— 1, raising stock for the market ; and 2, dairying, 1. The returns are somewhat slower than in the case of sheep, and the attendant labour is greater. A fat steer is worth from $30 to $40 at three and three and a half year's old. The cost of raising them is about as follows : — Calf (in fall) costs ^5 7 tons of hay (put up by yourself), say ^1 per ton , 7 3 summers' herding, at ^1 ... 3 " Herds" are found in all localities where cattle are grazed on the prairie from May to October, shut up in yards at night, and salted for 75 c. to a head. Dealers travel the country, and there is always a ready sale at the farm for shipping to Chicago for fat stock which are fitted for market without the necessity of grain or roots. The great points of success are the selection of good healthy calves, warm shelter in winter, regularity in feeding and watering, and cleanliness. 2. Good cows are worth from $20 to $30 a head ; it is usual to cross with bulls nearly or quite thoroughbred. 254 APPENDIX. The profits of dairying may be estimated as follows : A good cow is worth about $25. Besides raising a calf yearly, beginning with the third year, she will give for five and a half months in summer 10 lbs. of butter per week, worth on the average 10 cents per lb., or about $22. The calf is considered a full equivalent for her keep through the year. A dairy of course entails con- siderable work ; and strict regularity in milking and scrupulous cleanliness and neatness are in- dispensable elements of success. Hogs. The breeds recommended are Poland-China and Berkshire, and a breed which is preferred by many is obtained by crossing the above. Nothing surpasses Indian corn for fattening purposes; and a very profitable industry is carried on by shipping hogs alive to the great packing estab- lishments of Chicago. They thrive well in open yards, with a little shelter from the weather and plenty of straw. All the attention needed is to throw into the sties as much corn in the " cob " as they will eat up clean, and allow plenty of house swill and water. The price of pork regulates that of Indian corn. APPENDIX. 255 HOESES. Those who are accustomed to see farmwork done by the heavy draught-horses used ia England will perhaps look at first with some degree of surprise at the light wiry little animals, weighing on the average under a thousand pounds, which not only carry on all the operations of a Western farm, but may be harnessed to a light " buggy " and driven at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour, or ridden at a pinch " to hounds," They are remarkably docile, are never " broken in," and cost on the average about £20 each. Of late years the heavy Norman-Percheron stal- lions have been imported with great success ; and a very handy breed for general purposes is obtained by using a Canadian horse, a cross between an English coach-horse and a Clydesdale mare. We should recommend the, farmer whose stock is limited to three or four horses to have always one or two mares to breed from, using a good cross. In this way, at a trifling cost, and little interference with work, a good colt may be raised every year, worth at three years old from $100 to $300. In the severe cold of winter Indian corn is a capital substitute for oats. Blanketing, clipping, and tail-banging are English notions not to be carried out in the West, and 256 APPENDIX. for tli« summer's work it is best to remove the shoes altogether. An American four-wheeled "buggy" for two persons, with movable top, is the most delight- ful of carriages, and in spite of its apparent lightness will stand any amount of wear and tear. It may be bought from £8 to £20, and is absolutely essential to the settler's comfort, and is adapted for single horse or team at pleasure. The Poultey Yaed should form an important feature in the home- stead. Turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens are all easily raised ; their keep is not felt, and they jirovide the table with an agreeable variety. It Js a common practice to allow them to roost among cattle. This is a slovenly plan, and not to be recommended. A small poultry-house, so arranged as to be warmed from the animal heat of the cattle-sheds, will give a sujiply of fresh eggs all the winter through, and make a good breeding establishment. Tliose who have carefully followed our farm operations thus far will have seen that nearly all tlie necessaries, and many of the luxuries, of life are provided from the farm itself. Butter and eggs in excess of what is required for family use APPENDIX. 257 can be exchanged for groceries ; and the sale of surplus wheat or stock provides, even on the smallest holding, an amount of ready money amply sufficient for all the settler's wants. It must be borne in mind, however, that it is only by following the advice given in the subjoined tables as to the relations to be ob- served between the amount of available capital and the land which should be bought and farmed that any success can be guaranteed. Experience has taught us that no mistake is more fatal than over-buying land. It ends inevitably in difficulty and debt, and the man who begins by buying too much ends, as a rule, by losing all he has bought. We cannot too strongly insist upon this point, and we beg our readers to bear in mind that in the tables given further on we put before them the most it is possible to do with a given sum in Western farming, and that it would be a more safe and prudent course to attempt less than more. Houses and Buildings. If settlement in a new country has its diffi- culties and inconveniences, not the least of its charms is that the new house and the buildings of the homestead can all be designed after the settler's own fancy. He is not obliged to occupy 258 APPENDIX. some tumble-down barrack, with leaky roof and draughty windows ; or to house his stock in some ill-contrived patched-up buildings, which cost him nearly their worth in annual repairs. Everything can be fresh and new and bright, and he is able, once in his life at any rate, to indulge in the pleasure of being his own architect. Nothing is more charming to the eye, nothing more comfortable, and we may add (as the reader will see by-and-by) nothing so cheap as what are known in Minnesota as "frame houses." We shall briefly describe their construction, and can only say, from five years' personal experience, that we never occupied a more delightful house, cool in summer, with the thermometer sometimes reaching one hundred degrees in the shade, and warm in winter, when the mercury sometimes stands for days together at twenty to thirty degrees below zero, than one such which cost just £100. A south aspect should as a rule be chosen, with a site if possible on rising ground ; and where natural timber is not growing on the farm, a grove of soft maple or willow or cottonwood should be planted in rows four feet apart, and four feet from tree to tree, " cultivated " once or twice in summer, in the manner described for "corn." Three or four acres or more form, in APPENDIX. 259 five or six years, a sufficient shelter, and an orna- mental feature in tlie homestead. The first thing to be thought of is a good, roomy cellar, with a stone wall (if stone is easily obtainable), or lined and floored with inch boards, and complete ven- tilation by a through draught where possible. This is for keeping provisions and vegetables from frost in winter and heat in summer. A good stoned cellar forms a capital substitute for a dairy on a small farm. Upon a low stone wall the wooden sills of the house are laid. The exterior walls and roof consist of rough boards nailed on the studding. These are covered with " building paper," which keeps out draught, and upon this again is nailed what is known as " siding," half-inch bevelled boards. The roof is covered with wooden shingles, and one or more brick chimneys complete the structure. The whole is then painted white, picked out with French grey or any colour which may be fancied, supplied with ornamental wooden or metal gutters, and the house needs no repair or re-painting for the next three years. Inside the walls are lathed and plastered. The rooms can then be papered, the woodwork stained and varnished its natural colour, much prettier and more durable than paint, and the floors throughout painted, eflfecting a saving in carpet,, and making the s 2 260 ■ APPENDIX. house cool and pleasant in summer. Doors and windows, machine-made, can be bought at a very cheap rate. The heating in American sitting-rooms is effected by stoves, open or close, which stand free in ench room, a pipe passing through the upper floor and warming the bedroom abore. These stoves are, many of them, quite works of art, and are adapted for either coal or wood, as can be most cheaply or conveniently obtained. An American cooking-stove is the most perfect thing of its kind in the world ; and compared with the huge open fireplace of an English kitchen, which spoils the cook's temper, ruins her complexion, and mounts up the family coal bill to ominous figures, is "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever." A verandah is an indispensable addition to an American house. It extends usually six or eight feet in breadth along the south side of the build- ing, and, besides giving character to the simplest cottage, makes a charming outdoor room in the hot days of summer. The supports may be readily covered with wild vines or creeping shrubs, which grow luxuriantly, and form a shade almost impervious to the hot rays of the northern sun. An ice-house is a great luxury in summer, and APPENDIX. 261 costs very little money ; and where a farm has a frontage to a lake, a summer-house, with boat and bath-house beneath, makes a capital smoking- room ; and, provided with mosquito netting and a hammock, a charming bachelor's bedroom in the sultry nights of summer. Farm buildings, also of "frame," are easily constructed, and afford an effectual shelter for stock at a very small cost. They will vary, of course, with the size of each farm. A good "frame" stable for four horses, consisting of rough boards battened, with shingle roof, wooder racks and mangers, and two-inch plank floor, sloping a little for drainage, can be built for £2U. An additional £5 would give a lean-to " buggy " house ; £10, more or less, a hayloft overhead, a piece of very desirable economy both of time and fodder in bad weather. With plenty of straw bedding horses thrive and look well in the severest winter weather. In summer the windows , should be replaced by 'mosquito wire-netting and a mosquito door, which secures the double object of thorough ventilation and rest to the horses at night. The house must also be protected in summer by extra mosquito windows and doors, making one quite independent of these little pests of Minnesota's semi-tropical summer. Cattle-sheds and pigsties are of similar con- 262 APPENDIX. stiuction to stables, though in the former floors are very commonly dispensed with. The joints should be battened. Some authorities advise this being dispensed with for sheep on account of the greater ventilation necessary. It may be roughly estimated that cattle can be housed for $3, and sheep for 50c., a head. A lean-to frame building, with the walls respectively six and four feet high, and roofed with boards battened at the joints opening at the lower side by swinging doors into inclosed yards of convenient size, is all the shelter required. In the higher side should be doors for entering theshedsjforfeedingandremovingmanure. Hay-racks and feeding-troughs for grain are all the fittings necessary. Extra feeding-racks along the yard-fences are convenient in fine weather. And it is very important to have inelosures effectually separating the bucks from the rest of the flock, or for dividing ewes from wethers, etc. It will be found a great eventual saving of time and labour — costly articles in America — to have haylofts over stables and cattle-sheds ; but where economy does not permit of these, stacks should be placed as close to the yard-fences and sheds as possible, both for the additional shelter they afford, and the saving of time, etc., referred to. The best plan for a farmyard is a square with a south or east aspect for the principal sheds. APPENDIX. 263 and a well in the centre for convenient watering, if a lake or creek is not easily accessible. The figures in the subjoined tables may be relied upon as substantially accurate, having been cal- culated with great care and checked by competent farmers. The table on " wheat-growing " will be useful as calling the attention of English gentle- men who in these days of small dividends may ■wish for a good and permanent investment, often paying cent, per cent, profit. Wheat should generally be held until May or June, .when it commands the highest prices. It may be here stated that many farms in Minnesota and Iowa are worked by non-resident owners, and American capitalists consider these investments as some of the most secure and lucrative in the world. Perhaps a few words in explanation of the dif- ferent kinds of land-tenure in Minnesota (and which are also applicable to several other of the Western States) may not be inappropriate here. The fee-simple of the land in every State rests .originally in the United States Government, ac- cruing by the right of eminent domain, or through having been acquired by treaties with Indians, It would be open to " homestead entry " (as described in note, page 50 of text), with the exception of every eighteenth section, or square 264 APPENDIX. mile, which is known as school-land, and devoted to educational purposes. Certain other lands, known as internal-improvement lands, are also reserved. These are offered periodically at public auction at an upset price of $5. Until recent years Congress granted to railway corporations for the construction of roads every alternate section within ten-mile limits on each side of their respective lines, or what are called "deficiency lands" within twenty-mile limits where the alternate sections had been previously entered under the "Homestead Act." These lands are offered for sale by the railway companies in Minnesota, at prices ranging from |5 to $10 or $15 an acre. Unless made farms are bought, the improvements on which are not usually worth the higher price asked for them, purchases from railway corporations, directly or indirectly, are practically the only choice left. The land open to "homestead entry " in Minnesota is nearly all taken up, except in the extreme northern and least desirable part of the State. Considerable bodies may be entered in the . wheat-growing district, which lies in the valley of the Bed Biver of the north, but which is not so well adapted for general farming or stock-raising. It must not be forgotten that timber-land fetches a much higher price than prairie-, the APPENDIX. 265 timber being valued to the purchaser in excess of the price of the land. But for the small capitalist prairie-land is to be recommended, not only from its greater cheapness, but from the fact of such land being practically a ready-made farm, re- quiring no laborious clearing, and every aore of which can be made available at once, either aa arable or meadow, while groves of some soft wood, such as maple or cottonwood, attain a luxuriant growth in a very few years. TABLE I.* Capital of £500 to £700. 80 acres of land, at £2 per acre . . £160 House (5 rooms), £80 ; stable, £20 ; buildings, £30; well, £10 . . .140 Furniture 40 Three horses, £60 ; waggon, sleigh, and harness, £20 80 Stilky (riding) plough, £17; seeder, £10 ; mower, £20 ; hay-rake, £5 ; other tools, £10 (must borrow " Har- vester " or " Self-binder ") ... 62 Carry forward . . . £482 * These tables are based upon the calculation of prairie-laud, where everything has to be done. 266 APPENDIX. Brought forward . . • £482 100 sheep (^2), £40; buck, £5; 2 cows, £10; pigs, £5 60 Living for 12 months, £50 ; feed, £20 ; seed, £20 90 Occasional " hired help" in haying and . harvest, £20 . . , 20 £652 TABLE IL* Capital of £1000 to £1200. 160 acres of land, at. £2 per acre . .£320 House (6 rooms), £100; stable, £20 ; buildings, £50; well, £10 . . .180 Furniture ,. . 50 Three horses, etc., as in Table I., with " buggy," £20 100 • Self-binder 50 Sulky-plough, etc., as in Table I. . . 62 300 sheep, £l20; 3 bucks, £15 (or equivalent in cattle); 3 cows, £15; pigs, £5 155 Living for 12 months, £75 ; feed, £20; seed, £30 125 " Hired man " with board and lodging in house, and extra " help " . . .80 £1122 * A reduction of £40 may be made, if desired, by commencin"- with 2H0 sheep, and £40 more saved by smaller house and buildings. The same remark applies, mutatis mutandis, to ' Tables III. and IV. . APPENDIX. 267 TABLE III. Capital of £1500 to £2000. 320 acres, at £2 per acre . . . £640 House (8 rooms), £120 ; stable, £30 ; buildings, £70 ; well, £10 . . .230 rurniture 80 Horses, etc., as in Table I., with ' "buggy," £20 100 Self-binder 50 Sulky-plough, etc., as in Table I. . . 62 600 sheep, £200; 5 bucks, £25 (or equivalent ia cattle) ; 4 cows, £20 ; pigs, £10 255 Living for 12 months, £100 ; feed, £30; seed, £40 170 Hired man and extra help . , . .100 £1687 T.^BLE IV. Capital of £2000 to £3000. Section of land (640 acres), at £2 per acre £1280 House (10 rooms), £200 ; stables, £50 ; buildings, etc., £100 350 Furniture 100 Carry forward ... . £1730 268 APPENDIX. Brought forward . . £1730 Five horses, 2 waggons, sleighs, har- ness, etc 150 Two self-binders 100 Implements (about double those re- quired on the smaller farms) . . 150 500 sheep, £200 ; bucks, £25 ; 4 cows, £20 ; pigs, £20 (or equivalent in cattl(3) 265 Living for 12 months, £100 ; feed, £50 ; seed, £50 200 Two hired men by the year, and extra help in haying and harvest. . . 180 £2775 Calculation for a Wheat Farm of 1000 acres, which can be worked by owner on tite spot oe by a reliable tenant. Capital Account. 1280 acres* at KlO, ^12,800 ; house, ^1000 ; bams, ^600 . . . ^14,400 10 sulky ploughs, K750'; 8 seeders, g400 ; 10 drags, KlOO . . . 1260 3 waggons (in hiring team owner brings waggon) 150 ^ Carryforward . . .^15,800 * Say two sections. APPENDIX. 269 Brought forward . . . ^15,800 2 horses, ^200 ; buggy, glOO ; harness, ^40 ; saddles, etc 400 Furniture, ^150; 6 self-hinders . . . 1800 Breaking 1000 acres, at K2 . . . . 2000 ' Steam threshing-machine .... 1500 g21,600 1500 bushels seed wheat, at Bl.25. 1850 Second and subsequent Tears. Ploughing (previous fall), at gl 1000 Seeding, at 10 cents .... 100 Harrowing twice 200 Hire of teams during harvest, say 1000 Hire of men, threshing .... 500 ^2800 (say £5200) ^26,150 Yearly Beceipts. Say 20,000 bushels, at gl . . • .«20,000 Besides the rise in value of the land. LONDON : PniNTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SON'S, STAJJlrOUJ>,STllEET AND CHAltlNQ CKOab. A Catalogue of American and Foreign Books Published or Imported by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co. can be had on application. Crown Buildings, i88, Fleet Street, London, October, 1879. ^ Efet Of 2$OOfe0 PUBLISHED BY SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON. ALPHABETICAL LIST. 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Gentle Life (Queen Edition). 2 vols, in 1, small 410, \os. 6d. List of Puhlications. ii THE GENTLE LIFE SERIES. Price 6j-. each j or in calf extra, price loj. dd. ; Smaller Edition, cloth extra, zs. 6d. A Reprint of these Volumes (with the exception of "Familiar Words") has been issued in very neat limp cloth bindings at 2s. 6d. each. The Gentle Life. Essays in aid of the Fomiation of Character of Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. 2 1st Edition. *' Deserves to be printed in letters of gold, and circulated in every house." — Chambers' '^oumaU About in the World. Essays by Author of " The Gentle Life." " It is not easy to open it at any page without finding some handy idea." — Morn- ing Past. Like unto Christ. A New Translation of Thomas a Kempis' " De Imitatione Christi." 2ud Edition. ** Could not be presented in a more exqui^te form, for a more sightly volume was never seen." — llhtstrated Lo7idon News. Familiar Words. An Index Verborum, or Quotation Hand- book. 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Guizot's main merit is this, that, in a style at once clear and vigorous, he sketches the essential and most characteristic features of the times and personages aescnbed, and seizes upon every salient point which can best illustrate and brmg out to view what is most significant and instructive in the spirit of the age described.'' — Evetwig Stajidardf Sept. 23, 1874. : Masson's School Edition. The History of France from the Earliest Times to the Outbreak of the Kevolution ; abndged from the Translation by Robert Black M A with Chronological Index, Historical and Genealogical Tables '&c' By Professor GusTAVE Masson, B.A., Assistant Master at Harrow School. With 24 full-page Portraits, and many other Illustrations I vol., demy Svo, 600 pp., cloth extra, los. td. History of England. 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