LETTER No. XI.
The North Pacific Railway—Brainerd—Detroit—Massacre by Sioux—Indian Reservation—Fargo—Wheat-fields of Dakota—Bismarck—"Bad Lands"—The Rockies—Arrival at Livingston.
Frank's Ranche, Oct., 1885.
We took our departure from St. Paul in a Pullman Sleeping Car at 4 p.m., and found ourselves very comfortably placed; a fortunate circumstance, seeing that this car had to be our home for fifty-eight hours over 1,032 miles from St. Paul to Livingston, with no opportunity of even stretching our legs outside the train.
The North Pacific Railroad stretches across the great continent from Duluth at the head of Lake Superior, and from St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, to Portland, on the Pacific, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles.
DINING CAR.
Of its commercial success or the value of its shares in the market I know nothing, but as a simple traveller over more than 1,200 miles I can speak well of it; its track is all steel rail, and its road-bed solid. All its passenger trains are equipped with the Westinghouse air-brake, Miller platforms, and patent steel-tired car-wheels. Pullman palace drawing-room sleeping-cars of the newest and most improved pattern run between St. Paul and Portland; I would, however, caution passengers that it is desirable to secure berths in these beforehand at St. Paul, by applying to the conductor, who will telegraph to the ticket agents in advance. The dining-cars are also very luxurious in their appointments, and the menu all that can be desired. I may add that the charge for every meal is only seventy-five cents, whereas I have been charged a dollar on other lines, and at inconvenient roadside inns, for far inferior fare. The only complaint I have to make is that the cars are sometimes heated in a way which is almost unbearable, and if they could increase their speed, which averages seventeen miles an hour, it would be a boon to weary travellers who want to get on. One does not object to moderate progress through beautiful scenery, but seventeen miles an hour for hundreds of miles of prairie land becomes monotonous.
From St. Paul our route takes a northwesterly direction on the eastern side of the Mississippi to Brainerd, where the railroad from Duluth joins our line. There we cross the Mississippi, and thenceforth our route is almost in a bee-line due west to the Pacific. On leaving Brainerd we pass through the Lake Park region, and for some distance the scenery is charmingly diversified by fine timber and lakes, on which may be seen flocks of wild ducks and larger water-fowl, sometimes a solitary prairie chicken, and here and there a well-fenced wheat farm with good buildings, and surrounded by many large ricks. In the neighbourhood of Detroit, Mic., is the White Earth Reservation of the Chippewa or Ojibway Indians, of whom there are 1,500 civilized and Christianized. It is only about twenty years ago that this country was devastated by the murderous Sioux, when more than 3,000 men, women, and children were most inhumanly butchered.
Now we reach Fargo, and are in the neighbourhood of the famous wheat-fields of Dakota.
MR. O. DALRYMPLE'S FARM.
"It is in this neighbourhood that those enormous farms are located which extend further than the eye can reach, and upon which in harvest time an army of labourers are employed. One of the largest of these belongs to a firm of which Mr. Oliver Dalrymple is the chief. They own about 75,000 acres, or 117 square miles."—Forest and Stream.
At Bismarck we crossed the Missouri river ("the big muddy," as it is called), over a splendid three-pier iron bridge. The view one gets of the upward reach of the river and its muddy banks is fine. The bridge has three spans of 400 feet each and two approach spans of 113 feet each; it is said to have cost a million dollars. The Missouri is here 3,500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and 2,800 feet wide, being still navigable for 2,000 miles further to the north.
At Mandan we come upon Mountain time, that is, we lose an hour since leaving Niagara. We reached Mandan at 12.50, and started at 12.10 by the time-table, having remained there twenty minutes. We are now approaching Pyramid Park, the celebrated "Bad Lands," but our train is two hours behind time, so we shall not see them by daylight, and in fact I failed to see them at all.
BRIDGE ACROSS THE MISSOURI AT BISMARCK.
When I arose on the following morning at six o'clock we found ourselves travelling along
"That desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path."
We had passed Bad Lands in the night. I cannot pretend to describe what I did not see, but I am told that this extraordinary bit of country is in itself worth coming from England to see; there is nothing else in the world like it. One writer tells me that "it owes its singular appearance to the combined action of fuel and water, which have assisted to produce the most fantastic forms and startling contrasts of colours that the most disordered imagination could conceive."
"BAD LANDS."
Mr. E. V. Smalley thus describes it:—
"The change in the scene is so startling, and the appearance of the landscape so wholly novel and so singularly grotesque, that you rub your eyes to make sure that you are not dreaming of some ancient geologic epoch, when the rude, unfinished earth was the sport of Titanic forces, or fancying yourself transported to another planet. Enormous masses of conglomerate—red, grey, black, brown, and blue, in towers, pyramids, peaks, ridges, domes, castellated heights—occupy the face of the country. In the spaces between are grassy, lawn-like expanses, dotted with the petrified stumps of huge trees. The finest effect of colour is produced by the dark red rock—not rock in fact, but actual terra-cotta, baked by the heat of underlying layers of lignite. At some points the coal is still on fire, and the process of transforming mountains of blue clay into mountains of pottery may be observed from day to day. It has been going on for countless ages, no doubt. To bake one of these colossal masses may have required 10,000 years of smouldering heat. I despair of giving any adequate idea of the fantastic forms of the buttes or of the wonderful effects of colour they offer. The pen and brush of a skilful artist would alone be competent for the task. The photographer, be he never so deft with his camera and chemicals, only belittles these marvellous views. He catches only bare outlines, without colour, and colour is the chief thing in the picture. He cannot get the true effect of distance, and his negatives show only staring blacks and whites in place of the infinite variations of light and shadow effects in valleys and gorges and hollows, and upon crags and pinnacles. Look, if you can, by the feeble aid of written words, upon a single butte, and see how impossible it is to photograph it satisfactorily. It rises from a carpet of green grass. Its base has a bluish hue, and appears to be clay solidified by enormous pressure. It is girdled by bands of light grey stone and black lignite coal. Its upper portion is of the rich red colour of old Egyptian pottery. Crumbled fragments strew its sides. Its summit, rising 300 feet above the plain, has been carved by the elements into turrets, battlements, sharp spires, grotesque gargoyles, and huge projecting buttresses—an amazing jumble of weird architectural effects, that startle the eye with suggestions of intelligent design. Above, the sky is wonderfully clear and blue, the rays of the setting sun spread a rosy tint over the crest, and just above its highest tower floats a little flame-coloured cloud like a banner. When I say there are thousands of these buttes, the reader will perceive that the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri are a region of extraordinary interest to the tourist and artist."
I had done my best to keep awake; I really thought I had done so for hours, and I know that I peeped out of my bed many times during the night, but nothing but the dim broad everlasting prairie met my gaze—so I must have fallen asleep just as we were passing through this interesting region, to my great disappointment. I was told by those who had been more wakeful, that they could see the lignite coal a-fire,—fire which has for countless ages been baking these rocks into actual terra-cotta. I was inclined to question the exactness of this statement. Smoke may doubtless be seen; and when I am told by a man that he has lighted a cigar at a hole in the rock the existence of fire can be no longer questioned.
We were told by the guide-books to expect to see hereabouts, herds of buffalo, deer, and elk,—in fact, we have only seen a few prairie dogs, and these looked comical enough as they stood bolt upright on their little hillocks, with their fore-paws hanging down before them. They only wanted a stick in their arms to look like soldiers on guard.
Just here we caught our first distant glimpse of the Rockies, some of the peaks tipped with snow,—and now we are at Livingston!
I need not tell you how anxiously I looked out for the train from Bozeman. When it came in I sought in vain through the crowd for Frank; my heart sank within me when I found that no Frank was there. I could not get on to Bozeman; the last train for the day had already gone, so we took the train for the "National Park," and I sat down in one corner of it, and felt more like fainting than I had ever felt in my life before. Three weeks had I been in the country, and not a word or sign from the boy I had come so far to see. What was the cause? If he had been ill some friend would surely have told me. Was he living? Had he met with some terrible accident on that long sheep-drive he wrote about months ago? Had he married a red Indian squaw, and did he not want to see me? Did he suppose that his old friend M. and I would be too proud to put up at the little log shanty which he had built with his own hands? Had he been in the hug of a grizzly?
These were some of the grim reflections that passed through my disturbed mind as I sat at the end of the car, gloomily watching the magnificent scenery through which the train was now carrying us down towards the Park.
