"I know of no other portion of the earth's surface where so many advantages are concentrated, and where the man of industry and small means may so quickly and with so much certainty render himself independent. Here you have a climate of exceeding purity, a soil of amazing productiveness, abundance of the clearest water, with groves, and lakes, and rivers and streams wherever they are wanted. Then the great railway lines are beginning to intersect this country in all directions, and thus furnish the farmer with a cheap and immediate outlet for his produce."
We will close these brief extracts—taken from the writings of persons well qualified to form a sound judgment on the subject they were discussing, and totally unconnected personally with the interests of Minnesota—with two extracts from a speech of the distinguished statesman, Hon. Wm. H. Seward, delivered in St. Paul, the capital of our State, so far back as 1860.
Mr. Seward said, and America has not produced so far-seeing a statesman:
"Here is the place—the central place—where the agriculture of the richest region of North America must pour out its tributes 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 rise, and where the productions for the support of human society in the old crowded States must be brought 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."
[GENERAL STATE STATISTICS.]
LAKES, RIVERS, TIMBER, CLIMATE, SOIL, STOCK RAISING.
In the following we have borrowed much from authorized State reports, adding our own comments when necessary.
LAKES.