The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

Starting from Pembina, at the northwest corner of the State, on the Red River of the North, and travelling due east eighty miles, I should reach the Lake of the Woods; sailing across it sixty miles, then entering the river leading to Rainy Lake, I might pass through the wonderful water-way of lakes and rivers reaching to Lake Superior,—a distance of about four hundred miles.

The eastern boundary formed by the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Lake Superior is more irregular. Its general outline, as we look at it upon the map, is that of a crescent, cutting into Minnesota, the horns turned eastward. The area within the boundaries thus described is estimated at 84,000 square miles, or 54,760,000 acres. It is a territory larger than Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined.

Here, upon the Mississippi, I gaze upon bluffs of gray limestone wrought into fantastic shape by the winds and storms of centuries and by the slow wearing of the river; but were I to climb them, and gain the general level of the country, I should behold rolling prairies dotted with lakes and ponds of pure water, and groves of oak and hickory. All of Minnesota east of the Mississippi is a timbered region. Here and there are openings; but, speaking in general terms, the entire country east of the river is a forest, which through the coming years will resound with the axe of the lumberman.

When we go up the Mississippi eighty miles above St. Paul to St. Cloud, we shall find the Sauk River coming in from the west; and there the Mississippi is no longer the boundary of the timbered lands, but the forest reaches across the stream westward to Otter-Tail River, a distance of more than one hundred miles. The Sauk River is its southern boundary.

All the region north of the Sauk, at the head-waters of the Mississippi and north of Lake Superior, is well supplied with timber. A belt of woods forty miles wide, starting from the Crow-Wing River, extends south nearly to the Iowa boundary. It is broken here and there by prairie openings and fertile meadows. The tract is known throughout the Northwest as the region of the "Big Woods."

There are fringes of timber along the streams, so that the settler, wherever he may wish to make a home, will generally find material for building purposes within easy reach. In this respect Minnesota is one of the most favored States of the Union.

The formations of the bluffs now and then remind us of old castles upon the Rhine. They are, upon an average, three hundred and fifty feet above the summer level of the river. We are far from the Gulf of Mexico, yet the river at St. Paul is only six hundred and seventy-six feet above tide-water.

Northward of Minneapolis the bluffs disappear, and the surface of the river is but a few feet below the general level of the country, which is about one thousand feet above the sea.

It is one of the remarkable topographical features of the continent, that from St. Paul to the Peace River, which empties into the Athabasca, the elevation is about the same, though the distance is more than one thousand miles. Throughout this great extent of territory, especially in Minnesota, are innumerable lakes and ponds of pure fresh water, some of them having no visible outlet or inlet, with pebbly shores and beaches of white sand, bordered by groves and parks of oak, ash, and maple, lending an indescribable charm to the beauty of the landscape.

While we are making these observations the steamer is nearing Winona, a pleasant town, delightfully situated on a low prairie, elevated but a few feet above the river. The bluffs at this point recede, giving ample room for a town site with a ravine behind it.