How can one describe what is indescribable? I can only speak of this city as situated on a beautiful plain, with the Mississippi thundering over a cataract with a power sufficient to build up half a dozen Lowells; with a country behind it where every acre of land as far as the eye can see, and a hundred or a thousand times farther, is capable of cultivation and of supporting a population as dense as that of Belgium or China. Wide streets, costly school-houses, church spires, a community in which the New England element largely predominates,—a city where every other door does not open to a lager-beer saloon, as in some Western towns; where the sound of the saw and the hammer, and the click of the mason's trowel and sledge, are heard from morning till night; where the streets are filled with wagons from the country, bringing in grain and carrying back lumber, with the farmer, his wife and buxom daughter, and tow-headed, bright-faced little boys perched on top—such are the characteristics of Minneapolis.
There was a time when Pegasus was put in harness, and the ancients, according to fable, tried to put Hercules to work. If those days of classic story have gone by, better ones have come, for the people of Minneapolis have got the Father of Waters in harness. He is cutting out one hundred million feet of lumber per annum here. I can hear him spinning his saws. He is turning a score of mill-stones, and setting a million or two of spindles in motion, and pretty soon some of the citizens intend to set him to weaving bags and cloth by the hundred thousand yards! Only a tithe of his strength is yet laid out. These men, reared in the East, and developed in the West, will make the old Father work for them henceforth. He will not be allowed to idle away his time by leaping and laughing year in and year out over yonder cataract. He must work for the good of the human race. They will use him for the building of a great mart of industry,—for the erection of houses and homes, the abodes of comfort and happiness and of joyful and peaceful life.
[CHAPTER II.]
ST. CLOUD AND BEYOND.
St. Cloud was the rendezvous of the party, where a grand ovation awaited us,—a band of music at the station, a dinner at the hotel, a ride to Sauk Rapids, two miles above the town.
St. Cloud is eighty miles above St. Paul, situated on the west bank of the river, and is reached by the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The goods of the Hudson Bay Company pass through the town. Three hundred tons per annum are shipped from Liverpool to Montreal, from Montreal to Milwaukie, from Milwaukie by rail to this point, and from hence are transported by oxen to the Red River, taken down that stream on a small steamer to Lake Winnipeg, then sent in boats and canoes up the Assinniboin, the Saskatchawan, and to all the numerous trading-posts between Winnipeg and the Arctic Ocean.
We are getting towards the frontier. We come upon frontiersmen in leggings, slouch hat, and fur coat,—carrying their rifles. Indians are riding their ponies. Wigwams are seen in the groves. Carts are here from Pembina and Fort Garry after supplies. And yet, in the suburbs of the town we see a large Normal School building just completed. A magnificent bridge costing $40,000 spans the Mississippi. At Sauk Rapids the river rolls over a granite ledge, and a chartered water-power company is erecting a dam, constructing a canal, and laying the foundations for the second great manufacturing city upon the Mississippi.
This section has been a favorite locality for German emigrants. Nearly one half of the inhabitants of Stearns County, of which St. Cloud is the county-seat, are Germans. Here we bid good by to the locomotive and take the saddle instead, with light carriages for occasional change.