The Seat of Empire

by Charles Carleton Coffin

We find an obliging young Scotchman with a thin-faced wife in possession of the property belonging to the Company. He takes care of the premises through the year on a salary of two hundred dollars, and has his tea, sugar, and groceries furnished him. He can cultivate as much land as he pleases, though he does not own a foot of it,—neither does the Company own an acre. It belongs to the people of the United States, and any brave young man with a large-hearted wife may become possessor of these beautiful acres if he will, with the moral certainty of finding them quadrupled in value in five years.

This great highway of the North lies along the eastern bank of the river. We have travelled over it all the way from Fort Abercrombie, passing and meeting teams. Here we see a train of thirty wagons drawn by oxen, loaded with goods consisting of boxes of tea, sugar, salt, pork, bacon, and bales of cloth, which are shipped by steamer from this landing. The teas come from England to Montreal, are there shipped to Milwaukie, and transported by rail to St. Cloud. Each chest is closely packed in canvas and taken through in bond. The transportation of the Hudson Bay Company between this place and St. Cloud amounts to about seven hundred tons per annum.

In addition, the Red River transportation carried on by the Indians and half-breeds is very large. About twenty-five hundred carts pass down and up this highway during the year, each one carrying upon an average nine hundred pounds.

Besides all this there is the United States government transportation to Fort Abercrombie and the forts beyond, amounting last year to eighteen hundred tons. The rates paid by the War Department government for transportation are $1.36-3/8 per hundred pounds for every hundred miles. All of this traffic will be transferred at once to the Northern Pacific Railroad upon its completion to the Red River.

The estimated value of the Red River trade is ten millions of dollars per annum, and it is increasing every year.

The keen-eyed hunters of our party have been on the lookout for a stray buffalo or a deer, but the buffaloes are a hundred miles away. We hear that they have come north of the Missouri in great numbers, and those who are to go West anticipate rare sport. For want of a buffalo-steak we put up with beef. It is juicy and tender, from one of Mr. Marchaud's heifers, which has been purchased for the party.

It is a supper fit for sovereigns,—and every one is a sovereign out here, on the unsurveyed lands, of which we, in common with the rest of the people, are proprietors. We are lords of the manor, and we have sat down to a feast. Our eggs are newly laid by the hens of Dakota City, our milk is fresh from the cows whose bells are tinkling in the bushes along the bank of the river, and the cakes upon our table are of the finest flour in the world. Hunger furnishes the best relish, and when the cloth is removed we sit around the camp-fire during the evening, passing away the hours with wit, repartee, and jest, mingled with sober argument and high intellectual thought.

Our tents are pitched upon the river's bank. Far away to the south we trace the dim outline of the timber on the streams flowing in from the west. Turning our eyes in that direction, we see only the level sea of verdure,—the green grass waving in the evening breeze. At this place our company will divide,—Governor Marshall, Mr. Holmes, and several other gentlemen, going on to the Missouri, while the rest of us will travel eastward to Lake Superior.

It would be a pleasure to go with them,—to ride over the rolling prairies, to fall in with buffaloes and try my pony in a race with a big bull. It would be thrilling,—only if the hunted should right about face, and toss the hunter on his horns, the thrill would be of a different sort!

We sit by our camp-fires at night with our faces and hands smeared with an abominable mixture prepared by our M. D., ostensibly to keep the mosquitoes from presenting their bills, but which we surmise is a little game of his to daub us with a diabolical mixture of glycerine, soap, and tar! Our tents are as odorous as the shop of a keeper of naval stores. There is an all-pervading smell of oakum and turpentine. Clouds of mosquitoes come, take a whiff, and retire in disgust. We can hear them having a big swear at the Doctor for compounding such an ointment!