Whenever you find a farm-house anywhere out West where there are delicious apple-pies, or anything especially nice in the pastry line, on the table, you may be pretty sure that the hostess came from Maine; at least, such has been my experience. I remember calling at a house in central Missouri during the war, and, instead of having the standard dish of the Southwest "hog and hominy," obtaining a luxurious dinner, finishing off with apple-pie, the pastry moulded by fair hands that were trained to housework on the banks of the Penobscot. Last year I found a lady from Maine among the Sierra Nevadas; I was confident that she was from the Pine-Tree State the moment I saw her pies; for somehow the daughters of Down East have the knack of making pastry that would delight an epicure. And now in Minnesota we sit down to a substantial dinner topped off, rounded, and made complete by a piece of Maine apple-pie.
The daughters of New Hampshire and of Vermont may possibly make just as good cooks, but it has so happened that we have fallen in with housewives from Maine when our appetite was sharpened for something good.
Our dinner is at the house of a farmer who came to Minnesota from the Kennebec. He knew how to swing an axe, and the oaks and maples have fallen before his sturdy strokes; the plough and harrow and stump-puller have been at work, and now we look out upon wheat-fields and acres of waving corn, inhale the fragrance of white clover, and hear the humming of the bees. We see at a glance the capabilities of the forest region of Minnesota. We understand it just as well as if we were to read all the works extant on soil, climatology, natural productions, etc. Here, as well as westward of the Mississippi, wheat, corn, potatoes, clover, and timothy can be successfully and profitably cultivated.
"I raised thirty-five bushels of wheat to the acre last year, and I guess I shall have that this year," said the owner of the farm.
This well-to-do farmer and his wife came here without capital, or rather with capital arms and strong hearts, to rear a home, and here it is: a neat farm-house of two stories; a carpet on the floor, a sofa, a rocking-chair, pictures on the walls; a large barn; granary well filled,—a comfortable home with a bright future before them.
When the timber has disappeared from eastern Minnesota, the land will produce luxuriantly. The country will not be settled quite as rapidly here as west of the Mississippi; but it is not to be forever a wilderness. The time will come when along every stream there will be heard the buzzing of saws, the whirring of mill-stones, and the click and clatter of machinery. This vast area of timber will invite every kind of manufacturing, and the same elements which have contributed so largely to build up the Eastern States—the manufacturing and industrial—will here aid in building up one of the strongest communities of our future republic.
Clearings here and there, cabins by the roadside, bark wigwams which have sheltered wandering Ojibwas, and a reach of magnificent forest, are the features of the country through which we ride this glorious afternoon, with the sunlight glimmering among the trees, till suddenly we come upon Chengwatona.
It is a small village on Snake River, with a hotel, half a dozen houses, and a saw-mill where pine logs are going up an incline from the pond at one end, and coming out in the shape of bright new lumber at the other.
The dam at Chengwatona has flooded an immense area, and looking toward the descending sun we behold a forest in decay. The trees are leafless, and the dead trunks rising from the water, robbed of all their beauty, present an indescribable scene of desolation when contrasted with the luxuriance of the living forest through which we have passed.