These plucky girls have set a good example to young men who want to get on in the world.
Perhaps I am too enthusiastic over the future prospects of the region between Lake Superior and the Pacific, but having travelled through Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada, I have had an opportunity to contrast the capabilities of the two sections. Kansas has magnificent prairies, and so has Nebraska, but there are no sparkling ponds, no wood-fringed lakes, no gurgling brooks abounding with trout. The great want of those States is water. The soil is exceedingly fertile, even in Utah and Nevada, though white with powdered alkali, but they are valueless for want of moisture. In marked contrast to all this is the great domain of the Northwest. For a few years the tide of emigration will flow, as it is flowing now, into the central States; but when the lands there along the rivers and streams are all taken up, the great river of human life, setting towards the Pacific, will be turned up the Missouri, the Assinniboine, and the Saskatchawan. The climate, the resources of the country, the capabilities for a varied industry, and the configuration of the continent, alike indicate it.
I am not sure that Mr. Blotter accepted all this, but he has gone to Minnesota with his wife, turning his back on a dry-goods counting-house to obtain a home on the prairies.
[CHAPTER XI.]
NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD.
The statesman, the political economist, or any man who wishes to cast the horoscope of the future of this country, must take into consideration the great lakes, and their connection with the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Columbia Rivers, and those portions of the continent drained by these water-ways.
Communities do not grow by chance, but by the operation of physical laws. Position, climate, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, arable lands, coal, wood, iron, silver, and gold are predestinating forces in a nation's history, decreeing occupation, character, power, and influence.
Lakes and navigable streams are natural highways for trade and traffic; valleys are natural avenues; mountains are toll-gates set up by nature. He who passes over them must pay down in sweat and labor.