The Leaf Hills are 267 feet higher than the Mississippi, and the ascent is only seven feet to the mile,—so slight that the engineers on the locomotive reckon it as level grade. These hills form the divide between the Mississippi and the Red River. Straight on, over the level valley of the Red River, westward to the summit of the rolling prairies between the Red River and the Missouri, the locomotive speeds its way. Gradually we rise till we are 2,400 feet above tide-water,—the same elevation that is reached on the Union Pacific 250 miles west of Omaha.
A descent of 400 feet carries us to the Missouri. We wind up its fertile valley to the richer bottom-lands of the Yellowstone, over a route so level that at the mouth of the Big Horn we are only 2,500 feet above tide-water. The Yellowstone flows with a swifter current above the Big Horn. We are approaching the mountains, and must pass the ridge of land that separates the Yellowstone from the upper waters of the Missouri. It lies 950 miles west of Lake Superior, and the summit is 4,500 feet above the sea. Through the entire distance, thus far, there have been no grades greater than those of the Illinois Central and other prairie railroads of the West. Crossing the Missouri we are at the back-bone of the continent, depressed here like the vertebra of a hollow-backed horse. We may glide through the Deer Lodge Pass by a grade of fifty feet, at an altitude of only 5,000 feet above tide-water.
Mr. Milnor Roberts, civil engineer, approached it from the west, and this is his description of the Pass:—
"Considered as a railroad route, this valley is remarkably favorable, the rise from Deer Lodge City to the pass or divide between the waters of the Pacific and Atlantic being quite gentle, and even on the last few miles, the summit, about 5,000 feet above the sea, may be attained without employing a gradient exceeding fifty feet to the mile, with a moderate cut. The whole forty miles from Deer Lodge City to the summit of the Rocky Mountains by this route can be built as cheaply as roads are built through prairie countries generally. A little more work will be required in passing to the east side from this side, down Divide Creek to Wisdom or Big Hole River; but the line will be highly favorable on an average all the way to the Jefferson Fork of the Missouri River. This favorable pass comes into connection more particularly with the Yellowstone Valley route to the main Missouri Valley. A remarkable circumstance connected with this pass will convey a very clear view of its peculiarly favorable character. Private parties engaged in gold mining, in the gold-fields which exist abundantly on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, have dug a ditch across this summit which is only eighteen feet deep at the apex of the divide, through which they carry the waters of 'Divide Creek,' a tributary of the Missouri, across to the Pacific side, where it is used in gold-washing, and the waste water passes into the Pacific Ocean. This has been justly termed highway robbery."
There are half a dozen passes nearly as low,—Mullan's, Blackfoot, Lewis and Clark's, Cadotte's, and the Marias.
Going through the Deer Lodge Pass, we find that the stream changes its name very often before reaching the Pacific. The little brook on the summit of the divide, turbid with the washings of the gold-mines, is called the Deer Lodge Creek. Twenty-five miles farther on it is joined by a small stream that trickles from the summit of Mullan's Pass, near Helena, and the two form the Hell Gate, just as the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee form the Merrimac in New Hampshire, receiving its name from the many Indian fights that have taken place in its valley, where the Blackfeet and Nez Perces have had many a battle. The stream bears the name of Hell Gate for about eighty miles before being joined by the Blackfoot, which flows from the mountains in the vicinity of Cadotte's and Lewis and Clark's Passes.
A little below the junction it empties into the Bitter Root, which, after a winding course of a hundred miles, is joined by the Flathead, that comes down from Flathead Lake and the country around Marias Pass. The united streams below the junction take the name of Clark's River, which has a circuitous course northward, running for a little distance into British America, then back again through a wide plain till joined by the Snake, and the two become the Columbia, pouring a mighty flood westward to the ocean. The line of the road does not follow the river to the boundary between the United States and the British Possessions, but strikes across the plain of the Columbia.
The characteristics of Clark's River and the surrounding country are thus described by Mr. Roberts:—
"Clark's River has a flow in low water at least six times greater than the low-water flow of the Ohio River between Pittsburg and Wheeling; and while its fall is slight, considered with reference to railroad grades, it is so considerable as to afford a great number of water-powers, whose future value must be very great,—an average of eleven feet per mile.
"Around Lake Pend d'Oreille, and for some miles westward, and all along Clark's River above the lake as far as we traversed it, there is a magnificent region of pine, cypress, hemlock, tamarack, and cedar timber, many of the trees of prodigious size. I measured one which was thirty-four feet in circumference, and a number that were over twenty-seven feet, and saw hundreds, as we passed along, that were from twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference, and from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high. A number of valleys containing large bodies of this character of timber enter Clark's River from both sides, and the soil of these valleys is very rich. Clark's River Valley itself is for much of the distance confined by very high hills approaching near to the stream in many places; but there are sufficient sites for cities and farms adjacent to water-powers of the first class, and not many years can elapse after the opening of a railroad through this valley till it will exhibit a combination of industries and population analogous to those which now mark the Lehigh, the Schuylkill, the Susquehanna, and the Pomroy region of the Ohio River. Passing along its quiet scenes of to-day, we can see in the near future the vast change which the enterprise of man will bring. That which was once the work of half a century is now the product of three or four years. Indeed, in a single year after the route of this Northern Pacific Railroad shall have been determined, and the work fairly begun, all this region, now so calm and undisturbed, will be teeming with life instilled into it by hardy pioneers from the Atlantic and from the Pacific.