V
A SOLDIER'S WORLD
Instead of a world of city streets and country towns, of tilled fields and rivers busy with commerce, the raw recruit at Old Fort Snelling entered upon a world of stone barracks and Indian tepees, of tangled prairies and rushing rivers.[198] The landing was directly under the cliff which towered above to a height which to many a wanderer in a frail canoe seemed twice the one hundred and six feet which the scientist's instruments ascribed to it.[199] In later years a stairway led to the quarters of the commanding officer, but the wagon road which crept upwards along the sandstone wall—“nearly as white as loaf-sugar”[200]—where the swallows flew in and out from their holes, gained the summit at the rear of the fort.
Following the road through the gate, and passing between the buildings to the center of the parade ground, the recruit probably paused to look about him.[201] Visible in the openings between the buildings was the stone wall about ten feet high which surrounded the barracks, quarters, and storehouses. This wall took the place of the picket-stockade which was so prominent a feature in earlier and ruder fortifications. Conforming to the arrangement of the buildings which it enclosed, the wall was diamond-shaped, one point being at the edge of the promontory where the valley of the Minnesota River met that of the Mississippi River. A second point was on the edge of the steep bluff which rose from the Mississippi. A third point, at a distance of about four hundred and fifty feet directly opposite the second, was on the summit of the Minnesota bluff. The fourth point was situated on the level ground of the plateau, at a distance of about seven hundred feet from the first point.
As he stood in the middle of the parade ground and gazed beyond the pump and the magazine at the western or fourth point, the recruit saw rising to a height twice that of the wall, the Old Round Tower. To-day this tower is a vine-clad relic—a vestige remaining from the days of the past. But to the soldier of Old Fort Snelling it was a more practical structure—a place of lookout from which he was often to scan the swells of the prairie for approaching Indians or returning comrades. At the second and third points were blockhouses—buildings of stone, each giving a view of the river below it. At the first point there was also a tower—a wooden lookout platform at the very edge of the precipice from which was visible the landscape surrounding the fort.
But the soldier was doubtless more interested in the buildings in which he was to live. The barracks for the men were under the north wall and consisted of two buildings one story in height. The larger of these, which was intended to accommodate two companies was divided into sets, each set having on the main floor an orderly-room and three squad-rooms, while below in the basement were a mess-room and a kitchen. The other barrack was intended to be occupied by one company only; and the orderly-room, squad-rooms, mess-rooms, and a kitchen were on the same floor. The cellars below were damp and were used only for storage purposes.
PLAN OF OLD FORT SNELLING
From a survey by Captain Arthur Williams, reproduced in the Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. VIII, opposite p. 430]
