The Russell House at Sauk Rapids was presided over by Dr. Chase. According to his card, Dr. Chase conferred more benefactions upon the human race for the very smallest remuneration than any man living. His hotel was situated in the loveliest portion of Minnesota, commanding the magnificent rapids of the Mississippi; his board and lodging were of the choicest description; horses and buggies were free, gratis, and medical attendance was also uncharged for. Finally, the card intimated that, upon turning over, still more astonishing revelations would meet the eye of the reader. Prepared for some terrible instance of humane abnegation on the part of Dr. Chase, I proceeded to do, as directed, and, turning over the card, read, "Present of a $500 greenback"!!! The gift of the green back was attended with some little drawback, inasmuch as it was conditional upon paying to Dr. Chase the sum of $20,000 for the goodwill, etc., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more observable than in this Doctor's establishment; whether it was from the fact that each guest suffered under a painful knowledge of the superhuman efforts which the Doctor was making for his or her benefit, I cannot say; but I never witnessed the proverbially frightened appearance of the American people at meals to such a degree as at the dinner-table of the Sauk Hotel. When the damsels before alluded to commenced their peregrinations round the table, giving in terribly terse language the choice of meats, the solemnity of the proceeding could not have been exceeded. "Pork or beef?" "Pork," would answer the trembling feeder; "Beef or pork?" "Beef," would again reply the guest, grasping eagerly at the first name which struck upon his ear. But when the second course came round the damsels presented us with a choice of a very mysterious nature indeed. I dimly heard two names being uttered into the ears of my fellow-eaters, and I just had time to notice the paralyzing effect which the communication appeared to have upon them, when presently over my own shoulder I heard the mystic sound-I regret to say that at first these sounds entirely failed to present to my mind any idea of food or sustenance of known description, I therefore begged for a repetition of the words; this time there was no mistake about it, "Steam-pudding or pumpkin-pie?" echoed the maiden, giving me the terrible alternative in her most cutting tones; "Both!" I ejaculated, with equal distinctness, but, I believe, audacity unparalleled since the times of Twist. The female Bumble seemed to reel beneath the shock, and I noticed that after communicating her experience to her fellow waiting-woman, I was not thought of much account for the remainder of the meal.
Upon the day of my arrival at Sauk Rapids I had let it be known pretty widely that I was ready to become the purchaser of a saddle-horse, if any person had such an animal to dispose of. In the three following days the amount of saddle-horses produced in the neighbourhood was perfectly astonishing; indeed the fact of placing a saddle upon the back of any thing possessing four legs seemed to constitute the required animal; even a German--a "Dutchman'" came along with a miserable thing in horseflesh, sand-cracked and spavined, for which he only asked the trifling sum of $100. Two livery stables in St. Cloud sent up their superannuated stagers, and Dr. Chase had something to recommend of a very superior description. The end of it all was, that, declining to purchase any of the animals brought up for inspection, I found there was little chance of being able to get over the 400 miles which lay between St. Cloud and Fort Garry. It was now the 12th of July; I had reached the farthest limit of railroad communication, and before me lay 200 miles of partly settled country lying between the Mississippi and the Red River. It is true that a four-horse stage ran from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie on Red River, but that would only have conveyed me to about 300 miles distant from Fort Garry, and over that last 300 miles I could see no prospect of travelling. I had therefore determined upon procuring a horse and riding the entire way, and it was with this object that I had entered into these inspections of horseflesh already mentioned. Matters were in this unsatisfactory state on the 12th of July, when I was informed that the solitary steamboat which plied upon the waters of the Red River was about to make a descent to Fort Garry, and that a week would elapse before she would start from her moorings below Georgetown, a. station of the Hudson Bay Company situated 250 miles from St. Cloud. This was indeed the best of good news to me; I saw in it the long-looked-for chance of bridging this great stretch of 400 miles and reaching at last the Red River Settlement. I saw in it still more the prospect of joining at no very distant time the expeditionary force itself, after I had run the gauntlet of M. Riel and his associates, and although many obstacles yet remained to be overcome, and distances vast and wild had to be covered before that hope could be realized, still the prospect of immediate movement overcame every perspective difficulty; and glad indeed I was when from the top of a well-horsed stage I saw the wooden houses of St. Cloud disappear beneath the prairie behind me, and I bade good-bye for many a day to the valley of the Mississippi,
CHAPTER SEVEN.
North Minnesota--A beautiful Land--Rival Savages-Abercrombie--News from the North-Plans--A Lonely Shanty--The Red River--Prairies--Sunset-- Mosquitoes--Going North--A Mosquito Night--A Thunder-storm--A Prussian-- Dakota--I ride for it--The Steamer "International"--Pembina.
The stage-coach takes three days to run from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie, about 180 miles. The road was tolerably good, and many portions of the country were very beautiful to look at. On the second day one reaches the height of land between the Mississippi and Red Rivers, a region abounding in clear crystal lakes of every size and shape, the old home of the great Sioux nation, the true Minnesota of their dreams. Minnesota ("sky-coloured water"), how aptly did it describe that home which was no longer theirs! They have left it for ever; the Norwegian and the Swede now call it theirs, and nothing remains of the red man save these sounding names of lake and river which long years ago he gave them. Along the margins of these lakes many comfortable dwellings nestle amongst oak openings and glades, and hill and valley are golden in summer with fields of wheat and corn, and little towns are springing up where twenty years ago the Sioux lodge-poles were the only signs of habitation; but one cannot look on this transformation without feeling, with Longfellow, the terrible surge of the white man, "whose breath, like the blast of the east wind, drifts evermore to the west the scanty smoke of the wigwams." What savages, too, are they, the successors of the old race--savages! not less barbarous because they do not scalp, or war-dance, or go out to meet the Ojibbeway in the woods or the Assineboine in the plains.
We had passed a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Osakis, and reached another lake not less lovely, the name of which I did not know.
"What is the name of this place?" I asked the driver who had stopped to water his horses.
"I don't know," he answered, lifting a bucket of water to his thirsty steeds; "some God-dam Italian name, I guess." This high rolling land which divides the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from those of Hudson Bay lies at an elevation of 1600 feet above the sea level. It is rich in every thing that can make a country prosperous; and that portion of the "down-trodden millions," who "starve in the garrets of Europe," and have made their homes along that height of land, have no reason to regret their choice.
On the evening of the second day we stopped for the night at the old stockaded post of Pomme-de-Terre, not far from the Ottertail River. The place was foul beyond the power of words to paint it, but a "shake down" amidst the hay in a cow-house was far preferable to the society of man close by.