As to the commercial resources of Duluth, sir, they are simply illimitable and inexhaustible, as shown by this map. I see it stated here that there is a vast scope of territory, embracing an area of over two million square miles, rich in every element of material wealth and commercial prosperity, all tributary to Duluth.
Look at this map; do not you see from the broad brown lines drawn around this immense territory, that the enterprising inhabitants of Duluth intend some day to enclose it all in one vast corral, so that its commerce would be bound to go there whether it would or not? And on this map, sir, I find within a convenient distance the Piegan Indians, which of all the many accessories to the glory of Duluth I consider the most inestimable.
For, sir, I see vast "wheat-fields" represented on this map in the immediate neighborhood of the buffaloes and the Piegans; and though the idea of there being these immense wheat-fields in the very heart of a wilderness, hundreds and hundreds of miles beyond the utmost verge of civilization, may appear to some gentlemen as rather incongruous, as rather too great a strain on the "blankets" of veracity, to my mind there is no difficulty in the matter whatever.
Here, you will observe, are the buffaloes, directly between the Piegans and Duluth, and here, on the right of Duluth, are the Creeks. Now, sir, when the buffaloes are sufficiently fat from grazing on these immense wheat-fields, you see it will be the easiest thing in the world for the Piegans to drive them on down, stay all night with their friends, the Creeks, and go into Duluth in the morning.
Sir, I might stand here for hours and hours and expatiate with rapture upon the gorgeous prospects of Duluth as depicted upon this map. But human life is far too short and the time of this House far too valuable to allow me to linger longer upon the delightful theme. Nevertheless, sir, it grieves my very soul to be compelled to say that I cannot vote for the grant of lands provided for in this bill.
Ah, sir, you can have no conception of the poignancy of my anguish that I am deprived of that blessed privilege! There are two insuperable obstacles in the way. In the first place, my constituents for whom I am acting here have no more interest in this road than they have in the great question of culinary taste now perhaps agitating the public mind of Dominica as to whether the illustrious commissioners who recently left this capital for that free and enlightened republic would be better fricasseed, boiled, or roasted; and in the second place, these lands which I am asked to give away, alas! are not mine to bestow.
My relation to them is simply that of trustee to an express trust. And shall I ever betray that trust?
Never, sir! Rather perish Duluth! Perish the paragon of cities! Rather let the freezing cyclones of the bleak Northwest bury it forever beneath the eddying sands of the raging St. Croix.