BURNING OF THE CAPITOL.
At nine o'clock on the evening of March 1, 1881, while both houses of the legislature were in session, and all the halls and departments were crowded with visitors, the dome of the building was found to be on fire. The flames spread with too great rapidity to be checked, and all that could be done was to save the contents of the building. The most valuable records and papers of the various offices, and of the legislature, with some of the furniture, were carried out, but the greater part of the contents of the building, including the valuable law library, the supply of state laws, documents and reports, and all the stationery in the secretary of state's store rooms, etc., were a total loss. The Historical Society's library was mostly saved. The entire loss to the State was fully $200,000.
Fortunately the city of St. Paul had just completed a fine and spacious market house, which was still unoccupied, and its use was at once tendered the State by the city authorities, and while the flames were still burning the furniture and effects saved from the old capitol were removed thither. At nine o'clock next morning the state departments and both houses of the legislature were again at work in their new quarters. But two days of the session yet remained. Gov. Pillsbury immediately secured estimates for rebuilding the burned edifice, using the old walls, and an act appropriating $75,000 for that purpose was passed. Work was commenced at once. It was then found that the old walls were too unsafe to use, and at the extra session in September, 1881, the further sum of $100,000 was appropriated for the completion of the building. Its total cost was about $275,000. The dome of the building is two hundred feet above the ground, giving a noble view to the visitor who ascends it. The exterior of the edifice is neat and tasty, and it is altogether creditable to the State, considering its comparatively small cost.
SELKIRK VISITORS.
In the early days a somewhat primitive people inhabited the Northwest, making their homes on the banks of the Red River of the North and on the shores of Winnipeg, in what was known as the Selkirk settlement, now included in the province of Manitoba. They were a mixed race of Scotch, French and Indian stock, born and raised under the government of the Northwest British Fur Company. They were a peaceable, partly pastoral and partly nomadic, trading people. They cultivated the ground quite successfully considering the high latitude of their home and the absence of machinery for farm work, raising wheat, vegetables, cattle and horses. They engaged in hunting and trapping and yearly visited St. Paul with the surplus products of their labor to be disposed of for money or goods. They came usually in caravans consisting of files of carts drawn by cows, oxen and ponies, and commanded by a captain elected to the position who exercised over them a rigid military rule. Their carts were rude, creaking affairs, made entirely without iron, all the fastenings being sinews and leathern thongs. This harness was made of raw hides, Indian tanned, and sewed with animal sinews. Their costume was a happy cross between the civilized and savage. Their caravans included from 100 to 600 carts, which were laden with furs, buffalo robes, buffalo tongues, dried pemmican, etc. As they came a distance of 450 miles, the journey required many days, but was made in good military order. The raising of a flag was the signal for starting, the lowering, for stopping. At night the carts were ranged in a circle about the encampment, and sentinels posted. Their encampment within the suburbs of St. Paul attracted great crowds of the curious. In 1857 their train consisted of 500 carts, and in 1858 of 600, but later, as railroads were built northward and steamers were placed upon the Red River of the North, their number gradually diminished and finally their visits ceased altogether.
CYCLONES.
Recorded and unrecorded, Minnesota and Wisconsin have had their full share of those atmospheric disturbances that have wrought so much destruction in the Western States. In the early days, when the country was sparsely settled and villages and towns were few and far between, they came and went unnoted, or attracting but little attention. They left no traces on the plain, and in the forests only a belt of fallen timber, known as a "windfall." These belts are sufficiently numerous to establish the fact that these storms were probably as frequent in early, even in prehistoric, times as at the present. Their movements are more destructive in later times because of the improvements of civilization, the increased number of human habitations and the growth of towns and cities. The tornado has more to destroy, and as a destroying agent, its movements are better known and more widely published.
Scientists are not agreed as to the cause of these destructive phenomena, but enough is known to overthrow the theory so persistently advanced that it is in consequence of the cutting away of the forests and the substitution of farms. In fact much of the country was already prairie land and abundant evidences of tornadoes are found in the midst of old forests in which have since grown up trees of considerable size, and this at a period long before the lumberman commenced his destructive work.
We append a few sketches of cyclones that have occurred in comparatively recent times.