Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1873-09-04
MONTANA.

MONTANA.
BY CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.
From the Boston Congrsgationalist.
Westward over the Union Pacific Railroad
ten hundred and twenty miles, from Canada
| to California, thence northward four hundren
and eighty miles to Helena. Magnificent dis
tances! You must go over them to appre-
ciate them, especially the four hundred and
eighty miles in rattle-trap called a stage, a
jerky drawn by two horses. 1t was in Wis
consin and Minnesota called mud wagon; ;
but it has the faculty of jerking you into or
out of hole, hence the name No matter
about the stage, or the discomfort, it is the
country, the people, the things seen, the OBJ
jects of interest, that claim our attention.
am not going to write about the great salt
basin, or the lava beds of Idaho, the basaltic
rock, which was once red hot pudding, and
which has cooled into brown pumice which
forms the bed of all the Snake River region,
from Fort Hall westward to the land OF the
Modocs. 1t was great volcano once-a
fiery sea, rolling its red hot pillows and belch-
ing its livid flames. But the fires are out, the
pudding is cold, the great southern branch of
the Columbia river runs over it, sage brush
covers it, and you may ride as far as from
Boston to Buffalo oyer this old crater of the
primeval ages. You may sniff up the alkali
dust, drink bitter waters, fight the mosquitoes,
and view desolation all the way, all of
which, so far as civilization is concerned,
will never be anything but country suited to
Modocs and candidates for Botany Bay.
But there is different country to be talked
about-the land of the Delectable Mountains
just such mountains as Bunyan has de-
scribed in Pilgrims Progress, green and
sunny slopes, verdant hills, ravines, valleys,
plains, groves of pine, cedar, balsam, and
fir. An outline of blue on fields of white,
upon the topmost ridges where the winter
SHOWS are cleaning in the summer sun. l
never am weary with gazing at the ever
changing shades; the purple of the morning,
the light gray of midday, the silver and the
gold Of sunset.
There are mountains everywhere, long
ranges, lying one beyond the other like the
pillows of the sea, foothills with innumera-
bic ravines, widening here and there to pleas.
ant valleys, with rivulets streaming from a
thousand springs. 1t is the land of the
mountains, the land where two of the great
river systems of the continent have their rise
the Missouri on the one hand and the COL
umbia on the other.
am up here on the ridge-pole of the con-
tinent, nearly six thousand feet above the sea,
breathing the sweet air, inhaling the fra
GRANGE of the pines and balsam, and can look
complacently down upon the dwellers of the
low-lands, sweltering in the sultry heats.
Come up here and take an outlook eastward
towards advancing civilization, and westward
to the Pacific. am almost as far west of
St. Paul as Massachusetts, is east of that city;
4 = So for hor RI hp In in,
straight line as it is from Boston to Cleve- |
land.
There is a great deal of country out here. |
Montana alone is large enough to make |
twenty -one States of the size Of Massachu- !
sets there is so much superficial area, but |
there are so many hill-sides that have an an
gle of forty-five degrees, so much land TILED
edgeways, that you may reckon it at thirty
States the size of Massachusetts,.
It is q wonderful land, an enchanting re-
zion. I am charmed with its beauty and
amazed at the wealth which God has stored
up here for coming generations. First the
silver and gold put the silver first, althought
his is the richest gold producing country on
The continent, surprising California or Col
orado. The annual yield from the placer
mines is now about eight millions OF dollars.
From one ravine, sixteen miles in length,
a lQer creek. on WHICH, IL IOCdCEu VuSutd
City, more than forty millions of dollars worth
If gold has been mined. But the mineral
wealth of the future is in its silver mines,
which have hardly been touched. More than
our thousand leads, as they are called-quartz
,eins containing silver-have been discovered
md placed on record. Some of those quartz
eads will yield $500 per ton. am inform
ID that the quartz veins upon the average
yi]l Weld not less than 500 worth of sill
,er, and that generally they contain enough
cad and copper, and other metals, to pay for
mining. Silver ores must be shipped to the !
eduction works where coal is abundant, and
or want of transportation the mines will not
e at present developed. When the North
'acific Railroad is completed to this mineral {
egion, am informed by men who ought to ,
now what they are talking about, that the i
hipment of ores will not be less than half /
aiilion tons per annum. The time will come
,hen the ores will be reduced in the Terri
Dry, for there Is coal field In Montana far :
lrger than that of Pennsylvania. I picked up 9
melumps last week, within half mile of {
,e summit of the Rocky Mountains, where y
line has been opened. The line of the North G
m Pacific Railroad west of the Missouri 7
ms over coal bed for q distance of two t
undred miles. The coal veins show them y
lives ell sl0ng the Yellowstone and the Mis-
,uri, and the field reaches n0rthward through :
ritiah America to lake Atbabasca, distance Il
( more than eight hundred miles. The coal t
,rmatiOn shows itself all the way down the 9