Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-12-24
DEVILS LAKE.
COL. PAT DONAN ON THE EAMED SALT
WATER LIKE OF DAKOTA.
A Veritable Elysium in the Wilderness
Its Future Greatness Wildly Pictured
Some of Its Attractions to Tourists and
Settlers---Its Designation an Outrageous
MisnOmer.
Pat Donan in Fargo Sunday Argus. |

Colonel Donan, as an Argusite, pencil and
notebook in hand, showed his intellectual
cheek yesterday morning at the door of
Doty, Donan & Curtis handsome real
estate Office, room 6, Continental hotel.
"Come in, come in" continued the eagle
screaming boomer of the Great North
west, I'VE are always crowded here and
always rushed, but Pm never too busy or
TOO proud to stop q minute and say
'howdye' to one of the noble army of
martyrs newspaperial. What do you
wants What can do for you?
II want you to talk a little for the
Argus" said the modest seeker for in
formation"
Talk is cheap. What variety of it do
you wish? What you'd you have me talk
You have been to the DEVILS lake region,
and that is the theme of universal interest
just now. What sort of country is it?
If the gentleman for whom it is named
ever owned it, and surrendered it without
fight to Simrall, Creel, Ensign, Dana,
Benham and Uline, he is a bigger fool
than orthodoxy ever charged. 1t is big
country and it takes big trip to reach 1t.
l went as simple child of nature, an un-
sophisticated seeker for light, to revel in
the beauties of Dakota landscape in this
charming season of primroses and daisies,
aurora borealises, rainbows, mosquitoes,
wild geese and fower-perfumed zephyrs,
and had jolly, jolly time. I had
pleasant days fly around in Grand Forks
with Winship and Webster, of the Herald;
Hansborough and Briscoe, of the News, Ham
ilton, Rose, Tallant and Cole; dinedot the
dainty home of Murphy, of the Plaindeal-
or, with him and his charming
and accomplished sister and Editor
Henderson and his lovely wife. Went up
to Larimore on a night train. Met the
found him to be an old neighbor boy.
Accepted his invitation to take seat in
his wagon next day behind the fastest
team and beside the fastest drixer in Da-
kota. Stopped for the night in Lari-
more at the Swain house, where the in
teresting clerk, when I asked him for
bootblack, stared at me in open-eyed
wonder, languidly pointed me to black
ing brush under the Office counter, and
remarked, every fellow blacks his own
shoes up here, but We hain't got no black
ing" P. Morris, the big hearted manager
of the Larimore and Devils lake stage
line, came over and rendered me a stand
ing deadhead on his fine Concord coaches.
Saturday morning L. p. Goodhue, one
of natures noblemen, who owns a prom
Using townsite at the end of the Manitoba
track, insisted on wrapping me up in his
new buffalo overcoat, and then I bounced
| into 1t. Creels light wagon behind pair
of lightning soIrels and started at a rat
thing rate for his majesty dominions, with
| a demijohn in the bow of our craft. Creel
| is a wild driver, and we few over the en-
tire seventy-fve miles at an average of
seven and a half miles an hour, actual
driving time. We passed the beautiful
Wamduska lake, where an Eastern COM
pany has built a $4,000 mansard roof
hotel, wound along the chain of dry lakes
that or ce linked Wamduska with DEVILS
lake, halted to warm at Lamoreaux's near
the east end of the great lake, took birds
| eye view of the sand and alkali point
where the proposed Odessa town site is to
be located, flew along the shore past Dana's,
Simrall's and Devils Lake City; and final
ly tumbled out In front of CreePs huge
stockade on Creel's bay.
A great deal is being said about Lieu
tenant Creel; what sort of fellow is
Creel was appointed to West Point from
my old district in Missouri in 1873. He is
cousin of Stonewall Jackson and of Gen
eral William L. jackson, formely of Vir-
ginia, but now a noted Judge of Louisville,
Kentucky. He is granddaughter of
| DR.. Creel, who was one of the jury that
| tried Aaron Burr for treason more than
| three-quarters of century ago, and he is
connected with many of the leading fami-
lies in Virginia. He is only about twenty
eight years old, has a hand and foot as
small as girls. He is holding large
| number of valuable claims, and has a
small army of retainers and adherents
His stOckade on Rock island is known
as ''the FORT" and in the stables adjoining
stand some twenty horses of the
toughest and wiriest breeds.
His castle on the mainland is
huge log house with with long row of
sod stables matched with straw behind it,
in the stalls of which some ten or fifteen
fine horses paw the ground ready to fly
anywhere day or night. Handsome bug
gies and landeaus are in the carriage
house, under the straw-thatched roof of
poles and sod. On the walls of the big log
house that constitutes the combined dwell
ing and fort hang many handsome pictures
in elegant frames. Easy chairs, lounges
and rugs and fine mirrored sideboards
mingle with stacks of guns, elk and buff
falo horns, and festoons of pistols and In
dian trophies, while three or four maenifi-
cent dogs stretch themselves lazily on the
floor, mingling the luxury and elegance of
metropolitan civilization with the rude
ness of the frontier in the strangest of
strange medleys. Among the pictures on
the rough log walls was an exquisite por-
trait, in massive and richly carved gilt
frame, of one of my loveliest friends, Miss
Nellie 'Hazletine, of st. Louis, now Mrs.
Fred Paramour. of that city. Men, booted
and spurred, come and go at all hours of
day and night, and the whole place has the
air of military camp, in which this slen-
der young ex-lieutenant is commander-in.
chief. 1t recalls some of Walter SCOTS
pictures of wild life to the tune of ssBIue
Bonnets ove- the Border" in the days of
the Scotch and English cattle raids.
How is the land and how does it lie?
There is some as rich and beautiful as