St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-06-08
What a Newspaper Man Saw
in Crossing the New Half
Of the Cont nent.
The Busting Race Of City
Builders Who Are Peopl-
ing Puget Sound.
Pen Sketches Of Portland, Ia
coma, Seattle and Other
Coast Towns.
A Vast Region of Undeveloped
Wealth for the Future
Settler.

Editorial Correspondence.
TACOMA, June $50 much has been
said and written about the Pacific North
west took advantage of late vacation
to visit this section and to see for my
self whether the boom stories which
came floating from across the Rockies
possessed any of the elements of truth,
Or whether like other creations of the
boomer they owed their vivid coloring
to that genius for eXaggeration which
controls this age. l went, saw, and
am satisfied. 1t is the purpose of this
paper to tell what [ saw, and why l am
satisfied; but it may be we'll to say, by
way of premise, that while my eXpecta
tions were in the main fulfilled. there
were many things had heard which are
subject to modification.
ST. Paul to Portland.
To person who has an aversion to
railroad travel, and who has not ex-
perienced trip across the continent,
vision of the continuous ride of four
days and nights from st. Paul to Port
land presents itself to the mind as some
thing too horrible to endure. Hence
the first agreeable surprise was the ease
with which the journey is accomplished
over the Northern Pacific line, with the
best road-bed Of all the transconti-
mental lines, and with its train of SUI
perbly equipped Pullman palace cars.
1t is not travel in the ordinary sense.
1t is a pleasure ride across the new half
of the continent in luxurious ease, with
scenery always in sight to please the
eye and to invite study. The transconti-
mental trains are so arranged that
the country you pass over in the night
going out can be seen by daylight on
the return trip.
Once across the Red River of the
North, we skim along over the smooth
prairieS of North Dakota. through the
famous wheat region of the Jim river
valley, where the fields are smiling i'll
prospect of the bOuntiful harvest that
must be reaped in the fall if th ere is
half a season, on until the middle of the
afternoon we enter the Bad Lands.
Nature must have been in its freakieSt
mood when the multitudinous samples OF
Free-Hand Stone Cutting
were erected on these plains. AS far as
the eye can reach in every direction the
grotesque forms of chalky clay, and
eroded rock rise to view looking like
the dismantled towers of deserted cas-
ties. The Imagination grows weary
with peopling the late winter home of
the buffalo with Egyptian rulers busily
engaged in pyramid building and ar
mOred knights of the olden time scaling
castle walls or hurting adventurous
aSsailants from the battlements. What
uses Nature designed the Bad Lands
for is still an open question, only that
we know that the buffalo and the ante
lope, before their determination. with
the instinct of self protection that God
had given them, invariably made this
region their winter quarters. Here the
grasses retain their nutritious quality
throughout the entire winter, and the
Sheltering pyramids afford protec-
ton from the billiards. The thought
came to my mind that the best use the
government could have made OF the
Bad Lands of Dakota and Montana
would have been to have fenced them
off for buffalo farm, and thus to have
preserved the royal beast of the prai
rieS.
Having emerged from the Bad Lands
skirting the Yellowstone valley the
traveller is charmed with sight of the
fertile ranch lands extending from Liv
ingston to Helena. The rich verdure,
the limpid streams and the cattle on the
thousand hills make picture of pas
toral beauty nowhere else to be seen.
The Hoary-Headed Mountains
encircling Helena seem to be jealous Of
their vast mineral wealth, for they lean
toward you with warning aspect and
seem to forbid the intrusion of the ma
terialistic tendencies of this age. But
mans high purpose to assert his SUI
premacy over natures dominion has
rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun
though they be. Their sides have
been pierced and the golden stream is
pouring forth. Their proud SUBMITS
have bowed in submission to the engi-
neer's skill; and with his snort of tri-
umph the locomotive Chambers over and
around them with the ease and the
grace of chamois on his native hills.
Crossing the Rocky mountains is an
experience in the trip of every trans
continental traveller that is sure to be
remembered. The summit is reached
by gradual ascent and after a full
twelve hours travel. The grade is so
light you scarcely realize the summit is
being approached until you feel pecul-
lar dizziness of the head, roaring in
the ears, such as is the effect of an over
dose of quinine; or, i'll case of weak
lungs, a smothering sensation in the
chest; or, if you have heart trouble,
you are liable to suffer from palpitation
of the heart. Some one of these unfail-
ing indications will give you notice
that you have reached an altitude I'M
comfortable for human existence. But
it is of short duration. A plunge into
tunnel, a run of five minutes i'll the
darkness, and you emerge on
The Pacific Slope.
1t is not altogether Imagination that
you feel warmer and heavier atmOs-
phere. The force of the gulf wave that
draws up the Pacific coast is not
wholly exhausted until it eXpends itself
against the western brow of the Rockies.
Then comes the delightful descent
through Natures art gallery, where pict-
ures are limned that it would be sacri-
lege for mans art to attempt to copy.
The diversity of the scenery from that
on until the waters of the Pacific are
reached lends additional charm to the
prospect. The changes are so frequent,
so sudden, and so diverse the mind is
kept in delirium of expectancy. Here
you are overshadowed with towering
mountains with their ragged fronts
frowning down upon you, there you
are dashing across one of the valleys of
Arcadia whose loneliness is only equal
ed by its fertility; again you seem to be
flying in mid air as you look from your
car window down to the depths of a
gulch 226 feet below the car tracks;
then you are sweeping ocross the arid
region between Spokane and EllenS-
burg, looking so dreary and desolate in
its waste you wonder why some of the
rains that are not needed on Puget
Sound are not lent to water section
that only needs a few showers each
summer to make it blossom as the rose.
Then you have your choice of routes
through the Cascade range, to either
follow the course of the Columbia river
where it cleaveS its way through the
mountains, leaving
Its Massive Walls
of masonry on both sides, over which
the clear mountain streams dash in