The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1893-10-06
A RAMBLE OVER UNCLE SANS TERRI
TORY.
NUMBER TWO.


We journeyed to st. Paul by the rail
way which runs along the west bank of
the river, and affords fine views of the
scenery of the upper Mississippi; the
high bluffs with their peculiar shapes,
and the shining reaches of the stream
made up very pretty picture. At one
place the river widens out into good
sized lake. Several stern wheel steamers
were passed, each pushing immense RATS
of logs: why they should push instead of
towing, seemed strange to us, but we
were told that the pilots can swing the
great RATS at will, even heading them
through quite narrow channels. The
western rivers are not as handsome as
our eastern streams, the water is gener-
ally muddy and as the soft banks are
continually eaten away by the current,
the streams become in time like canals,
many different channels wandering
through great stretches of bottom land
covered with debris of all kinds, and full
of fallen and tangled timber, caused by
the great floods. st. Paul had ha ,dly re-
covered from the celebration incident to
the opening to the Pacific coast of the
Great Northern railway. Plaster arches
were numerous, about $4,000 was spent
on these useless and homely things, and
at the time of our visit they were trying
to cut down the salaries of the firemen;
the report was that they wished to make
up on the poor fiIemen what they had
spent on the celebration; and people
thought it dangerous place to econo-
mize. When l visited the twin cities in
1888, was better pleased with st. Paul
than Minneapolis; but this time Mime
apolis impressed me much more favOra-
bly, than ST. Paul, which did not appear
to rs as prosperous as four years ago;
while Minneapolis has grown rapidly
and improved very much; when st. Paul
found her old rival was many thousand
ahead in population, it seemed to have
diSheartened her somewhat. Summit
avenue, hundreds of feet above the Miss
isslppi, with its fine residences and
grand outlook, is still much the finest
street, but noticed that very few new
dwellings had been erected there during
the past five years. Minneapolis has a
girdle of beauty in the four lovely lakes
that surround it, pearls they are, strung
as it were on the charming boulevards
that connect them, which with the fine
park in the city, make up splendid
park system. The people are to be con-
graduated on their foresight i'll securing
all this for the city, ere it was everlast-
ingly to late. The electric roads have
united with the city and built a beautiful
pavilion in one of the lakes, and jointly
they pay fine band which discOurses
music there on many summer evenings,
attracting crowds of people, and giving
them grand uplift. Then Lake Mime
sofa, whose beauty can be guessed when
we find it has coast line of 100 miles,
although not a very large lake, probably
5 by 10 miles, is only ten miles away, and
it affords innumerable sites for cottages
on the high and pretty shores, and ample
opportunity for water sports of all kinds,
We found Mr.. and Mrs. Andrew 5. Keyes
and Mrs. j. n. S rarton nicely located
on the shore of Lake Harriet; they like
Minneapolis very much, but sigh for a
glimpse of the Green Mountains. 1t is
hard for people born in sight of noun
tains to live on the flat plains of the
West and not he homesick. We were in
terested to see the great building into
which So much money from this vicinity
has been poured: splendid stone struc-
ture but far in advance of the needs of
that city, and poor is the prospect for
the unfortunate investors ever seeing
their money again. Why cannot our
people do as the Jews did when Iestor-
ing the walls of Jerusalem, build every
man over against his own house. What
would the West have done without the
help of eastern money to develop it, yet
they dislike the East with that curious
feeling which people usually have to-
ward those they have misused. | doubt
if st. Paul, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas
City or Denver will be very much larger
:. l. 3 AloN 6
they have all grown too rapidly.
A ride of two nights and day over
the Northern Pacific railway brought us
to Livingston, where the branch road
running to the Yellowstone Park con-
meets with the main line. 1t is quite
sizeable town, but with the usual odd
mixture of buildings that is found in
these frontier places. The Northern Pa
cifc runs through the pretty lake coun-
try of Minnesota, where are many thriv-
ing towns, on through North Dakota,
rising ever rising on what seems to be an
interminable grade; hour after hour the
train ran slowly, yet it was hard to tell
that we were getting to SO high an alti-
tude. Fargo had lately been visited with
a very disastrous confagration, the num-
erous chimneys standing among the
Troy after the great fire of 1862. We
were all agOg to see the famous Red
River of the North, of which we had so
often heard, but behold! a sluggish,
muddy stream, like good sized creek,
though of course this was near tile head
waters. 1t is the only American river
that flows north: kind Providence has
kept us from having streams where, in
the spring, the ice melts first at the head
waters, and later sweeps all before it.
We crossed the Missouri, the "Big Mud
dy," as the Indians called it, at Bismarck
and were amazed to see the great size of
the stream at that distance from its
mouth; and it is navigable to Fl. Benton
a long way faI Their up. The Bismarck
shore is a high bluff, and the bridge is far
above the stream, but the train ran
many miles across the bottoms before
we reached Mandan; the whole of which
is flooded with every rise of the Mis-
souri,, so that no one can live there. The
so called pillows of golden grain we did
not see, for the wheat was yet green.
The days were of great length, the
first week in July, the sun was peeping
at us very early, and at 10 o'clock p. m.
we could plainly see the surrounding
country. Newspapers could be read at
the car windows until p. m. As the
elevation increased the face of the coun-
try grew more bare and desolate; for
miles and miles scarcely a house could
be seen, and most of those we did see
were built of sods from the surrounding
prairie; generally on the bank of a
stream, where alone was enough land APP