The New Eldorado: A Summer Journey to AlaskaBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
The New Eldorado: A Summer Journey to Alaska
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Alaska -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
In the State of Montana we find a more hilly country than that through
which we have so recently passed, yet it is well adapted to farming and
possesses large areas of excellent grazing land. Indeed, there is
scarcely any part of this territory, except the mountain ranges, where
the climate is not sufficiently mild for cattle to winter out-of-doors.
Undoubtedly they will thrive better for being housed at night in the
coldest weather here or anywhere, but this is not absolutely necessary.
No food is required for them except the native bunch grass, which cures
itself, and stands as hay until the succeeding spring. Cattle are very
fond of and will quickly fatten upon it. Sheep husbandry is also a great
and growing interest here. We observe now and again a thrifty flock,
tended by a boy-shepherd accompanied by his dog, recalling similar
scenes in Tasmania and on the plains of Russia.
Statistics show that there are over two million acres now under
cultivation in Montana, and that the territory is also fabulously rich
in minerals. The present output of gold, silver, and copper is at the
rate of three million dollars per month, and the yield of the mines is
steadily on the increase.
As we hasten on our way, looking on one side far down into sombre
depths, and on the other at threatening, overhanging bowlders, or
backward at the road-bed cut out of the solid rock which forms the
cliff, we wonder at the successful audacity which conceived and built
such a difficult highway. We have seen few instances of similar
engineering so remarkable as is exhibited at certain points on the
Northern Pacific Railroad. Equal difficulties have been overcome on the
Zig-zag Railway over the Blue Mountain Range, near Sidney, Australia,
and also in Northern India, where the narrow gauge railroad climbs the
foothills of the Himalayan Range to Darjeeling, about eight thousand
feet above the plains of Hindostan, but in neither of these instances is
the work so thorough, or on so gigantic a scale, as where the Northern
Pacific crosses the Rocky Mountains.
We are quite conscious of being on an up grade, the large engine panting
audibly from its extra exertion, and the train moving forward no faster
than one could walk. Presently tall, snow-capped peaks come trooping
into view, like mounted Bedouins clad in fleecy white, as the small city
of Livingston is reached. This locality is about forty-five hundred feet
above the sea. The town is situated in a beautiful valley, with nothing
to indicate its altitude except the snow-crowned mountains not far away,
standing like frigid sentinels. The observant traveler will also notice
a certain rarefied condition of the atmosphere. Here we are about midway
between the Great Lakes and the Pacific coast,—between Superior, the
largest lake on the globe, and the Pacific, the largest ocean in the
world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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