Minnesota -- Description and travel; Northwest, Canadian; Northwestern States; Red River of the North
Yes, provided he has good pluck, and is willing to work hard and to
wait. If he can command one thousand dollars, he can do a great deal
better than he can with half that sum.
If you were to go out sixty miles beyond St Paul to Darsel, on the
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad you would see a farm worked by seven
sisters. The oldest girl is about twenty-five, the youngest fifteen.
They lived in Ohio, but their father and mother were invalids, and for
their benefit came to Minnesota in April, 1867, and secured a hundred
and sixty acres of land under the Homestead Law. The neighbors turned
out and helped them build a log-house, and the girls went to work on
the farm. Last year (1869) they had forty acres under cultivation,
and sold 900 bushels of potatoes, 500 bushels of corn, 200 of wheat,
250 of turnips, 200 of beets, besides 1,100 cabbage-heads, and about
two hundred dollars' worth of other garden products. They hired men
to split rails for fencing, and also to plough the land; but all the
other work has been done by the girls, who are hale and hearty, and
find time to read the weekly papers and magazines. The mother of these
girls made the following remark to a gentleman who visited the farm:
"The girls are not fond of the hard work they have had to do to get the
farm started, but they are not ashamed of it. We were too poor to keep
together, and live in a town. We could not make a living there, but
here we have become comfortable and independent. We tried to give the
girls a good education, and they all read and write, and find a little
spare time to read books and papers."
These plucky girls have set a good example to young men who want to get
on in the world.
Perhaps I am too enthusiastic over the future prospects of the region
between Lake Superior and the Pacific, but having travelled through
Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada, I have had an opportunity to
contrast the capabilities of the two sections. Kansas has magnificent
prairies, and so has Nebraska, but there are no sparkling ponds, no
wood-fringed lakes, no gurgling brooks abounding with trout. The great
want of those States is water. The soil is exceedingly fertile, even
in Utah and Nevada, though white with powdered alkali, but they are
valueless for want of moisture. In marked contrast to all this is the
great domain of the Northwest. For a few years the tide of emigration
will flow, as it is flowing now, into the central States; but when the
lands there along the rivers and streams are all taken up, the great
river of human life, setting towards the Pacific, will be turned up
the Missouri, the Assinniboine, and the Saskatchawan. The climate, the
resources of the country, the capabilities for a varied industry, and
the configuration of the continent, alike indicate it.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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