Minnesota is one of the best-watered States of the Union. The thousands of lakes and ponds dotting its surface are fed by never-failing springs. This one feature adds immeasurably to its value as an agricultural State. In Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska the farmer is compelled to pump water for his stock, and in those States we see windmills erected for that purpose; but here the ponds are so numerous and the springs so abundant that far less pumping will be required than in the other prairie States of the Union. We fall in with a Dutchman, where we camp for the night, who has taken up a hundred and sixty acres under the Pre-emption Act. He has put up a log-hut, turned a few acres of the sod, and is getting ready to live. His thrifty wife has a flock of hens, which supply us with fresh eggs. This pioneer has recently come from Montana. He had a beautiful farm in the Deer Lodge Pass of the Rocky Mountains, within seven miles of the summit. "I raised as good wheat there as I can here," he says,--"thirty bushels to the acre." "Why did you leave it?" "I couldn't sell anything. There is no market there. The farmers raise so much that they can hardly give their grain away." "Did you sell your farm?" "No, I left it. It is there for anybody to take." "Is it cold there?" "No colder than it is here. We have a few cold days in winter, but not much snow. Cattle live in the fields through the winter, feeding on bunch-grass, which grows tall and is very sweet." Here was information worth having,--the experience of a farmer. The Deer Lodge Pass is at the head-waters of the Missouri, in the main divide of the Rocky Mountains, and one of the surveyed lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad passes through it. We have thought of it as a place where a railroad train would be frozen up and buried beneath descending avalanches; but here is a man who has lived within seven miles of the top of the mountains, who raised the best of wheat, the mealiest of potatoes, whose cattle lived in the pastures through the winter, but who left his farm for the sole reason that he could not sell anything. Montana has no market except among the mining population, and the miners are scattered over a vast region. A few farmers in the vicinity of a mining-camp supply the wants of the place. Farming will not be remunerative till a railroad is completed up the valley of the Yellowstone or Missouri. What stronger argument can there be, what demonstration more forcible, for the immediate construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad? It will pass through the heart of the Territory which is yielding more gold and silver than any other Territory or State.