the emergencies of another. This had already developed well-built villages, with a certain primness and practicality about them. Perhaps they were exponents of the people.
Everywhere the evidences of skilled labor were visible. Great fields of growing wheat stretched away on either side, in faint, dimpled indentations. Men were at work in their fields and gardens; and occasionally a stout Norwegian woman shared their labors. At one time, we passed a wayside school-house, at the auspicious moment of "girls' recess." Eight or ten stout-limbed, chubby little creatures had climbed to the topmost rail of the fence, and sat there as we passed—some gazing gravely at us, others chattering together like young magpies. Whether it was a gala-day, or whether the Minnesota mothers had been studying economy by purchasing calico by the wholesale, I do not know; but all of these young damsels were arrayed in pink calico. They shone out brilliantly from their background of vivid green, like new and wonderful flowers of the prairie.
As we again neared the Mississippi, the bluffs became bolder, often standing in singular isolation upon the level plain. Before reaching the Minnesota River, the train was divided, a part of it going to St. Paul, and the remainder continuing up the banks of the Mississippi to Minneapolis. Having decided to first visit the latter place, I watched, from our high embankment, the cars descending, in curious, zigzag contortions, to the plains below. We crossed the Minnesota near its mouth, opposite Fort Snelling, and then hugged the rocks for a circling mile, midway between the sombre fort above us and the dark Mississippi beneath. Soon, however, we passed the rocky borders, came to the high, level prairie on which Minneapolis is situated, and reached that brightest little city of the North-west in mid-afternoon.
At the east, the great Falls of St. Anthony thundered in our ears; toward the south, the broken bluffs indicated the course of the Mississippi, and toward the north and west, long stretches of grain-covered prairies, varied here and there by clumps and zones of trees, met the horizon. The city itself is substantially built, and has no external appearance of its rapid growth. Public buildings are usually either of pale- yellow brick, or buff-stone from quarries near the city; the factories, which are numerous—supplied by the immense water- power of the falls —are built of the bluish-gray limestone from the bluffs.
Above all of the sounds of city life I heard the heavy throbbing of the cataract, and about sunset walked out to see it. The Falls of St. Anthony, I had been told, were little more than rapids, and in comparison with other American cataracts were of but little interest. But when I saw the vast volume of water pouring over the curved outline of rocks, and dashing against a huge pinnacle which some flood had imbedded in its current, and thence scattering the spray far back upon its course, I knew for the first time the sublimity of power. At first this impression held and overpowered me; but gradually I came to see that there was also great beauty of detail: huge masses of white or tawny foam advanced, receded, and changed at every moment, with an infinite variety of play that dazzled and bewildered the mind. Even the fragment of the densely wooded island which interrupts the line of the cascade, affords in its sombre stillness a pleasing contrast to the incessant motion of the water. And yet the perpendicular fall is of only about sixteen feet. Father Hennepin, who traveled untrammeled by actual measurements, assigned to them a height of from fifty to sixty feet. But this traveler went through America royally, unhampered by tape-line or quadrant. He
