A Summer"s Outing.
by Carter H. Harrison.
PREFACE.
"A Summer"s Outing" comprises letters hastily written while the writer was on the wing. Being printed in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE they were favorably received by many friends, who have urged their being published in book form, as a thing now needed by would-be tourists to the Yellowstone National Park and to Alaska. To this end they were revised and somewhat enlarged. If the little book be of little value, the apology is offered that it will be, too, of little cost.
"The Old Man"s Story" is thrown in as filling between two covers, and need not be read except by those who find an idle hour hard to dispose of.
CARTER H. HARRISON.
231 Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, May 6th, 1891.
INTRODUCTION.
THE WRITER INDULGES IN FANCIES.
The summer outing is a fad--a necessity of fashion. Reigning beauty bares its brow on ocean waves and climbs mountain heights, courting sun-kisses. Jaunty sailor hats and narrow visored caps are donned, that the amber burning of the summer"s excursion may be displayed at early a.s.semblies of heraldic Four Hundred. Anglo-mania has taught at least one good lesson--that the russet cheek of romping health is more kiss-tempting than the rose-in-cream of beauty lolling on downy cushions. Elite closes its ma.s.sive doors and draws down front window shades; Paterfamilias sweats in his struggle to force a balance to the credit side, and mothers and daughters sit at back windows in glare of sunlight, wooing sun-beams, while notices of "Out of town" are already placarded on front stoops.
The summer outing is urged by honest doctors, with the admission that change of air and scene is oftentimes worth more than all the nostrums doled out over apothecaries" counters. Motion is nature"s first inexorable law. A tiny drop of water is pressed between two plates of gla.s.s, apparently rendering the slightest motion impossible. The microscope fills it with scores or hundreds of beings full of life and energy, disporting in pleasure or waging deadly battle. Around us and about us nothing is still. The gra.s.ses grow in refreshing green and spring beneath the feet, but ere the wane of day, wither and crackle under the tread. Flowers bloom in beauty and within the hour fade in ugliness. The rock ribs of earth expand and contract under tidal commands of sun and moon, and continents lift from, or are sinking beneath briny oceans.
The gleaming sun, so rounded in glowing calmness as he gently circles across the vaulted sky, is a raging ma.s.s of countless millions boiling, dashing, burning jets, in any one of which fiery Vesuvius would be lost as a dim spark. Myriads of starry spheres flecking the midnight sky, are mighty suns tortured by inconceivable convulsions. Far off beyond them the telescopic lens dips up from limitless s.p.a.ce countless suns, all boiling, roaring and raging in unending, monstrous motion.
Motion evolves change. Change goes on everywhere, declares science!
Change, cries orthodoxy, is universal save in One--the everlasting, unchangeable maker of all things! Orthodoxy tells us that man--man the soul--, was made in G.o.d"s image and was by him p.r.o.nounced good. The "good" in G.o.d"s eye must be perfect. We know that man--the soul man--grows--the perfect therefore grows and perfection becomes more perfect. A Paradox! So is that mathematical truth that two parallel lines drawn towards infinity, meet.
The deathless soul emanates from G.o.d. Is the question irreverent? May not the Eternal who started then and keeps all things moving and growing--may not He grow in perfection? May not the Omnipotent become more potent, the Omniscient wiser? Being given to digression, I give this in advance to save the reader one later on.
In obedience to fashion"s and nature"s law, I would put myself in motion and would seek change. I will take an "outing" in this summer of A.D. 1890.
My daughter, a school girl, will go with me. The old and those growing old, should attach to themselves the young. Old tree trunks in tropical climes wrap themselves in thrifty growing vines. The green mantle wards off the sun"s hot rays, and prevents to some extent too rapid evaporation. Gray-haired grandfathers oftentimes delight to promenade with toddling grandchildren. This is good for momentary divertiss.e.m.e.nt, but for steady regimen it is a mistake. Callow childhood furnishes not to the old, proper companionship. The unfledged but intense vitality of the one may sap the slow-running current of the other, and reduce it to the lower level--to second childhood. Age should tie to itself ripening youth. Then heart and springtide is absorbed by the older, and ripe experience given to the younger in exchange.
We resolve to _do_ the Yellowstone National Park, by way of the Northern Pacific Railroad, thence onward to Puget Sound and Alaska to return by the Canadian Pacific. We hope for health, pleasure and brain food. I shall write of our goings and comings, that my friends at home may through our eyes feel that they are voyaging with us.
A beautiful or grand scene is doubly enjoyed when one feels he may through a letter have hundreds see what he sees and as he sees. They become his companions and hold sweet communion with him, though thousands of miles may lie between them. This is sympathy, and sympathy makes the joy of life. The tete-a-tete between lovers "beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," is delicious. But not more sweet than the communion between the orator and the mighty audience which he sways and bends at will. He holds a tete-a-tete with each of his listeners.
Byron swore he "loved not the world, nor the world him." The bard was self-deceived. He wrote that he might win the sympathy of millions.
Bayard Taylor told the writer once that he wrote from an irresistible impulse. His warm, generous nature yearned for the sympathy of a reading world. I shall write that a few hundred may see through my eyes--may feel when my heart beats, and for a few brief hours may be in sympathy with me. Some one possibly may sneer "Cacoethes Scribendi."
Catch the retort, "Honi soit qui Mal-y-pense."
LETTER I.
A RUN THROUGH PRETTY WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. BEAUTIFUL ST. PAUL.
JEALOUSY BETWEEN TWIN CITIES. AN INDIGNANT ST. PAUL DEMOCRAT AND A CARELESS SEATTLE MAN. DAKOTA AND THE DIRTY MISSOURI RIVER. A DISSERTATION ON WASTE OF LAND AND DESTRUCTION OF TREES. THE BAD LANDS. THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER. GATEWAY TO NATIONAL PARK AND ITS GUARDIAN EAGLE.
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, July 17, 1890.
We left Chicago by the Wisconsin Central Railroad for St. Paul. From the beginning the run was interesting, especially to one who remembers what the country was thirty-five years ago--an almost flat prairie of tangled gra.s.s, in which the water was held as in a mora.s.s, promising but little to the ambitious earth-tiller. I recall a remark of Senator Douglas when the future of our flat prairies was being discussed in my presence thirty-five years ago: "People do not realize that the drainage problem is being now daily solved. The leader of a herd of cattle browsing the prairies, is an engineer, and his followers faithful laborers in making ditches. When going to and from their grazing grounds, they march in line and tread down paths which make no mean drains. The cattle of Illinois are annually lifting millions of acres out of the swamp into good arable lands."
As soon as the Des Plaines was crossed, good farms began, and comfortable farm houses were always in sight; oats bent and waved in light green, and corn stood st.u.r.dy in emerald, where a third of a century ago, even in July, a pedestrian was compelled to step from ant-hill to ant-hill to keep his ankles dry. Copses of young wood relieved the monotony of too much flatness, and in a few hours after our start, pretty lakes shimmered in the sinking sun light, and sweetly homelike villas were ever in view. We crossed the Wisconsin line, and hill and vale or gentle undulations with wooded heights and flowing streams, and villages and saw mills enlivened the journey.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 16.)]
In the distant future when population shall become abundant, and tasteful homesteads shall replace somewhat speculative shanties, few countries of the world will be more pleasingly rural than southern and middle Wisconsin.
Books should be carried by the tourist in his trunk, and newspapers should be religiously discarded throughout the run to St. Paul. The country traversed opens many a pleasing page during the summer months, and glowing pictures are spread before him on nature"s living canva.s.s.
He unfortunately loses much when the curtain of night is drawn over G.o.d"s own impartial book: the book which never misleads if carefully read and studiously digested.
At St. Paul we had some hours to ride about the pretty town, before boarding the Northern Pacific railroad for our long journey to Puget"s Sound. This great road has the singular characteristic of having double termini at each end, and between each of the twins there exists a feud rarely found except between cities engaged in actual war with each other.
Athens and Sparta hated each other not as do St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Just now, owing to the taking of the census, there is blood in the eye of every St. Paulite. An elderly gentleman introduced himself to me the other day at the station. After a while he said: "It is a ---- shame the way the United States is treating St. Paul. I am a Democrat, sir, and can stand a little stuffing of the ballot-box, but I draw the line there. I can"t stand the stuffing of the census. We are willing to concede to Minneapolis 10,000 more population than we have, but Harrison ought to be turned out of office for running it up to 40,000.
It is a fraud, sir--a miserable Republican fraud. We will be revenged, sir, and will show our teeth next fall and don"t you forget it." I sympathized with him and felt like marching to Washington at once to send my cousin Ben back to Hoosierdom.
In the National Park I saw at four different hotels the names of Mr.
---- Mrs. ---- and two little blanks. There was a bracket after the names, but the writer had evidently forgotten to write in the address.
The name preceding his on the first book was from Boston. At the next place the preceding person was from New York, and again from some other city. The fourth day at dinner I was introduced to the head of the family. He was from Seattle. I asked him why it was he had not put in his address, declaring I would tell it on him at Tacoma. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "have I done that?" He rushed back to the register and wrote "Seattle" as big as a John Hanc.o.c.k. The next time we met in a crowd, I twitted him about the thing. He then declared he must have left out the address instinctively from a natural aversion to being known to come from any spot so close to Tacoma. Considerable jealousy of St. Paul on the part of her twin city is natural, for it is a beautiful town. Its residences on the hills are very fine, and their locations lovely beyond those of all but few cities. The entire town was very clean, and in the hill portion bright and cheerful. The residences are generally surrounded by considerable grounds, filled with trees and shrubbery, in much variety and in luxuriant growth. The young girl with me fell so completely in love with the clean, pretty place, that she declared, if she ever got married it would be to a St.
Paul man.
The run through Minnesota is as if through a great park. Everything is green and bright. Copse, meadow and field are as fresh as a May morning. The natural location of frequent wooded clumps, of prairie openings and of lakes, could hardly be improved by a landscape engineer. We pa.s.sed the great wheat fields of Dakota at night, but I thought there was far less of barren plain and alkali patches as we approached the Missouri river, than I saw there seven years ago.
How different the feelings with which we approached the Missouri from those experienced as we drew near the Mississippi! One cannot get up a feeling of respect for the tortuous, treacherous, muddy, long and snake-like ditch. One takes off his hat to the Father of Waters, but feels like kicking, if he had a place to kick, this lengthy, nasty thing. No one can see any real use for it, except as a tributary to and feeder of the Mississippi. It has not and never had a placid infancy.
Several of its upper feeders are beautiful, clear, rapid, purling streams. But some of them apparently without rhyme or reason suddenly become flowing mud. One dashes on a train along one and wishes he could alight to cast a fly for a speckled beauty. The road takes a turn around a mountain spur, and lo! the crystal stream has become liquid mud, to prepare itself, I suppose, for the mucky thing it will soon join. Possibly and probably, these transformations are owing to a miner"s camp and a placer washing on the other side of the spur.
North Dakota has not become settled along the railroad, after quitting the great wheat belt, as I expected. Farms are very scattered, and when seen are small and wear an air of neglect. Yet the native plains are cheerful looking and roll off in green undulations. The Forest Commissioners, if there be any, must find some more hardy species of trees than those now used to enable them to grow brakes for warding off the winds and blizzards. The railroad people have planted many trees, but they do not thrive. They seem alive about the roots, but dead after reaching one or two feet. Possibly a blanket of snow lies about the roots in winter and protects them; but the alternation of cold and hot winds apparently kills the sap as it rises higher up. Government should inaugurate a thorough system of arboriculture, inviting and encouraging a real science.
The Socialists say the Nation should own the land. To a certain degree the Socialists are right. The fountain of land ownership is in the Government. It should maintain such ownership to a certain extent throughout all time. "The earth is the Lord"s and the fullness thereof." Government is and should be the lord of the domain, and should never part with such control as may prevent private owners from destroying the land which is to be the heritage of the people to the latest generation. It should forbid and prevent a waste of land. To this end it should force the husbanding of all resources for the improvement of that which is to support the people for all time. No private owner should be allowed to destroy wantonly that which comes from mother earth. What comes from the bosom of the land, and is not essential to feed and maintain the cultivator, should be given back to it. A man should be fined who burns manure. Man should not cut timber to such an extent as to reduce a necessary rainfall. Commissioners should determine from scientific data, how much of forest is necessary in fixed districts of the country, and when so determined no one should be permitted to cut a tree without replacing it by a young one. In the Old World millions of acres are now worthless which once supported teeming populations; all because they have been denuded of trees.
Nearly all European countries as well as India are now, and have been for some years, earnestly endeavoring to check this evil. Commissioners of Forestry, earnest and educated men, have been appointed. Schools of Forestry are fostered by the state. The betterment has been so marked, that the ordinary pleasure seeking traveler sees a wonderful change between visits separated by twenty or thirty years. America has countless millions of acres scarcely capable of supporting a human being, which could be made to wave in cereals or grow fat in edible roots, if only trees were grown to induce a somewhat regular rainfall.
The arid plains of the Great West have the richest of known soils, if a little human sweat mixed with water in sufficient quant.i.ty could be kneaded into it. Government as the lord paramount of its domain, should force the growing of trees and should prevent the destruction of timber wherever the same is necessary to keep up or improve the land. It has parted with the t.i.tle to the soil, but still retains the power to use it for its own support. It levies and collects taxes from lands as the paramount owner. The same power exists to prevent the waste of that from which its taxes spring or through which its people may live.
"No one is a man," says the Arab maxim, "until he has planted a tree, dug a well, and grown a boy." The nation is an aggregation of men and should follow the maxim. The statesman who devises a good system of taxation is ent.i.tled to the praises of all men, but he is but a pigmy to the man who turns sterile deserts into places of plenty, or who make many blades of gra.s.s grow where now only one springs up. I am ready to bow down before the man who will maintain and improve the soil of our Eastern States, or will shower over the West a copious rainfall.
Bismark was disappointing. It has not improved as could have been expected since we helped to lay the corner-stone of its Capitol seven years ago.
BAD LANDS OR "MAUVAISES TERRES."