To my taste the finest stretch of the river was that immediately above Lake Pepin; but then, at this point, we had all the glory of the setting sun. It was like fairy-land, so bright were the golden hues, so fantastic were the shapes of the hills, so broken and twisted the course of the waters! But the noisy steamer went groaning up the narrow passages with almost unabated speed, and left the fairy land behind all too quickly. Then the bell would ring for tea, and the children with the beef-steaks, the pickled onions, and the light fixings would all come over again. The care-laden mothers would tuck the bibs under the chins of their tyrant children, and some embryo senator of four years old would listen with concentrated attention while the negro servant recapitulated to him the delicacies of the supper-table, in order that he might make his choice with due consideration. "Beef-steak," the embryo four-year old senator would lisp, "and stewed potato, and buttered toast, and corn-cake, and coffee,--and--and--and--mother, mind you get me the pickles."St. Paul enjoys the double privilege of being the commercial and political capital of Minnesota. The same is the case with Boston, in Massachusetts, but I do not remember another instance in which it is so. It is built on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, though the bulk of the State lies to the west of the river. It is noticeable as the spot up to which the river is navigable.
Immediately above St. Paul there are narrow rapids up which no boat can pass. North of this continuous navigation does not go; but from St. Paul down to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico it is uninterrupted. The distance to St. Louis in Missouri, a town built below the confluence of the three rivers, Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois, is 900 miles and then the navigable waters down to the Gulf wash a southern country of still greater extent. No river on the face of the globe forms a highway for the produce of so wide an extent of agricultural land. The Mississippi, with its tributaries, carried to market, before the war, the produce of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
This country is larger than England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain together, and is undoubtedly composed of much more fertile land. The States named comprise the great center valley of the continent, and are the farming lands and garden grounds of the Western World. He who has not seen corn on the ground in Illinois or Minnesota, does not know to what extent the fertility of land may go, or how great may be the weight of cereal crops. And for all this the Mississippi was the high-road to market. When the crop of 1861 was garnered, this high-road was stopped by the war. What suffering this entailed on the South Iwill not here stop to say, but on the West the effect was terrible.
Corn was in such plenty--Indian-corn, that is, or maize--that it was not worth the farmer's while to prepare it for market. When Iwas in Illinois, the second quality of Indian-corn, when shelled, was not worth more than from eight to ten cents a bushel. But the shelling and preparation is laborious, and in some instances it was found better to burn it for fuel than to sell it. Respecting the export of corn from the West, I must say a further word or two in the next chapter; but it seemed to be indispensable that I should point out here how great to the United States is the need of the Mississippi. Nor is it for corn and wheat only that its waters are needed. Timber, lead, iron, coal, pork--all find, or should find, their exit to the world at large by this road. There are towns on it, and on its tributaries, already holding more than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. The number of Cincinnati exceeds that, as also does the number of St. Louis. Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that the States should wish to keep in their own hands the navigation of this river.
It is not wonderful. But it will not, I think, be admitted by the politicians of the world that the navigation of the Mississippi need be closed against the West, even though the Southern States should succeed in raising themselves to the power and dignity of a separate nationality. If the waters of the Danube be not open to Austria, it is through the fault of Austria. That the subject will be one of trouble, no man can doubt; and of course it would be well for the North to avoid that, or any other trouble. In the mean time the importance of this right of way must be admitted; and it must be admitted, also, that whatever may be the ultimate resolve of the North, it will be very difficult to reconcile the West to a divided dominion of the Mississippi.
St. Paul contains about 14,000 inhabitants, and, like all other American towns, is spread over a surface of ground adapted to the accommodation of a very extended population. As it is belted on one side by the river, and on the other by the bluffs which accompany the course of the river, the site is pretty, and almost romantic. Here also we found a great hotel, a huge, square building, such as we in England might perhaps place near to a railway terminus in such a city as Glasgow or Manchester, but on which no living Englishman would expend his money in a town even five times as big again as St. Paul. Everything was sufficiently good, and much more than sufficiently plentiful. The whole thing went on exactly as hotels do down in Massachusetts or the State of New York. Look at the map and see where St. Paul is. Its distance from all known civilization--all civilization that has succeeded in obtaining acquaintance with the world at large--is very great.
Even American travelers do not go up there in great numbers, excepting those who intend to settle there. A stray sportsman or two, American or English, as the case may be, makes his way into Minnesota for the sake of shooting, and pushes on up through St.