The Government Wisely Sets Apart Two Sections Of Land
The 16th And 36th In Every Township For School Purposes.
A township
is six miles square; and the two sections thus reserved in each
township comprise 1280 acres.
Other territories have the same
provision. This affords a very good fund for educational uses, or
rather it is a great aid to the exertions of the people. There are
some nourishing institutions of learning in the territory. But the
greatest institution after all in the country the surest protection
of our liberties and our laws is the FREE SCHOOL.
LETTER XIII.
CROW WING TO ST. CLOUD.
Pleasant drive in the stage Scenery The past Fort Ripley Ferry
Delay at the Post Office Belle Prairie A Catholic priest Dinner
at Swan River Potatoes Arrival at Watab St. Cloud.
ST. CLOUD, October, 1856.
YESTERDAY morning at seven I took my departure, on the stage, from
Crow Wing. It was a most delightful morning, the air not damp, but
bracing; and the welcome rays of the sun shed a mellow lustre upon a
scene of "sylvan beauty." The first hour's ride was over a road I had
passed in the dark on my upward journey, and this was the first view I
had of the country immediately below Crow Wing. No settlements were to
be seen, because the regulations of military reservations preclude
their being made except for some purpose connected with the public
interests. A heavy shower the night before had effectually laid the
dust, and we bounded along on the easy coach in high spirits. The view
of the prairie stretching "in airy undulations far away," and of the
eddying current of the Mississippi, there as everywhere deep and
majestic, with its banks skirted with autumn-colored foliage, was
enough to commend the old fashioned system of stages to more general
use. Call it poetry or what you please, yet the man who can
contemplate with indifference the wonderful profusion of nature,
undeveloped by art inviting, yet never touched by the plough must
lack some one of the senses. Indeed, this picture, so characteristic
of the new lands of the West, seems to call into existence a new
sense. The view takes in a broad expanse which has never produced a
stock of grain; and which has been traversed for ages past by a race
whose greatest and most frequent calamity was hunger. If we turn to
its past there is no object to call back our thoughts. All is
oblivion. There are no ruins to awaken curious images of former life
no vestige of humanity nothing but the present generation of nature.
And yet there are traces of the past generations of nature to be seen.
The depressions of the soil here and there to be observed, covered
with a thick meadow grass, are unmistakeable indications of lakes
which have now "vanished into thin air." That these gentle hollows
were once filled with water is the more certain from the appearance of
the shores of the present lakes, where the low water mark seems to
have grown lower and lower every year. But if the past is blank, these
scenes are suggestive of happy reflections as to the future. The long
perspective is radiant with busy life and cheerful husbandry. New
forms spring into being. Villages and towns spring up as if by magic,
along whose streets throngs of men are passing. And thus, as "coming
events cast their shadows before," does the mind wander from the real
to the probable. An hour and a half of this sort of revery, and we had
come to the Fort Ripley ferry, over which we were to go for the mail.
That ferry (and I have seen others on the river like it) is a
marvellous invention. It is a flat-boat which is quickly propelled
either way across the river by means of the resistance which it offers
to the current. Its machinery is so simple I will try to describe it.
In the first place a rope is stretched across the river from elevated
objects on either side. Each end of the boat is made fast to this line
by pullies, which can be taken up or let out at the fastenings on the
boat. All that is required to start the boat is to bring the bow, by
means of the pully, to an acute angle with the current. The after part
of the boat presents the principal resistance to the current by
sliding a thick board into the water from the upper side. As the water
strikes against this, the boat is constantly attempting to describe a
circle, which it is of course prevented from doing by the current, and
so keeps on for it must move somewhere in a direction where the
obstruction is less. It certainly belongs to the science of
hydraulics, for it is not such a boat as can be propelled by steam or
wind. I had occasion recently to cross the Mississippi on a similar
ferry, early in the morning, and before the ferryman was up. The
proprietor of it was with me; yet neither of us knew much of its
practical operation. I soon pulled the head of the boat towards the
current, but left down the resistance board, or whatever it is called,
at the bow as well as at the stern. This, of course, impeded our
progress; but we got over in a few minutes; and I felt so much
interested in this new kind of navigation, that I would have been glad
to try the voyage over again.
On arriving within the square of the garrison, I expected to find the
mail ready for delivery to the driver; but we had to wait half an
hour. The mail is only weekly, and there was nothing of any
consequence to change. We repaired to the post office, which was in a
remote corner of a store-room, where the postmaster was busy making up
his mail.
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