It Is A Powerful Form Of Superlative,
And Soon Vanishes Away, As Do Other Superlatives In This Age Of
Strong Words.
I was at Chicago and at Buffalo in October, 1861.
I
went down to the granaries and climbed up into the elevators. I
saw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and
from the railroad vans up into the huge bins on the top stores of
the warehouses - for these rivers of food run up hill as easily as
they do down. I saw the corn measured by the forty-bushel measure
with as much ease as we measure an ounce of cheese and with greater
rapidity. I ascertained that the work went on, week day and
Sunday, day and night, incessantly - rivers of wheat and rivers of
maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in corn as they
distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score laden with
wheat, in each of which bins there was space for a comfortable
residence. I breathed the flour and drank the flour, and felt
myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff. And then I
believed, understood, and brought it home to myself as a fact that
here in the corn-lands of Michigan, and amid the bluffs of
Wisconsin, and on the high table plains of Minnesota, and the
prairies of Illinois had God prepared the food for the increasing
millions of the Eastern World, as also for the coming millions of
the Western.
I do not find many minds constituted like my own, and therefore I
venture to publish the above figures. I believe them to be true in
the main; and they will show, if credited, that the increase during
the last four years has gone on with more than fabulous rapidity.
For myself, I own that those figures would have done nothing unless
I had visited the spot myself. A man can not, perhaps count up the
results of such a work by a quick glance of his eye, nor
communicate with precision to another the conviction which his own
short experience has made so strong within himself; but to himself
seeing is believing. To me it was so at Chicago and at Buffalo. I
began then to know what it was for a country to overflow with milk
and honey, to burst with its own fruits and be smothered by its own
riches. From St. Paul down the Mississippi, by the shores of
Wisconsin and Iowa; by the ports on Lake Pepin; by La Crosse, from
which one railway runs Eastward; by Prairie du Chien, the terminus
of a second; by Dunleath, Fulton, and Rock Island, from whence
three other lines run Eastward; all through that wonderful State of
Illinois, the farmer's glory; along the ports of the Great Lakes;
through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and further Pennsylvania, up to
Buffalo? the great gate of the Western Ceres, the loud cry was
this: "How shall we rid ourselves of our corn and wheat?" The
result has been the passage of 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs
through that gate in one year!
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