inhabitants. Its present population is estimated at 20,000,—one third of them Irish, one third Americans, one quarter Germans, and the remainder of all nationalities. The largest town is Hastings, on the Mississippi, containing about four thousand inhabitants. The Hastings and Dakota Railroad, extending west, crosses the Milwaukie and St. Paul at Farmington, a pleasant little town located on a green and fertile prairie. Thirty miles of this Hastings and Dakota road are in operation, and it is pushing on westward, like all the others, to reach the territory of Dakota and the Missouri River.

On over the prairies we fly, reaching the oldest town in the State, Mendota, which was a trading-post of the American Fur Company as long ago as 1828. It was livelier then than now, for in those years Indians by the thousand made it their rendezvous, coming in their bark canoes down the Minnesota from the borders of Dakota, down the St. Croix, which joins the Mississippi opposite Hastings, down the Mississippi from all the region above the Falls of St. Anthony; but now it is a seedy place. The houses have a forlorn look, and the three hundred Irish and Germans that make up the bulk of the population are not of the class that lay the foundations of empires, or make the wilderness bud and blossom with roses; they take life easy, and let to-day wait on to-morrow.

Fort Snelling, admirably located, looms grandly above the high steep bluff of the northern bank of the Minnesota River. It was one of the strongest posts on the frontier, but it is as useless now as a last year's swallow's-nest. The frontier is three hundred miles farther on.

Upon the early maps of Minnesota I find a magnificent city occupying the surrounding ground. It was surveyed and plotted, but St. Paul and Minneapolis got ahead, and the city of Snelling has no place in history.

We approach St. Paul from the south. Stepping from the cars we find ourselves on the lowlands of the Mississippi, with a high bluff south of us, and another on the north bank, both rising perpendicularly from the river. We ride over a long wooden bridge, one end of which rests on the low land by the railroad station, and the other on the high northern bluff, so that the structure is inclined at an angle of about twenty degrees, like the driveway to a New England barn where the floor is nearly up to the high beams. We are in a city which in 1849, twenty years ago, had a population of eight hundred and forty, but which now has an estimated population of twenty-five thousand. Here that powerful tribe of Northern Indians, the Dakotas, had their capital,—a cave in the sandstone bluffs, which was the council-chamber of the tribe. Upon the bluff now stands the capital of the State, and the sanguine citizens believe that the city is to be the commercial metropolis of the Northwest. A few months ago I was on the other side of the globe, where civilization is at a stand-still; where communities exist, but scarcely change; where decay is quite as probable as growth; where advancement is the exception, and not the rule. To ride through the streets of St. Paul; to behold its spacious warehouses, its elegant edifices, stores piled with the goods of all lands, the products of all climes,—furs from Hudson Bay, oranges from Messina, teas from China, coffee from Brazil, silks from Paris, and all the products of industry from our own land; to behold the streets alive with people, crowded with farmers' wagons laden with wheat and flour; to read the signs, "Young Men's Christian Association," "St. Paul Library Association"; to see elegant school-edifices and churches, beautiful private residences surrounded by lawns and adorned with works of art,—to see this in contrast with what we have so lately witnessed, and to think that this is the development of American civilization, going on now as never before, and destined to continue till all this wide region is to be thus dotted over with centres of influence and power, sends an indescribable thrill through our veins. It is not merely that we are Americans, but because in this land Christian civilization is attaining the highest development of all time. The people of St. Paul may justly take pride in what they have already accomplished, and they also have reason to look forward with confidence to the future.

The county is quite small, containing only four and a half townships. The soil is poor, a sandy loam, of not much account for farming purposes, but being at the head of steamboat navigation a good start was obtained; and now that railroads are superseding steamboats, St. Paul reaches out her iron arms in every direction,—up the Mississippi to St. Cloud, westward through Minneapolis to the Red River of the North, southwest to touch the Missouri at Sioux City, due south over the line by which we reached the city, down the river towards Chicago, and northeast to Lake Superior. As a spider extends its threads, so St. Paul, or perhaps, more properly speaking, St. Paul and Minneapolis together, are throwing out their lines of communication, making themselves the centre of the great Northwest systems of railways. The interests of St. Paul are mercantile, those of Minneapolis manufacturing. They are nearly five hundred miles distant from Chicago,—far enough to be an independent commercial, manufacturing, and distributing centre. That such is to be their destiny cannot be doubted.

The outfit of our party had been prepared at Minneapolis; and a large number of gentlemen from that city made their appearance at St. Paul, to convey us to the town in their own private carriages.

It is a charming ride that we have along the eastern bank of the Mississippi, which pours its mighty flood,—mighty even here, though so far away from the sea,—rolling and thundering far below us in the chasm which it has worn in the solid rock.

On our right hand are fields of waving grain, and white cottages half hidden in groves of oak and maple. We see New England thrift and enterprise, for the six States east of the Hudson have been sending their wide-awake sons and daughters to this section for the last twenty years. The gentleman with whom we are riding came here from the woods of Maine, a lumberman from the Penobscot, and has been the architect of his own fortune. He knows all about the Upper Mississippi, its tributaries, and the chain of lakes lying northwest of Lake Superior. He is Mayor of Minneapolis, a substantial citizen, his hand ready for every good work,—for the building of schools and churches, for charity and benevolence; but on the Upper Mississippi he wears a red shirt, eats pork and beans, and sleeps on pine boughs. He directs the labor of hundreds of wood-choppers and raftsmen.

How different this from what we see in other lands! I find my pen runs on contrasts. How can one help it after seeing that gorgeous and lumbering old carriage in which the Lord Mayor of London rides from Guildhall to Westminster? The Lord Mayor himself appears in a scarlet cloak not half so becoming as a red shirt. He wears a massive gold chain, and a hat which would be most in place on the stage of a theatre, and which would make him a guy in any American town. Not so do the Lord Mayors of the Northwest appear in public. They understand practical life. It is one of the characteristics of our democratic government that it makes people practical in all things.

In 1865 the town of Minneapolis contained only 4,607 inhabitants, but the population by the census of the present year is 13,080.

The fall in the river at this point is sixty-four feet, furnishing 120,000 horse-power,—more than sufficient to drive every mill-wheel and factory in New England, and, according to