Russian," said Napoleon, "and you will find the Tartar." "Scratch the Frenchman," said Voltaire, "and you will find the tiger." Without necessarily concurring in either phrase, if all reports are true, it might be said, “Scratch Dacota, and you will fill your granaries.' These two tracts of country, in comparison with the populations they could maintain, are practically uninhabited. According to the American almanac, Dacota, in the census of 1885, contained 415,263 inhabitants, showing an increase since 1880 of 207'19 per cent. Minnesota, in 1885, contained 1,117,798, showing an increase in the same period of 43°17 per cent. According to the "Trade and Commerce Report for Chicago" for 1885, Minnesota, on 2,753,816 acres, produced 41,307,000 bushels of wheat (which you must not call "corn" in America); and Dacota, 22,330,000 on 1,540,200 acres. Minnesota, on 705,340 acres, 23,630,000 bushels of corn (maize); and Dacota, on 465,000 acres, 13,950,000. Then follow equally surprising tables of oats, rye, and barley.

Rapidity of work must be required where production is so abundant and labour is so scanty, and this is supplied by that population with which man has peopled earth-machinery. The long processions of four-horse ploughs on wheels, each armed with double shares, and driven by a man. who rides, are said to offer quite a striking scene in Dacota as they sally forth. If the illustration in the railway guide is correct, it must be something like that of a regiment of cavalry going out to

battle; and battle it is, though only to tear the earth instead of fellow-creatures. I know not how many of these ploughs work together. They start in succession, each driver following the next before him at just sufficient side-distance to make his furrows coincide, and thus a long diagonal line of ploughs is seen at work. The ground is flat, and of course entirely open, and the broad expanse offers great facility for work. It will be easily understood what vast breadths of land and prairie are thus rapidly ploughed up. Nor is the reaping less remarkable. On my way along the line, after leaving Minnesota, I was surprised by observing vast stretches of standing headless straw, with wheel-marks among it, and was informed that all this wheat had been reaped by what are called "headers." These machines are horsed and driven as are the ploughing-machines, and work after the like fashion. They are armed with horizontal knives at the level of the ears, which are thus cut off and carried along and deposited for removal.

"Then, what do you do with all this straw?"

"What can we do with it? We leave it standing, and plough the most of it in again."

What would our farmers at home say to this?

Thus, in these enormous wheat and corn-growing districts is the inequality of forces illustrated. Earth, in her newly discovered districts, teems with abundance where there are only few to feed, and forth goes her abundant produce to other lands, where a

kindred industry labours to support itself by the price demanded for but a small produce where there are many, perhaps too many, to supply. And this apparently must go on till the new lands are peopled as the old; for the facilities of carriage and communication increase every day, and it is impossible to hinder these. We do not appear to have anticipated the enormous consequences of this comparatively new element. Only the magic wand could bring about an immediate change-convert the millions that inhabit virgin soil into tens and hundreds of millions, and they will want their fruits for themselves. Such days must gradually overtake America, and bring her into line with the older and more crowded countries.

Such a future must be far distant; its mutterings can scarcely yet be heard; yet it is somewhat interesting to note, in passing, the real importance of this farming interest to the present wealth of the States. I take the statement from one of the New York papers, published while I was in America, that of the entire exports, 84 per cent. comes from the ground, and from mines, forests and fisheries, while only 16 per cent. is the product of machinery. The cotton of the South and the grain of the West are stated to hold a dual control over the national prosperity, the loss of both which crops for one season only would create a panic throughout Europe as well as at home.

"There are in America," says the writer, "over

four million farms, large and small. They cover nearly 300 million acres of improved land, and their total value is something like 10,000 million dollars. These figures are not, of course, comprehensible. They simply convey the idea of vastness of area and equal vastness of importance. The estimated value of the yearly product of these farms is between 2000 and 3000 millions of dollars.

"What America takes out of the ground, therefore, has much to do with the prosperity and happiness of the nation. What helps the farmer helps us all, and what hurts him hurts us all. His well tilled acres are the heart of the Republic, and each pulse drives the products of the country into every market on the planet."

Congress, it appears, has been asked to establish an experimental farm in every State and Territory.

G

CHAPTER V.

MINNEAPOLIS TO TACOMA-YELLOW STONE

NATIONAL PARK.

I HAD thus made about my first thousand miles in the States, counting from Niagara Station to Minneapolis, and was now to make another thousand, at a run, as far as a station called Livingston, on my road to Portland, in Oregon; for at Livingston I was to diverge south for about fifty miles, to a place called Cinnabar, in order to visit the far-famed and widely lauded "Yellow Stone National Park," in the territory of Wyoming, and just verging into that of Montana -which Wyoming, by the way, must not be confounded with Campbell's "Gertrude of Wyoming,” in Pennsylvania, "on Susquehanna's side." Accordingly I joined the train on the evening of Tuesday, the 13th of July, and took my Pullman's sleeping-car ticket, in addition to my "book," for two nights "aboard."

The famous Red River of the north, which forms the boundary between Minnesota and Dacota, was crossed in the night. This river flows northward into Lake Winnipeg, and is quite navigable; it is the river