Compendium of history and biography of North Dakota: containing a history of North Dakota . also a compendium of biography of North Dakota

• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
• Subjects: Arctic; Big Stone Lake; Bismarck; Grand Forks; Norway; Pacific; North Atlantic; Alaska
• Online Access: http://cdm16921.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ndsl-books/id/51156

COMFEXDIUM OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY estacado, of Texas. It is broken, occasionally, by low hills, or ridges, and sometimes by sharp peaked buttes. The country west of the Missouri river is generally more broken by hills and buttes, but has the advantage of being much better watered by a considerable number of small streams whose banks are fringed with timber. Practically speak-ing, the eastern part of the state lacks, in a great degree, the natural timber of the western part. When the settlers first came here it was nearly a treeless but grassy waste. The surface, gently un-dulating, is generally smooth, and the sweeps of the ridges long and easy. The climate is not so severe and harsh as is the general impression to those who have never been within its borders. On this point one of the commissioners of immi-gration of Dakota officially says : " * * * Hundreds of miles north of this there is a country with winters no more severe than those of the north New England states and summers more suitable for the growing of grain. We are separated from that region by the forty-ninth parallel, an imaginary political boundary, which nature does not take into account. * * * Those who think Dakota is a section of the Arctic region slipped down out of place should look to the east. The south line of Dakota is the forty-third parallel of north latitude. Follow this line across the Atlantic and much of Europe will be found lying north of it. All of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Great Britain are a full degree above the northern boundary of our great territory. Edinburgh, St. Petersburg, Stockholm and Chris-tiana, in the midst of a swarming population, are on the parallel of Sitka, Alaska. England and the north of Europe are made habitable by the influ-ence of the Gulf Stream. The Kuro-Siwo—the Black Ocean river of the Asiatic coast—or the Japanese current, gives the northwestern region the same mildness of climate that the Gulf Stream does to northern Europe, and why should not this country, like that, be filled with life and industry? Water heated ofif the coast of southern Asia sweeps across the Pacific ocean and tempers the climate of our western coast nearly up to the arctic circle. This river of warmth gives to British' Columbia, Washington and Oregon winters so mild that ice is a scarce article, even in Sitka, while roses grow in gardens along the Pacific coast at Christmas time. Imparting its heat to the air, it passes over the Rocky mountains—much lower between the fortieth and fiftieth parallels than further south — and affects the climate of a region larger than the original United States. Comparisons of tempera-ture made with the north Atlantic coast are most favorable to Dakota and Montana. The Missouri river at Fort Benton, Fort Buford, Bismarck and Pierre is clear of ice earlier than it is at Omaha. In the light of existing knowledge who will say that up to the sixtieth parallel this northwest is not as capable of being settled as Russia and Nor-way and Sweden south of that line? Glance at the physical features of this portion of the continent and one will see a great plain sloping northward. It is the latitude of the con-tinental water system. Nowhere else in the world is there such a succession of lakes and navigable rivers no other country possesses such an area of agricultural land so intersected by fresh water. Within a radius of one thousand miles is half the fresh water of the globe. At Grand Forks the Red river is less than one thousand feet above the sea follow the river to its mouth, Lake Winnipeg, and it has descended three hundred feet; and in a boat one can steam westward on the Saskathchewan more than one thousand miles, and then double the distance on other rivers. Follow the Red river to its source in Lake Traverse, and in high water a boat can reach Big Stone lake, the source of the Minnesota, and there pass to the Mississippi, thus joining Hudson's bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Two hundred miles to the east is Lake Superior and a waterway to the Atlantic. Two hundred miles to the west the Mis-souri can be reached, and the traveler can be borne into the shadows of the Rocky mountains, from whose western side another mighty river springs — the Columbia—and leaps to a dififerent sea. After the Mississippi and the Missouri, the Columbia drains the largest basin in the Republic. From Lake Superior along the northern bound-ary of the Republic to the Pacific ocean, the aver-age altitude is less than two thousand feet above the sea. It is the only line on which connected agricultural settlement can be made across the con-tinent. It is the cereal belt, and history shows that mankind gathers in largest numbers where food is most abundant and cheapest. Southwest of here is the roof of the continent; the plains of Colorado are almost as high as the mountains of Montana Denver, surrounded by productive farms, is a half mile higher than the average of Montana's valleys and plains. Between Omaha and Sacramento there is a continuous elevation of Internet Archive