| Summary: | COMPEXDIUM OF HISTORY AXD BIOGRAPHY. 141 conquered the prejudices against it, and grown with amaznig rapidity. Brainerd, Aloornead, Fargo and Eismarck have grown with marvelous strides. \ew cities have sprunginto existence, such as Jamestown, Mandan, Aliles City, BiUings, Glendive, Livingston, Bozenian, Spokane Falls, Ainsworth, Portland, Seat-tle, and Tacoma, and other cities on the Pacific slope have doubled their population. The lumber trade, fisheries and mining interests have doubled in a single year, under the incentive of this national highway. Population along the opening lines has increased an average of one hundred and fifty per cent. The volume of emigration in numbers and character has been a marvel, and the absorption of land has been on the same extraordinary scale. The creation of empire which is progressing under the spur of the completion of the Northern Pacific is without a parallel in the history of the world. At last we stand in the presence of the completion of this colossal enterprise. It is greater than the fin-ishing of a pyramid, or any of the seven wonders of the world which excited the admiration of antiquity. The dream of Carver, of Whitney, of Cook, is an accomplished fact. To Villard belongs the honor of completing this imperial work, and with it his name will be forever associated. "Into the valley of the Red river of the North, and for fifty miles without a curve, passes through the great wheat farms of the valley. From the Red river valley to the Yellowstone the country is gener-ally broad, rolling prairie, of rich farming lands, excepting where the Little ^Missouri cuts a deep gorge through the plateau, being bounded on either side for twelve to twenty miles by the broken forma-tions known as the""Bad Lands,' which aftord shelter for stock and abundant grazing. The Yellowstone country, from the east boundary line of ^Montana, westward to the Belt range, consists of elevated plateaus, with various broken mountain ranges on the south, all adapted to grazing, cut by broad val-leys, from a mile to six miles in width, through which the Yellowstone and its tributaries run, where the soil is a rich loam, well adapted to farming by irrigation. Central Montana is generally a moun-tainous country, and is cut by the main range of the Rocky mountains, with various collateral ranges, between which lie numerous fertile valleys. The mountains are covered with nutritious grasses, and are well supplied with pine timber. The soil in the valley is rich and productive and, wherever water can be oljtained for irrigation, abundant crops of wheat, oats, barley, rye, potatoes, etc., are raised. In the western part of Montana, along Clark's fork of the Columbia, and around Lake Pend d'Oreille, in northern Idaho, there is a very extensive stretch of valuable timber, consisting chiefly of pine and fir and red cedar, with considerable white pine in the vicinity of Lake Pend d'Oreille. F'rom this lake, which has an altitude of two thousand feet, down to Wallula, the road runs over the elevated plateau known as the great plateau of the Columbia, which, west of Spokane Falls, is generally devoid of timber, though the soil is rich and adapted to general farming. "The climate of the country .through which the line passes is modified, to a greater or less extent, by the physical features of the country which it trav-erses. In Alontana the mountains flatten out to the northward, the general elevation of the country being lower than in either Wyoming or Colorado. As the result of this flattening of the mountain ranges toward the north the warm winds from the great gulf stream of the Pacific ocean penetrate as far eastward as the Missouri valley. The winter cli-mate of Washington Territory, Montana and west-ern Dakota is materially modified by these west winds. The winters in Montana are less rigorous than those in Colorado or Dakota. The snowfall is greater than in Colorado, but the snows remain on the ground but a short time, and sometimes snowfall a foot in depth will disappear before the warm 'chinook' winds from the west in a single day. These facts account for the abundant grasses and remarkable advantages possessed by ^Montana as a cattle-raising country. The coteau that divides the waters of the Red river of the North from those of the IMissouri river, serve as a barrier to diverge the cold north winds coming down from the Arctic circle across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Jklissouri valley and the country westward has a winter cli-mate, generally much milder than that of the Red river valley and of Minnesota. "The territory of Washington possesses two dis-tinctive climates. The country west of the Cascade range has the climate of the Pacific coast, and is covered with enormous forests of red and yellow fir and cedar, and perhaps, taken all in all, is the most extensive and valuable forest belt in the United States. The climate of the coast is remarkably equable and uniform. On Puget sound, which is never frozen over, the thermometer rarely falls be-low twenty degrees, and snow falls only in small quantities, and rarely lies on the ground long enough to afford sleighing. There are the wet and the dry Internet Archive
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