CHAPTER XXIV.

STEAM-BOAT LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI-THE BLUFFS.

Ar last, after waiting three days at St Paul, and having sundry false alarms of a start, it was intimated to us that we should be conveyed from the hotel in an omnibus to a steamer that really was about to leave for Galena. It was somewhat discouraging, when we bade adieu to one of our friends, to see him turn up his eyes when we told him the name of the boat. "Wal, mister," he said, "it's your business, not mine; but I know something of that boat. She belongs to that darned picayunish old 'coon, Jim Mason, and he'll run her till she sinks, or busts up, and then God help the crowd." The Nominee, one of the oldest and safest boats on the river, was expected up in a day or two, and we were half tempted to wait for her; but we were too much pressed for time to justify such a proceeding; so we drove down to the wharf, shook hands tenderly with the omnibus driver, and boots, who accompanied him to help us to get our luggage on board, and went in search of cabins, in the course of which Bury found

284

THE "PIG'S EYE" SHALLOW.

himself, by mistake, in the ladies' saloon-a fact he was politely informed of by one of the occupants, who said, "Guess you put for the wrong pew,

mister."

The view of St Paul and the banks of the river just below it is very beautiful, and I was thankful for a stoppage upon the Pig's Eye, as the delay enabled me to take a sketch of the town. The process of getting over a shallow in a river steamer is somewhat novel. The boat we were in had only one paddle-wheel behind, and looked like an animated water-mill. When we got near a shallow, the pressure was increased, and we charged it. Our first attempt at the Pig's Eye was a failure, and we were obliged to back off; but we took another run and went at it resolutely-then groaned and creaked severely upon the sand, while the old wheel behind worked and pushed away bravely, stirring up oceans of mud, until we scraped over and paddled away again with the rapid current.

The population upon the Upper Mississippi is beginning to be considerable, and the settlers who have chosen their locations upon its banks, at all events revel in magnificent scenery. There are perpendicular bold cliffs towering above the dark stream, like the ruined walls of some gigantic fortress, divided by deep valleys, where lofty forest trees are connected by hanging creepers, and grassy glades open up into rolling prairie, dotted with cattle wading in the deep pasturage; while here and there a thin wreath of

THE SETTLEMENT OF WILD LAND.

285

blue smoke, curling over all, betokens the log-hut and its entourage of cultivation.

I understood that all this land was already in the market, and most of it private property. The way in which wild land is settled in the States is worthy of notice. The pioneers of civilisation, without capital to purchase land, go to those distant parts where they are at liberty to "squat" without any payment. A short residence of a month or two on a piece of land is sufficient to give a man a pre-emptive claim to it at any future period; so that when it is surveyed and put up for sale by the government, he is entitled to buy it at the fixed price of a dollar and a quarter the acre, thereby getting the advantage of his own improvement. He may then actually sell the land at five or six times this rate, and, paying the government the amount due, pocket the difference, and "make tracts" to wild lands further west, and repeat the process there. Thus there is always a great deal of settled land beyond that which is actually surveyed and available for purchase at land-offices. There are about twenty millions of acres open for this sort of settlement in Minnesota, and the emigrant has free choice to go and take possession of any location that suits his fancy, without asking permission, or being called upon to pay a farthing to anybody. He had better make his claim upon the side of some navigable river, so that he can reach a settlement without difficulty; or if he "conclude" to remain in a town, he must buy a lot, and can run up a small