Part 10

“Her empire the cradle of the two mightiest rivers of North America; a scepter of gold in her right hand, and a shield of silver in her left; her cornucopia full and overflowing from the abundance of her own bosom; and with the dawning star of statehood flashing independence from her youthful forehead, she will soon fall into line and ‘march to the music of the Union.’ Seated on her throne of forest-decked mountains, her enchanting landscapes of

‘Mountain, forest, and rock, Of deep blue lake and mighty river,’

stretching in picturesque grandeur toward either main—the Missouri her natural carrier to the east, and the Columbia to the west; the trade, traffic, and travel of two worlds rattling over her mountains and through her valleys by the great Northern Pacific or Northern Utah railways; her power centered on Nature’s wall of division between the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, with an equal interest in the commerce of both; valleys teeming with bountiful harvests and mines of boundless wealth in the precious metals; with such natural attractions and advantages, is it possible to draw an over-colored picture of her future?”

The country of which the above is a glowing description, is, with the exception of Alaska, the youngest of our territorial dependencies. It was cut off from Idaho and formed into a Territory May 26, 1864. Stretching for 275 miles from north to south, and 460 to 540 miles from east to west, it embraces a territorial area of 143,776 square miles; an area equal to three States like New York, the Empire State of the East.

Its surface is beautifully diversified with mountains, valleys, foot-hills, rivers, and creeks. The mountains supply the minerals and the timber; the foot-hills and uplands unlimited grazing for all kinds of stock; the creeks and rivers a water-power a hundred-fold greater than all New England. It is estimated that this great inland empire contains 10,000,000 acres of farming land, 21,000,000 acres of mountains, 5,000,000 acres of mines, 12,000,000 acres of timber, and 38,000,000 acres of grazing land.

Like Minnesota, it is a great water-shed. The Yellowstone, Madison, Jefferson, Muscleshell, Milk, Big Horn, Tongue, Powder, Sun and Gallatin rivers drawing their supplies from unnumbered springs and crystal rivulets descending from numberless mountain gorges, form the Missouri River; while the Big Blackfoot, Missoula, Hell Gate and Flathead rivers through the Columbia find their way to the Pacific. The hills and mountains bordering these rivers are spurs putting out from the main range of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes excel in height and grandeur the main range itself.

As its name signifies, Montana is a mountainous country. The western portion is traversed by the main, the Cœur d’Alene and Bitter Root ranges. In the northern portion are the Bear Paw, and Little Rocky ranges; in the central the Snow, Judith and Bull ranges; and in the southeast the Big Horn, Powder River and Wolf ranges. These have a varying height of from 7,000 to 11,000 feet, and by their arrangement form a series of depressions or basins, of which there are four large ones east and one west of the Rocky Mountains proper.

Though far to the north the mean temperature of some of the valleys is that of Philadelphia.

Like Minnesota it is a dry, invigorating climate and remarkable for its salubrity and freedom from malaria. On an average there are 250 days of sunshine during the year.

With the present development of the country there are about 300,000 head of cattle, 60,000 horses and 300,000 sheep; the annual product of wheat, 450,000 bushels; oats, 650,000 bushels; barley, 60,000 bushels; vegetables, 500,000 bushels, and 70,000 tons of hay. Montana is also rich in timber, coal, and the precious metals. In the past sixteen years more than $120,000,000 worth of gold-dust has been washed from her placers.

The first authentic information of Montana was given to the country by the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804. In 1834 Capt. Bonneville, and in 1853 Gov. I. I. Stevens, threw additional light upon the character of the country.

The permanent settlement of the country commenced with the rush of gold miners. As early as 1852 the existence of gold was discovered, but this knowledge was not made available until 1862, when the rush commenced, culminating in 1865-66.

The first mining settlement was at Bannock. Discovered in the summer of 1862 by some miners from Colorado, that winter found clustered there a population of 2,000; desperados from Idaho, bankrupt speculators from Nevada, guerrilla refugees from Missouri, miners from Colorado, gamblers and saloon-keepers, with a small leaven of good and true men. It was to that point that the Presbyterian Committee of Home Missions sent their first missionary.

The following year gold was discovered in Alder Gulch, and Bannock was deserted for the new diggings. With the population went Rev. Messrs. Smith and Price, Presbyterian ministers, and the first Protestant clergymen to preach in the Territory.

In 1864 Rev. A. M. Hough, the first regularly appointed Methodist missionary, reached the new diggings and commenced preaching.

Virginia City, the outgrowth of the Alder Gulch mines, is the county seat of Madison County. Like all mining towns, it was not laid out, but grew. The miner only wanted a temporary shelter, and every newcomer located his log cabin to suit himself, usually adjoining the last one built. When common convenience required a street, a street appeared. There were no yards or gardens, for beyond the narrow ravine filled with straggling cabins, only grew sage-brush. The miners thrived and the city grew. For sleeping accommodations a limited space was allotted upon the floor, the occupant furnishing his own blankets; and it was a long time before the regular diet of bacon, bread, and dried apples was varied by a potato. But gradually things changed; a better class of buildings appeared; the number of gambling and tippling places steadily decreased; the vigilantes gained the upper hand of the roughs; old residents brought in their wives and children, and the whole face of things became more like the “States.”

From the huge piles of dirt and stone that mar the beauty of the gulch, has been taken out $30,000,000 worth of gold dust. Of the ten thousand men that once worried and toiled and fought for gold, only about one thousand remain; yet the city is improving, and has a good future in store.

The next discovery of rich mines was on the Prickly Pear Creek. The Fisk Brothers with a colony from Minnesota had crossed the plains to this point and worked on quietly until the fame of the “Last Chance Mines” went abroad throughout the land, and a city arose like an exhalation, taking the name of Helena from the resemblance of the surrounding hills to those in the isle of St. Helena. Helena is not only the political capital, but the commercial, literary, social and religious center of the territory. It has many handsome buildings and is growing rapidly.

In the meantime discoveries were made in many directions and small camps of miners flourished until their gravel beds were worked over, or a new excitement enticed away the miners. The latest developed and most flourishing of the mining centers is at Butte, which has become the largest city in the Territory.

Among the beautiful villages with a promising future may be mentioned Deer Lodge, situated in a beautiful grazing valley. The first white settler was Johnny Grant, who had among his wives a squaw from every tribe that roamed that section. When the Flatheads passed by his ranch, no woman was to be seen but a Flathead, and when the Blackfeet came the sole wife of his bosom was a Blackfoot. And thus he lived at peace with the natives, a sharer in their spoils and an arbiter in their quarrels.

Down the Hell Gate River to the northwest of Deer Lodge is the broad, rich valley of the Bitter Root, with Missoula as its thriving county-seat. For many years the great Hudson Bay Fur Company had a station in that valley and monopolized the fur trade. From thence westward the natives speak the famous Chinook jargon, invented by the company to facilitate trade with the natives. Words were borrowed from the English, French, and various Indian tongues and worked into an incongruous combination which the all powerful influence of the company introduced everywhere. The Flathead and Pend d’Oreilles Indians that now inhabit that region are under papal influence. Among them is the Jesuit mission of St. Ignatius.

To the northeast of Helena is Fort Benton, which was originally built in 1846 as a trading post of the American Fur Company, and afterwards sold to the Northwestern Fur Company. Situated at the head of steam navigation on the Missouri River, it is growing rapidly and promises to be an important place. From thence, in days past, the citizens of the Territory would take a steamer for Sioux City, Iowa, two thousand miles distant by the windings of the river—a thousand miles of which was then through a wild Indian country. Steamers were frequently fired into by hostile Indians, whose camps and graves were met at frequent intervals. This route also passed through wild, and among the Citadel Rocks, weird scenery. These curious rocks are of soft white sandstone, worn into a thousand grotesque shapes by the waters which have come down from the table-lands during the unknown ages of the past.

To the southeast of Helena is Bozeman, a picturesque village with grand natural surroundings and a grand future as a city on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railway. From it the eye can range over four hundred miles, and a little way to the south of it, over the range, is the great Yellowstone Park—the enchanted wonderland—where trappers declare “they have seen trees, game and even Indians petrified, and yet looking as natural as life; where they have seen a mountain of quartz so transparent that they could see the mules feeding on the other side;”—a combination of many of the freaks of nature, which are usually looked for and found over many and widely separated lands. Already an increasing throng of tourists each summer are visiting its falls and cañons, its geysers and springs.

To the eastward down the Yellowstone Valley is Miles City, named after General Miles of the United States Army.

The rising cities of Glendive, Billings and Miles are examples of the great transformation that is passing over Montana with the advent of railways.

Only six years ago the savage Indians destroyed Custer and his troops of the 7th United States Cavalry, and held full sway of the entire valley of the Yellowstone. Now railway trains pass up and down through its scores of villages and hundreds of farms.

The census of 1880 gives the following statistics: Population 39,157; Roman Catholics, 10 churches and 13 priests; Disciples of Christ, 6 churches and 4 ministers; Methodist Episcopal, 8 churches and 6 ministers; Methodist Episcopal (South), 9 ministers; Protestant Episcopal, 8 churches and 6 ministers; Presbyterian, 6 churches and 7 ministers.

There are in the territory 19,791 Indians, of whose children only 287 are in school. Among the American population are 5,885 children of school age, of whom 2,804 are in school.

TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.

By CHARLES LAMB.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

There lived in the palace at Messina two ladies, whose names were Hero and Beatrice. Hero was the daughter, and Beatrice the niece, of Leonato, the governor of Messina. Beatrice was of a lively temper, and loved to divert her cousin Hero, who was of a more serious disposition, with her sprightly sallies. Whatever was going forward was sure to make matter of mirth for the light-hearted Beatrice.

At the time the history of these ladies commences, some young men of high rank in the army, as they were passing through Messina on their return from a war that was just ended, in which they had distinguished themselves by their great bravery, came to visit Leonato. Among these were Don Pedro, the prince of Arragon, and his friend Claudio, who was a lord of Florence; and with them came the wild and witty Benedick, and he was a lord of Padua.

These strangers had been at Messina before, and the hospitable governor introduced them to his daughter and his niece as their old friends and acquaintance. Benedick, the moment he entered the room, began a lively conversation with Leonato and the prince. Beatrice, who liked not to be left out of any discourse, interrupted Benedick with saying, “I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick; nobody marks you.” Benedick was just such another rattlebrain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased at this free salutation; he thought it did not become a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests upon. And as there is no one who so little likes to be made a jest of as those who are apt to take the same liberty themselves, so it was with Benedick and Beatrice; these two sharp wits never met in former times but a perfect war of raillery was kept up between them, and they always parted mutually displeased with each other. Therefore when Beatrice stopped him in the middle of his discourse with telling him nobody marked what he was saying, Benedick, affecting not to have observed before that she was present, said, “What, my dear lady Disdain, are you yet living?” And now war broke out afresh between them, and a long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew he had so well approved his valor in the late war, said she would eat all he had killed there: and observing the prince take delight in Benedick’s conversation, she called him “the prince’s jester.” This sarcasm sank deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a coward, by saying she would eat all he had killed, he did not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man; but there is nothing that great wits so much dread as the imputation of buffoonery, because the charge comes sometimes a little too near the truth; therefore Benedick perfectly hated Beatrice, when she called him “the prince’s jester.”

The modest lady Hero was silent before the noble guests; and while Claudio was attentively observing the improvement which time had made in her beauty, and was contemplating the exquisite graces of her fine figure (for she was an admirable young lady), the prince was highly amused with listening to the humorous dialogue between Benedick and Beatrice; and he said in a whisper to Leonato, “This is a pleasant-spirited young lady. She were an excellent wife for Benedick.” Leonato replied to this suggestion, “O my lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.” But though Leonato thought they would make a discordant pair, the prince did not give up the idea of watching these two keen wits together.

When the prince returned with Claudio from the palace, he found that the marriage he had devised between Benedick and Beatrice was not the only one projected in that good company, for Claudio spoke in such terms of Hero, as made the prince guess at what was passing in his heart; and he liked it well, and he said to Claudio, “Do you affect Hero?” To this question Claudio replied, “Oh, my lord, when I was last at Messina, I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye, that liked, but had no leisure for loving; but now, in this happy time of peace, thoughts of war have left their places vacant in my mind, and in their room come thronging soft and delicate thoughts, all prompting me how fair young Hero is, reminding me that I liked her before I went to the wars.” Claudio’s confession of his love for Hero so wrought upon the prince that he lost no time in soliciting the consent of Leonato to accept of Claudio for a son-in-law. Leonato agreed to this proposal, and the prince found no great difficulty in persuading the gentle Hero herself to listen to the suit of the noble Claudio, who was a lord of rare endowments and highly accomplished; and Claudio, assisted by his kind prince, soon prevailed upon Leonato to fix an early day for the celebration of his marriage with Hero.

Claudio was to wait but a few days before he was to be married to his fair lady; yet he complained of the interval being tedious, as indeed most young men are impatient, when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime, that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin to a good husband.

The device the prince invented was, that the gentlemen should make Benedick believe that Beatrice was in love with him, and that Hero should make Beatrice believe that Benedick was in love with her. The prince, Leonato, and Claudio began their operations first, and watching an opportunity when Benedick was quietly seated reading in an arbor, the prince and his assistants took their station among the trees behind the arbor, so near that Benedick could not choose but hear all they said; and after some careless talk the prince said, “Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me the other day—that your niece Beatrice was in love with Signor Benedick? I did never think that lady would have loved any man.” “No, nor I neither, my lord,” answered Leonato. “It is most wonderful that she should so doat on Benedick, whom she in all outward behavior seemed ever to dislike.” Claudio confirmed all this, with saying that Hero had told him Beatrice was so in love with Benedick, that she would certainly die of grief, if he could not be brought to love her; which Leonato and Claudio seemed to agree was impossible, he having always been such a railer against all fair ladies, and in particular against Beatrice.

The prince affected to hearken to all this with great compassion for Beatrice, and said, “It were good that Benedick were told of this.” “To what end?” said Claudio; “he would but make sport of it, and torture the poor lady worse.” “And if he should,” said the prince, “it were a good deed to hang him; for Beatrice is an excellent sweet lady, and exceeding wise in everything but in loving Benedick.” Then the prince motioned to his companions that they should walk on, and leave Benedick to meditate upon what he had overheard.

Benedick had been listening with great eagerness to this conversation; and he said to himself, when he heard Beatrice loved him, “Is it possible? Sits the wind in that corner?” And when they were gone, he began to reason in this manner with himself: “This can be no trick! they were very serious, and they have the truth from Hero, and seem to pity the lady. Love me! Why, it must be requited. I did never think to marry. But when I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I should live to be married. They say the lady is virtuous and fair. So she is. And wise in everything but in loving me. Why, that is no great argument of her folly. But here comes Beatrice. By this day, she is a fair lady! I do spy some marks of love in her.” Beatrice now approached him, and said with her usual tartness, “Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.” Benedick, who never felt himself disposed to speak so politely to her before, replied, “Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains;” and when Beatrice, after two or three more rude speeches, left him, Benedick thought he observed a concealed meaning of kindness under the uncivil words she uttered, and he said aloud, “If I do not take pity on her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture.”

The gentleman being thus caught in the net they had spread for him, it was now Hero’s turn to play her part with Beatrice; and for this purpose she sent for Ursula and Margaret, two gentlewomen who attended upon her, and she said to Margaret, “Good Margaret, run to the parlor; there you will find my cousin Beatrice talking with the prince and Claudio. Whisper in her ear, that I and Ursula are walking in the orchard, and that our discourse is all of her. Bid her steal into that pleasant arbor, where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, like ungrateful minions, forbid the sun to enter.” This arbor, into which Hero desired Margaret to entice Beatrice, was the very same pleasant arbor where Benedick had so lately been an attentive listener. “I will make her come, I warrant, presently,” said Margaret.

Hero, then taking Ursula with her into the orchard, said to her, “Now, Ursula, when Beatrice comes, we will walk up and down this alley, and our talk must be only of Benedick, and when I name him, let it be your part to praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to you must be how Benedick is in love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs close by the ground, to hear our conference.” They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to something which Ursula had said, “No truly, Ursula. She is too disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock.” “But are you sure,” said Ursula, “that Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?” Hero replied, “So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and they entreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if they loved Benedick, never to let Beatrice know of it.” “Certainly,” replied Ursula, “it were not good she knew his love, lest she made sport of it.” “Why, to say truth,” said Hero, “I never yet saw a man, how wise soever, or noble, young or rarely featured, but she would dispraise him.” “Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable,” said Ursula. “No,” replied Hero, “but who dare tell her so? If I should speak she would mock me into air.” “O you wrong your cousin,” said Ursula: “she can not be so much without true judgment, as to refuse so rare a gentleman as Signor Benedick.” “He hath an excellent good name,” said Hero: “indeed he is the first man in Italy, always excepting my dear Claudio.” And now, Hero giving her attendant a hint that it was time to change the discourse, Ursula said, “And when are you to be married, madam?” Hero then told her, that she was to be married to Claudio the next day, and desired she would go in with her, and look at some new attire, as she wished to consult with her on what she should wear on the morrow. Beatrice, who had been listening with breathless eagerness to this dialogue, when they went away, exclaimed, “What fire is in my ears? Can this be true? Farewell contempt, and scorn and maiden pride, adieu! Benedick, love on! I will requite you, taming my wild heart to your loving hand.” It must have been a pleasant sight to see these old enemies converted into new and loving friends; and to behold their first meeting after being cheated into mutual liking by the merry artifice of the good-humored prince. But a sad reverse in the fortunes of Hero must now be thought of. The morrow which was to have been her wedding-day, brought sorrow in the heart of Hero, and her good father Leonato.