Part 2

Chicago is usually figured as a conventionally insipid beauty, in flowing garments which would obstruct her progress and could never be kept white. This is a mistake. Most masculine of cities, most American of America's great centres, its shield should portray a strong youth in the flush of adolescence, conscious power in his proud curled lip, fire in his eye, springing to the foreground in the first ray of dawn, in his right hand the sceptre of genius and his left grasping the key of destiny. The good people of Chicago are not conspicuously lacking in civic self-appreciation. They are accustomed to being twitted by rivals in the rear on their boundless faith in their city's future greatness. They can afford to listen smilingly. If the child is father of the man, full-grown Chicago must some day tower above the up-stretched heads of its envious seniors like a giant among, say, a committee of venerable municipal Solons. Ordinary cities develop as babies do, slow growth to maturity, but this extraordinary late-comer into the family attained mental and muscular precocity in shorter time than its sisters required to cut their wisdom-teeth. Considered in relation to its geographical position and its express-speed rate of progress, Chicago has the promise and potency of an imperial greatness no easier to exaggerate than to limit. It was tried by fire in the day of small things, but quickly rose to a new life and it still carries the memorial glow in its heart as an inspiration to great things.

The word Chicago is a simpler form of the Indian name, Chacaqua, given to the river in honor of their deity, the Thunderer. The position of Chicago makes it the greatest lake port in the world. It is already the second city in the United States, though only born in 1830, and has hopes of becoming the first, by growth, and not by annexation policy. True, the newest city inherits the wealth and experience which the older ones had to gain for themselves, yet Chicago has done some fine original things. It hitched up an inland sea as its beast of burden and made a vast lake its pleasure pond. Finding itself only seven feet above the level of Lake Michigan it lifted itself bodily another seven feet, churches, warehouses, dwellings and all, with jack-screws, and shovelled a new foundation of dry earth beneath. Fifteen years later the great fire laid it lower than ever. On Oct. 8, 1871, began the disaster that made nearly a hundred thousand people homeless, destroyed seventeen thousand buildings and two hundred lives, and caused the loss of two hundred millions of dollars. Within a year or so the wooden town was transformed into a city of massive palaces built of stone and brick. It is now fast changing itself into a maze of towering Babels, whose tops support the pall of smoke that tells of manufacturing activity. It drove tunnels beneath its river for street-cars. Its thirty-five bridges were not enough for the constant rush. On its lake first swam the novel whale-back boats. One sin will rise up against the city on the day of doom: the twenty-mile line of lake shore has been largely prostituted to railway interests instead of being conserved as an unrivalled pleasure park for the people and an adornment to the city. It can plead in mitigation of sentence that its six public parks cover more than three square miles, besides some sixty linear miles of park-like boulevards of which Paris might be proud. Of these Michigan Avenue has a well-won fame. No business traffic is permitted on its wide and well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times recalls the Queen's Drive in the London season. If the Chicago man of affairs works hard at his calling, he takes his pleasure zestfully and plenty of it. On the grand occasion of the American Derby (for Chicago has its Epsom and Ascot in one) it is a revelation to see the gay caravan _en route_ to the race-course, as impressive a display of metropolitan luxury as any capital can present. And on this day the West can match the big crowds of England with this sixty thousand throng, each person paying two dollars for bare admission to the ground.

In a city primarily devoted to business it takes time for the development of the beautiful. Chicago has its "sights" for seekers after the merely outlandish, who often miss the real greatnesses that are less catchy to the eye. One of its achievements which impresses both the trained and untrained observer is the undertaking which has the uninviting name of Drainage Canal. The pure water of Lake Michigan used to be polluted by the inflow of the Chicago River. To prevent this the city has made an immense waterway by which the lake water is carried to the Illinois River and the tide of the Chicago River is diverted from its former course. The new canal is navigable and opens a route between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The territory involved embraces the city and forty-three square miles of Cook County. The main channel is twenty-eight miles long and the cost was about thirty millions.

In their commercial aspect the famous Stock-yards have greater interest than as a show place. They cover four hundred acres, the plant is valued at four million dollars, and about twenty millions of animals are killed and packed in a year. Similarly imposing are the statistics of most of Chicago's enterprises. The Board of Trade is one of the most remarkable sights in the country. Its public galleries are usually filled with spectators of the feverish bidding of the grain operators, whose slightest nod affects the markets of the world. The Stock Exchange is yearly taking a more important share in the money market. The financial institutions of Chicago and the West have more than once saved the East from impending panic, and immense loans are constantly being renewed, insuring the speedy recognition of the city as a force in the money markets of the nations.

More interesting is the honor-roll of Chicago's intellectual enterprise. The Columbian World's Fair of 1893 astonished the world with its beauty, its perfection of artistic skill and taste. It gave an impetus to the pursuit of the beautiful and refining which has borne substantial results. Near the site of the Fair is a cluster of buildings constituting the University of Chicago, dating from 1891, to which a single donor has given nine million dollars, and loyal citizens are continually adding to its possessions. The heads of the University count on an endowment fund of fifty millions. Nowhere is Chicago enthusiasm for progress more finely manifested than here. The great public libraries of the city are envied by foreign visitors. The central Public Library is a splendid triumph of architecture, next in interior elegance to the Library of Congress. It is valued at three millions, exclusive of its books. The Newberry and Crerar libraries form special branches of the system. The city's churches and charities are doing nobly in ameliorating the condition of the toilers and the handicapped in life's race. The name and fame of Miss Jane Addams and the Hull House settlement are world-wide. How difficult the task is may be conceived from the fact that out of a million and seven hundred thousand people in the city, nine hundred thousand are Americans, German, and Irish; the remainder represent twenty-four nationalities, exclusive of negroes. A report issued by an investigating committee of Hull House states that "the density of population in the Polish quarter in Chicago is three times that of the most crowded portions of Tokio, Calcutta, and many other Asiatic cities."

As in New York there is a marked tendency among the richer people to set up country homes. New suburban towns and villages of great attractiveness are drawing an increasing number away from the smoky city. On the other hand the far-famed hospitality of its people to prophets of every school of thought, and the spirit of enterprise which welcomes every new idea, attracts eccentrics and adventurers whose trumpetings are loud enough to mislead superficial observers into the notion that Chicago is the crank's paradise. If a fault at all, this amiable toleration leans to virtue's side. Rightly to appreciate the depth and breadth of Chicago's influence we must follow its trade to the remotest corners of the earth. We must trace the influences of its seats of learning and refinement. We must count, if we can, the tremendous results of its world-renowned enterprises that have stimulated nations to follow the successful lead. Be its faults what they may, Chicago has the heart, the will, and the muscle to mend them, as the world will see, and then will the true greatness of the Western metropolis be discerned, and its full influence be felt.

WINNIPEG LAKE AND RIVER.

W. F. BUTLER.

[Colonel W. F. Butler, in "The Great Lone Land," gives us some very interesting information about the life and scenery of the great American Northwest, from which we select the following description of a picturesque lake and river. His journey was made during the Riel rebellion, and the traveller was on his way to the Lake of the Woods, where he expected to meet an expedition sent for the suppression of the rebellion. The Red River Indians gave him a hearty send-off.]

The chief gave a signal, and a hundred trading guns were held aloft, and a hundred shots rang out on the morning air. Again and again the salutes were repeated, the whole tribe moving down to the water's edge to see me off. Putting out to the middle of the river, I discharged my fourteen-shooter into the air in rapid succession; a prolonged war-whoop answered my salute, and, paddling their very best, for the eyes of the finest canoers were upon them, my men drove the little craft flying over the water until the Indian village and its still firing braves were hidden behind a river bend. Through many marsh-lined channels, and amidst a vast sea of reeds and rushes, the Red River of the North seeks the water of Lake Winnipeg. A mixture of land and water, of mud, and of the varied vegetation which grows thereon, this delta of the Red River is, like other spots of a similar description, inexplicably lonely.

The wind sighs over it, bending the tall weeds with mournful rustle, and the wild bird passes and repasses with plaintive cry over the rushes which form his summer home.

Emerging from the sedges of the Red River, we shot out into the waters of an immense lake,--a lake which stretched away into unseen spaces, and over whose waters the fervid July sun was playing strange freaks of mirage and inverted shore-land.

This was Lake Winnipeg,--a great lake, even on a continent where lakes are inland seas. But vast as it is now, it is only a tithe of what it must have been in the earlier ages of the earth.

The capes and headlands of what once was a vast inland sea now stand far away from the shores of Winnipeg. Hundreds of miles from its present limits these great landmarks still look down on the ocean, but it is an ocean of grass. The waters of Winnipeg have retired from their feet, and they are now mountain-ridges, rising over seas of verdure. At the bottom of this by-gone lake lay the whole valley of the Red River, the present Lakes Winnepegoos and Manitoba, and the prairie islands of the Lower Assiniboine,--one hundred thousand square miles of water. The water has long since been drained off by the lowering of the rocky channels leading to Hudson Bay, and the bed of the extinct lake now forms the richest prairie-land in the world.

But although Winnipeg has shrunken to a tenth of its original size, its rivers still remain worthy of the great basin into which they once flowed. The Saskatchewan is longer than the Danube, the Winnipeg has twice the volume of the Rhine. Four hundred thousand square miles of continent shed their waters into Lake Winnipeg; a lake as changeful as the ocean, but, fortunately for us, in its very calmest mood to-day. Not a wave, not a ripple on its surface, not a breath of breeze to aid the untiring paddles. The little canoe, weighed down by men and provisions, had scarcely three inches of its gunwale over the water, and yet the steersman held his course far out into the glassy waste, leaving behind the marshy headlands which marked the river's mouth.

A long low point stretching from the south shore of the lake was faintly visible on the horizon. It was past mid-day when we reached it; so, putting in among the rocky boulders which lined the shore, we lighted our fire and cooked our dinner. Then, resuming our way, the Grand Traverse was entered upon. Far away over the lake arose the point of the Big Stone, a lonely cape whose perpendicular front was raised high above the water. The sun began to sink towards the west; but still not a breath rippled the surface of the lake, not a sail moved over the wide expanse, all was as lonely as though our tiny craft had been the sole speck of life on the waters of the world. The red sun sank into the lake, warning us that it was time to seek the shore and make our beds for the night. A deep sandy bay, with a high backing of woods and rocks, seemed to invite us to its solitudes. Steering in with great caution among the rocks, we landed in this sheltered spot, and drew our boat upon the sandy beach. The shore yielded large store of drift-wood, the relics of many a northern gale. Behind us lay a trackless forest, in front the golden glory of the western sky. As the night shades deepened around us and the red glare of our drift-wood fire cast its light upon the woods and rocks, the scene became one of rare beauty.

As I sat watching from a little distance this picture so full of all the charms of the wild life of the voyageur and the Indian, I little marvelled that the red child of the lakes and the woods should be loath to quit such scenes for all the luxuries of our civilization. Almost as I thought with pity over his fate, seeing here the treasures of nature which were his, there suddenly emerged from the forest two dusky forms. They were Ojibbeways, who came to share our fire and our evening meal. The land was still their own. When I lay down to rest that night on the dry sandy shore, I long watched the stars above me. As children sleep after a day of toil and play, so slept the dusky men who lay around me. It was my first night with these poor wild sons of the lone spaces; it was strange and weird, and the lapping of the mimic wave against the rocks close by failed to bring sleep to my thinking eyes.

[The next day an early start was made]

We entered the mouth of the Winnipeg River at mid-day and paddled up to Fort Alexander, which stands about a mile from the river's entrance. Here I made my final preparations for the ascent of the Winnipeg, getting a fresh canoe better adapted for forcing the rapids, and at five o'clock in the evening started on my journey up the river. Eight miles above the fort the roar of a great fall of water sounded through the twilight. In the surge and spray and foaming torrent the enormous volume of the Winnipeg was making its last grand leap on its way to mingle its waters with the lake. On the flat surface of an enormous rock which stood well out into the boiling water we made our fire and our camp.

The pine-trees which gave the fall its name stood round us dark and solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky blackness; the rushing water, white with foam; above, the rifted thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a rough shelter with cross poles and a sail-cloth, and, huddling themselves together under the upturned canoe, we slept regardless of the storm....

A man may journey very far through the lone spaces of the earth without meeting with another Winnipeg River. In it nature has contrived to place her two great units of earth and water in strange and wild combinations. To say that the Winnipeg River has an immense volume of water, that it descends three hundred and sixty feet in a distance of one hundred and sixty miles, that it is full of eddies and whirlpools, of every variation of waterfall from chutes to cataracts, that it expands into lonely pine-cliffed lakes and far-reaching island-studded bays, that its bed is cumbered with immense wave-polished rocks, that its vast solitudes are silent and its cascades ceaselessly active,--to say all this is but to tell in bare items of fact the narrative of its beauty. For the Winnipeg, by the multiplicity of its perils and the ever-changing beauty of its character, defies the description of civilized men as it defies the puny efforts of civilized travel. It seems part of the savage,--fitted alone for him and for his ways, useless to carry the burdens of man's labor, but useful to shelter the wild things of wood and water which dwell in its waves and along its shores. And the red man who steers his little birch-bark canoe through the foaming rapids of the Winnipeg, how well he knows its various ways! To him it seems to possess life and instinct, he speaks of it as one would of a high-mettled charger which will do anything if he be rightly handled. It gives him his test of superiority, his proof of courage. To shoot the Otter Falls or the Rapids of Barriere, to carry his canoe down the whirling of Portage-de-l'Isle, to lift her from the rush of water at the Seven Portages, or launch her by the edge of the whirlpool below the Chute-a-Jocko, all this is to be a brave and a skilful Indian, for the man who can do all this must possess a power in the sweep of his paddle, a quickness of glance, and a quiet consciousness of skill, not to be found except after generations of practice. For hundreds of years the Indian has lived amidst these rapids, they have been the playthings of his boyhood, the realities of his life, the instinctive habit of his old age. What the horse is to the Arab, what the dog is to the Esquimaux, what the camel is to those who journey across Arabian deserts, so is the canoe to the Ojibbeway. Yonder wooded shore yields him from first to last the materials he requires for its construction: cedar for the slender ribs, birch bark to cover them, juniper to stitch together the separate pieces, red pine to give resin for the seams and crevices. By the lake or river shore, close to his wigwam, the boat is built;

"And the forest life is in it,-- All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a yellow water-lily."

It is not a boat, it is a house; it can be carried long distances overland from lake to lake. It is frail beyond words, yet you can load it down to the water's edge; it carries the Indian by day, it shelters him by night; in it he will steer boldly out into a vast lake where land is unseen, or paddle through mud and swamp or reedy shallows; sitting in it, he gathers his harvest of wild rice, or catches his fish or shoots his game; it will dash down a foaming rapid, brave a fiercely running torrent, or lie like a sea bird on the placid water.

For six months the canoe is the home of the Ojibbeway. While the trees are green, while the waters dance and sparkle, while the wild rice bends its graceful head in the lake, and the wild duck dwells amidst the rush-covered mere, the Ojibbeway's home is the birch-bark canoe. When the winter comes and the lake and rivers harden beneath the icy breath of the north wind, the canoe is put carefully away; covered with branches and with snow, it lies through the long dreary winter until the wild swan and the wavey, passing northward to the polar seas, call it again from its long icy sleep.

Such is the life of the canoe, and such the river along which it rushes like an arrow.

The days that now commenced to pass were filled from dawn to dark with moments of keenest enjoyment, everything was new and strange, and each hour brought with it some fresh surprise of Indian skill or Indian scenery.

The sun would be just tipping the western shores with his first rays when the canoe would be lifted from its ledge of rock and laid gently on the water; then the blankets and kettles, the provisions and the guns, would be placed in it, and four Indians would take their seats, while one remained on the shore to steady the bark upon the water and keep its sides from contact with the rock; then when I had taken my place in the centre, the outside man would spring gently in, and we would glide away from the rocky resting-place. To tell the mere work of each day is no difficult matter: start at five o'clock A.M., halt for breakfast at seven o'clock, off again at eight, halt at one o'clock for dinner, away at two o'clock, paddle until sunset at seven-thirty; that was the work of each day. But how shall I attempt to fill in the details of scene and circumstance between these rough outlines of time and toil, for almost every hour of the long summer day the great Winnipeg revealed some new phase of beauty and of peril, some changing scene of lonely grandeur? I have already stated that the river in its course from the Lake of the Woods to Lake Winnipeg, one hundred and sixty miles, makes a descent of three hundred and sixty feet.

This descent is effected not by a continuous decline, but by a series of terraces at various distances from each other; in other words, the river forms innumerable lakes and wide expanding reaches bound together by rapids and perpendicular falls of varying altitude; thus when the _voyageur_ has lifted his canoe from the foot of the Silver Falls and launched it again above the head of that rapid, he will have surmounted two-and-twenty feet of the ascent; again, the dreaded Seven Portages will give him a total rise of sixty feet in a distance of three miles. (How cold does the bare narration of these facts appear beside their actual realization in a small canoe manned by Indians!) Let us see if we can picture one of these many scenes. There sounds ahead a roar of falling water, and we see, upon rounding some pine-clad island or ledge of rock, a tumbling mass of foam and spray studded with projecting rocks and flanked by dark wooded shores; above we can see nothing, but below, the waters, maddened by their wild rush amidst the rocks, surge and leap in angry whirlpools. It is as wild a scene of crag and wood and water as the eye can gaze upon, but we look upon it not for its beauty, because there is no time for that, but because it is an enemy that must be conquered.