For sixty years, the foreign tourist has steamed up and down the river
between St. Louis and New Orleans, and then gone home and written his book,
believing he had seen all of the river that was worth seeing or that
had anything to see. In not six of all these books is there mention
of these Upper River towns–for the reason that the five or six tourists
who penetrated this region did it before these towns were projected.
The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the same old regulation trip–
he had not heard that there was anything north of St. Louis.
Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling with great towns,
projected day before yesterday, so to speak, and built next morning.
A score of them number from fifteen hundred to five thousand people.
Then we have Muscatine, ten thousand; Winona, ten thousand; Moline,
ten thousand; Rock Island, twelve thousand; La Crosse, twelve thousand;
Burlington, twenty-five thousand; Dubuque, twenty-five thousand;
Davenport, thirty thousand; St. Paul, fifty-eight thousand, Minneapolis,
sixty thousand and upward.
The foreign tourist has never heard of these; there is no note of them
in his books. They have sprung up in the night, while he slept.
So new is this region, that I, who am comparatively young,
am yet older than it is. When I was born, St. Paul had a population
of three persons, Minneapolis had just a third as many.
The then population of Minneapolis died two years ago; and when
he died he had seen himself undergo an increase, in forty years,
of fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine persons.
He had a frog’s fertility.
I must explain that the figures set down above, as the population of St. Paul
and Minneapolis, are several months old. These towns are far larger now.
In fact, I have just seen a newspaper estimate which gives the former
seventy-one thousand, and the latter seventy-eight thousand.
This book will not reach the public for six or seven months yet;
none of the figures will be worth much then.
We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another beautiful city,
crowning a hill–a phrase which applies to all these towns; for they
are all comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye,
and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills.
Therefore we will give that phrase a rest. The Indians have a tradition
that Marquette and Joliet camped where Davenport now stands, in 1673.
The next white man who camped there, did it about a hundred and seventy
years later–in 1834. Davenport has gathered its thirty thousand
people within the past thirty years. She sends more children to her
schools now, than her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago.
She has the usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers,
and institutions of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs,
an electric alarm, and an admirable paid fire department,
consisting of six hook and ladder companies, four steam fire engines,
and thirty churches. Davenport is the official residence of two bishops–
Episcopal and Catholic.
Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock Island,
which lies at the foot of the Upper Rapids. A great railroad
bridge connects the two towns–one of the thirteen which fret
the Mississippi and the pilots, between St. Louis and St. Paul.
The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half
a mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has
turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions
by art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of drives.
Near the center of the island one catches glimpses, through the trees,
of ten vast stone four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre
of ground. These are the Government workshops; for the Rock Island
establishment is a national armory and arsenal.
We move up the river–always through enchanting scenery,
there being no other kind on the Upper Mississippi–
and pass Moline, a center of vast manufacturing industries;
and Clinton and Lyons, great lumber centers; and presently
reach Dubuque, which is situated in a rich mineral region.
The lead mines are very productive, and of wide extent.
Dubuque has a great number of manufacturing establishments; among them