richness of soil; but this is more than counterbalanced by the living
springs and flowing streams that everywhere dot and cross her surface.
Ask the farmer on the distant plains what consideration he would give
for pure and abundant water as against soil. Her grasses are more tender
and sweeter, and her beef better than is that of those localities which
rival her in fertility. Go walk through the waving fields of golden
grain in summer-time, spread almost endlessly up and down her beautiful
valleys, and far out over the rolling prairies, and then answer if eye
ever beheld better, or more of it, in the same space, anywhere this side
of the Sierras.

Wheat is the great staple product of the West, and is the chief article
of export. It is this, more than all things else, which puts the
thousands of railway trains in motion, and spreads the white wings of
commerce on all the lakes and oceans. This important grain is, in the
valley of the Mississippi, nowhere so much at home as in this State. The
superior quality of the berry, and the abundant and steady yield of her
acres, long since settled the question of her rank as a grain-producing
State. The future has in store still greater triumphs in this same
department for this young and noble commonwealth. She is at present in
her veriest infancy, and, indeed, can scarcely be said to have taken the
first step in that career which is so full of brilliant promise and
grand capabilities.

Lest it be thought we have an overweening love for our subject, beyond
its just deserts, let us add here that the State has, in its
geographical position, most extraordinary advantages, which, at present,
are little known and of little worth, but which the future must
inevitably develop. The vast and fertile region lying to the northwest
of Minnesota, drained and watered by the Red. Assiniboine, and