58 TEANSACTIONS OF THE [fEB. 9, 



can be run at so moderate an expense compared with other 

 lines. . . . And so the Great Northern is building, dividing- 

 the great territory between the Northern Pacific and Canadian 

 Pacific road?, from St. Paul on the east to Fairhaven, on Pnget 

 Sound, on the we^t ; and the surveys show a route not only the 

 shortest by two hundred miles, but on which the average grade 

 will be very much less than by any other transcontinental line, 

 and the maximum grade about one-third of its most favorably 

 situated competitor. . . . 



The trip upon which I made the observations that I am to- 

 outline this evening was taken with a view of examining and 

 reporting upon the resources of the country through which the 

 Great Northern is to run, and I have selected two points which 

 are of geological as well as economic interest for this evening^s 

 talk. 



All along the main line, from St. Paul to Great Falls, towns 

 and ranches and herders' corrals are springing up with the usual 

 Western push and promise, Great Falls itself being the most con- 

 spicuous example. Six years ago there were a dozen houses at 

 this point, scattered along the banks of the Missouri, and perhaps 

 the most stupendous and available water power on the continent 

 was only looked upon as one of nature's curiosities. Land was 

 worth two dollars an acre. To-day there is a city of about five 

 thousand inhabitants, with electric railway, electric lights, sewers, 

 good hotels, five banks, and all the elements of a commercial cen- 

 tre. Over a million dollars are being expended in the erection of 

 great smelting establishments, and a dam costing nearly a quar- 

 ter of a million of dollars has been built to furnish a great water 

 power for other manufacturing industries in process of devel- 

 opment. 



Within about two miles of old Fort Assinniboine, the new line 

 now buililing to the coast leaves the Great Falls branch and 

 starts westward. About eighty miles northwest of Assinniboine 

 are the Sweet Grass Hills, serving as the source of the Sage and 

 Cottonwood creeks, and surrounded on three sides by the Milk 

 River — the latter a considerable stream, which, rising in Ameri- 

 can territory, flows north into the British possessions, and, after 

 running some two hundred miles parallel with the border, returns 

 to United States territory just east of the Sweet Grass country. 



On our maps the Sweet Grass Hills are represented as a range 

 running east and west just south of the Canadian boundarj', and 

 as they are approached from the direction of Assinniboine this 

 view seems to be justified; but on a nearer view they subdivide 

 into three separate buttes, distant about thirty miles from the 

 Great Northern extension, and locally known as the North, Mid- 



