STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 337 



with good railway facilities, with road beds and equipments 

 which have no superiors in the United States. Our 4,280 miles 

 of railway, considering our area and population, make us as 

 well sei'ved as any other state in the Union. The great dual cities 

 of St. Paul and Minneapolis, at the head of navigation of the Mis-, 

 sissippi, make the third chief railway terminal point in the 

 country, Chicago and New York alone excelling. The country 

 thus made tributary to Minnesota and its commercial cities, as 

 the gateway to the commerce and trade of the Northwest, is a 

 region greater than all New England, New York and Pennsyl- 

 vania combined, and gives a field such as cannot be paralleled in 

 any other state. Here terminates the Northern Pacific transcon- 

 tinental line. Here too gather the great waterways, on the apex 

 of the continent, equidistant from Hudson's Bay and the Gulf 

 of Mexico, We possess unobstructed navigation to the great 

 gulf on the south; through the "unsalted seas" to the Atlantic 

 on the east; while the upper Mississippi and the Eed Eiver of 

 the North cheapen transportation through a fertile zone. Engi- 

 neering science predicts a grand waterway through our charm- 

 ing lacustrine regions, connecting the Eed Eiver with Lake 

 Superior. With such a network of railways and vast waterways 

 centreing in Minnesota, nature and art have united their forces 

 to cheapen transportation to its possible minimum. 



We might inscribe upon our shield that we area ^ terminal 

 state," and invoke that god Terminus, whom the Eomans set up 

 to mark the limits of empire. Here ends the western trend of 

 the waterways of the St. Lawrence and the great lakes; here 

 begins the navigation of the Eed Eiver of the North; here closes 

 the navigation of the "Father of Waters;" here is the limit of 

 the United States railways, stopping at the line of the Dominion 

 of Canada; here is the eastern terminal of the Northern Pacific. 

 Those conditions have given to the state and its commercial centre, 

 St. Paul, a phenomenal growth. We stand at the gateway ot 

 the Northwest to toll its wealth. We are but in the early morn- 

 ing of this exciting drama. The prolific power of a cereal em- 

 pire, the cattle upon ten thousand hills, fabulous mineral re- 

 sources, and a thousand wealth producing elements; these, under 

 the creative energies of Anglo-Saxon civilization, are the mighty 

 forces which stand as sponsors for our future growth and great- 

 ness. The sober judgments of men are made almost incredulous 

 by the immensity of our resources. 



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