628 



MINNESOTA. 



men. A commission consisting of the District 

 Attorney and the Surveyor-General of Minne- 

 sota was formed by the Secretary of the Inte- 

 rior (Schurz) to investigate and classify the cases 

 of trespass upon the public lands, and to report 

 the facts and suggestions. This undertaking 

 involves a considerable amount of labor, but 

 from the outlook it will enable the trespassers 

 to compromise upon better terms than they 

 would receive at the hands of a jury, and at the 

 same time save the costs of trial, which would 

 be considerable. 



An act of the Legislature at a former session 

 required the State Geologist, Professor Win- 

 chell, to give an account and accurate chemical 

 analysis of the waters of Minnesota. Soon af- 

 ter a sanitary examination of the wells in the 

 section of Red River Valley extending from 

 Breckenridge to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and also 

 of other wells and springs outside the valley, 

 was made. As reported by him, the wells of 

 the Red River country very generally become 

 offensive after a time from foul gases engen- 

 dered in them, and when in this condition they 

 originate stubborn intestinal difficulties eventu- 

 ating in dysentery and various forms of fever. 

 These diseases being identical with those exist- 

 ing in southwestern counties, it has been in- 

 ferred that the illness incidental to the northern 

 and southern health districts may very proba- 

 bly be induced by the same cause, namely, the 

 use of impure water for domestic purposes. 



The effects of the severe cold that prevailed 

 over the middle and northern sections of the 

 country during two or three of the first days 

 in January, 1879, were thus reported by the 

 4 'Press "at St. Paul: 



It is within the limits of candid moderation to say 

 that no region north of Memphis, and between New 

 York and the Rocky Mountains, has suffered so little 

 from the late visitation of cold as that embraced by a 

 radius of one hundred miles from St. Paul and Minne- 

 apolis as a center. In this section the thermometer 

 has ranged for a week or more between five and twen- 

 ty-five degrees below zero ; but no individual, enter- 

 prise, or corporation has suffered the least pain or in- 

 convenience from the weather. The clear, dry air of 

 our favored prairies has rendered harmless a degree of 

 cold which would make the damp winds of the lower 

 lakes or seacoast messengers of icy death. We have 

 simply exchanged fall for winter overcoats, kid gloves 

 for fur mittens, and gone on hauling wheat and cut- 

 ting wood in the country, trading and manufacturing 

 in town, without a thought of complaint of the weath- 

 er. Not a single case of freezing has been reported in 

 St. Paul or Minneapolis. Only one case lias been 

 noted in the countrv, and that was a new-born babe 

 abandoned upon a door-step. Not a single business 

 enterprise has been hindered or suspended. Travel in 

 city and country is facilitated rather than checked by 

 frozen roads, smoother and easier than the most costly 

 Nicolson. Not a railroad train has been stopped or 

 delayed from one end of the State to the otther. So far 

 aa information goes, not a locomotive has been frozen 

 or a brakeman frost-bitten. This is but a repetition 

 of the experience of last winter, when, from November 

 to March, not a train was delayed an hour by weather 

 in any part of the State, or upon the whole line of the 

 Northern Pacific. While this has been our experience, 

 not for a week nor a month, but for a term long enough 

 to establish a rule, the condition of the so-called mild- 

 er latitutes in extreme seasons is vividly reflected in 



the telegraphic dispaches of the last few days. From 

 the Atlantic to the Mississippi the wail of frost- bitten 

 humanity goes up, where it is not smothered in ava- 

 lanches of snow. A degree of cold indicated by the 

 zero point of the thermometer is more fatal to New 

 England. New York. Michigan, the Ohio Valley, Illi- 

 nois, ana southern Wisconsin, all the States indeed 

 which are swept by moisure- bearing winds from fresh 

 or salt water, tnan one of thirty degrees below to Min- 

 nesota. While not an ear has been nipped, here, Chi- 

 cago. Buffalo, Philadelphia, and New York hospitals 

 are filled with frozen subjects. While not a train has 

 been delayed in Minnesota, there is no continuous 

 travel between Chicago and the seaboard ; central New 

 York cities are shut off from the world ; thirteen loco- 

 motives can not bring a train into Buffalo ; it is almost 

 fatal to some for a car-load of passengers to be caught 

 out of a depot ; and freight helplessly piles up in ware- 

 houses. 



The remarkable mildness of the climate in 

 the extreme northwestern region has often 

 been noticed. Mr. J. W. Taylor, the United 

 States Consul at Winnipeg, shows by compar- 

 ative tables of temperature that during the 

 months of February and March it was seven 

 degrees warmer at Battleford, on the North 

 Saskatchewan, 700 miles northwest of Winni- 

 peg, than at the latter place. He also gives 

 thermometrical records of Battleford, Winni- 

 peg, and St. Paul, for the month of April. 

 From St. Paul, in latitude 45, to Winnipeg, in 

 latitude 50, is about 500 miles, and from Winni- 

 peg to Battleford, a little below latitude 53, is 

 700 miles a distance of 1,200 miles between 

 the extreme points, and a difference of nearly 

 eight degrees of latitude. Mr. Taylor gives a 

 table of daily April temperatures for each of 

 these three points, and they disclose the fact 

 that while at Winnipeg it was on the average 

 over ten degrees colder than at St. Paul, it was 

 only three degrees colder at Battleford. In 

 other words, the April weather at Battleford 

 was seven degrees warmer than at Winnipeg, 

 nearly three degrees farther south. The sum- 

 maries of these tables of daily temperatures for 

 April show the following means: Battleford, 

 46-70; Winnipeg, 39-10; St. Paul, 49-70. 

 Mr. Taylor has no doubt that the districts 500 

 miles northwest of Battleford the valley of 

 the Peace River are warmer than Manitoba. 

 The experience of a single month or of two or 

 three months would be a slight foundation for 

 any general inference as to the climate of the 

 Saskatchewan Valley ; but these thermometrical 

 data are simply confirmatory of the generali- 

 zations of the climatologists, based on the ob- 

 servations which have been carried on for many 

 years at the posts of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, that the line of equal mean temperatures, 

 especially for the season of vegetation between 

 March and October, instead of following lines 

 of latitude, bends from the Mississippi Valley 

 far to the north, carrying the zone of wheat 

 from Minnesota away up to the sixtieth paral- 

 lel in the valley of the Peace River, and repro- 

 ducing the summer heats of New Jersey and 

 southern Pennsylvania in Minnesota and Da- 

 kota, and those of northern Pennsylvania and 

 Ohio in the valley of the Saskatchewan. A 



