140 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Geographical and commercial position. 



cladus Canadensis) are found native as far north as the valley.j of the 

 Minnesota and Cannon rivers.* 



VIII. THE COMMANDING GEOGRAPHICAL AND COMMERCIAL POSITION OF 



THE STATE. 



The geographical position and natural resources of the state of Minne- 

 sota are destined to make her one of the leading states of the Union. In 

 agriculture, and in the manufacture of flour, she already has an advanced 

 rank. Her facilities for diversified manufactures and for commerce, and 

 her resources of timber and iron, not to mention copper and silver, though 

 as yet mainly undeveloped, will in time make her the center of important 

 and far-reaching industries, and these will lead to a corresponding position 

 in political influence and civil institutions. 



No state in the Union presents greater contrasts ot natural surface 

 than Minnesota, nor a wider range of natural resources. From the flat or 

 undulating prairies of the southern and western counties, where for scores 

 of miles a furrow can be turned from the primeval turf without deviating 

 or stopping for a stone or a snag, one may pass in a few hours' travel to as 

 rough and impassable hill ranges as can be found in America, or to as dense 

 and majestic a "forest primeval." The first decades of a new state are 

 given up to the easiest means of subsistence and income. It is only when 

 the exigencies of growth and civilization begin to reach out for new fields 

 that the more comprehensive industries of commerce and manufactures, or 

 of mining, are brought into activity. Minnesota is at present known as a 

 great wheat-raising state. That is natural. Her prairie soil, requiring only 

 the plow and the seed, was the easiest of her natural resources to bring into 

 quick development; but it should be remembered that she has within her 

 limits equal advantages for other kinds of wealth and influence. The com- 

 manding commercial position of Minnesota, and the effect it must have on 

 her future history, have been thus summarized by Wm. H. Seward in a 

 public speech at St. Paul, in 1860. 



WILLIAM H. SEWAED'S OPINION OF MINNESOTA. 



I find myself now. for the first time upon the highlands in the center of the continent 

 of North America, equidistant from the waters of Hudson's bay and the gulf of Mexico from 

 the Atlantic ocean and the ocean in which the sun sets. Here, upon the spot where spring up 

 almost side by side so that they kiss each other, the two great rivers, the one of which, pursuing 



*A few trees of black walnut once grew in the Mississippi bottoms near Nininger in Dakota county, 



