'V 



X sary to wear knee-high rubber boots if you wished 

 to travel dry-shod along this road!" 



"Yes, I do; and then if you were not very careful you 

 stepped into a hole and got wet anyway." 



The foregoing is a sample of the conversation I have heard 

 lately while traveling the highways formed by the dirt dumped 

 from the drainage ditches now being constructed in the north- 

 ern end of the state. We have for some time past so got the 

 habit, whenever occasion offered, of bemoaning the roadless 

 condition of the country that we are, on this subject at any 

 rate, becoming confirmed pessimists. Let us forget for a while 

 about those roads we haven't, and consider those we have 

 and those we shall have in the future. Without wishing to 

 appear irreligious, I might quote: 



"Count your roads and ditches, 

 Count them one by one; 

 And then it will surprise you 

 What the law has done." 



These roads and ditches may not appear very extensive 

 when scattered through such large counties as Beltrami and 

 Koochiching, which possess a total of about four and one-half 

 million acres. But the fact cannot be gainsaid that hundreds 

 of miles of traversible roads will be built in the next few 

 years where at present there are only moose and deer trails. 



And when we have these highways, will the money expended 

 in their construction be well invested? There is no surer in- 

 vestment today than in the land of Northern Minnesota. For 

 years, all that country lying north of Red Lake had been 

 characterized as practically worthless swamp; but every 

 shovel turned up by the dredges contradicts such an asser- 

 tion and reveals the fact that here is a truly wonderful soil, 

 in many places a black vegetable loam three and more feet 



26 



