No. 4.] FARMERS' NATIONAL CONGRESS. 593 



City and to Fargo, N. D., where it halted for supper and 

 for the night. 



Mayor Johnson of Fargo, with a committee of citizens, 

 had provided carriages, which took the delegates on their 

 arrival for a drive about town, along the Red River Park 

 and to the North Dakota Agricultural College, etc. One of 

 the committee was a former resident of Boston, who had 

 been in Fargo eight years, and owned a wheat farm of 8,000 

 acres in that vicinity, the diti'erent stations of which were 

 connected by telegraph and telephone. 



The hotels of the town were overtaxed to accommodate so 

 large a number of visitors, but the citizens opened their 

 houses, and all were comfortably lodged. 



An enthusiastic meeting was held at Masonic Hall in the 

 evening, where the mayor and others made addresses of wel- 

 come, responded to by members of the Farmers' National 

 Congress. 



The weather was exceedingly hot, the thermometer at 97°, 

 with a strong, hot wind blowing from over the prairie. 



The Red River valley, and, in fact, the greater part of 

 North Dakota, is a prairie as flat as the sea, and on the night 

 spent at Fargo the sun went down behind the western hori- 

 zon in a flood of glory, as often seen to do on the ocean. 



Fargo is a town of 8,000 inhabitants, well laid out in 

 broad streets, and has good buildings ; it was settled less 

 than twenty-five years ago, and lies upon the banks of the 

 Red River of the North, the dividing line between Dakota 

 and Minnesota. 



Before it was settled by whites, the State was Indian ter- 

 ritory. It is a fertile, wheat-raising State, its crop this 

 year in that cereal amounting to 44,000,000 bushels. The 

 whole population of the State is estimated at 182,000 ; its 

 area is 70,000 square miles. 



The Red River rises in Lake Traverse, one mile from 

 Lake Big Stone, the source of the Minnesota River, the 

 latter emptying its waters into the Mississippi and the Gulf 

 of Mexico, the former running north through Lake Winni- 

 peg and finding entrance into the ocean at Hudson's Bay. 



In April the ice and snow of Dakota melt, while the river 

 farther north is frozen, causing an inundation along its banks 



