TEN DAYS IN MONTANA. 127 



appointed sleepers. I spent the day at St. Paul, and 

 improved the opportunity of taking a good look at this, one 

 of the liveliest and most enterprising cities in the Northwest. 

 At twenty minutes past six P.M. I boarded the west- 

 bound train on the Northern Pacific railroad, disposed myself 

 in the sleeper " Fargo," and at a seasonable hour wrapped 

 the drapery of my couch about me, and laid down to plea- 

 sant dreams. The night was bright with the light of the full 

 moon, and an occasional glance through the windows showed 

 that the country through which we passed during the night 

 was not thickly settled, nor, generally speaking, good land. 

 Most of the soil is too sandy to be valuable for agricultural 

 purposes, though there are occasional tracts of a better 

 quality, and on these there are good farms. After passing 

 Brainerd we enter a good country, a rich black soil. Here 

 vegetation grows luxuriantly, and the farmers are in good 

 circumstances. At Perham we enter the lake region. From 

 here to Moorehead the country is dotted all over with lakes 

 of various sizes. Nearly all of them afford good fishing and 

 duck shooting. Wild rice grows in most of them, and ducks 

 breed numerously all through this part of the state. On 

 nearly every lake or pond we passed we saw large numbers of 

 them. They are very tame. They pay but little attention 

 to the noise of the passing trains, and frequently sat within 

 twenty feet of the track while we passed. Even when some 

 of the passengers shot at them with revolvers they would not 

 fly. Conductor Doyle told me that sportsmen often stand 

 in the door of the baggage car and kill large numbers of 

 them as the trains pass them. Chicken shooting is also good 

 all along the line of this road from Brainerd west to its 

 terminus. Deer are found in goodly numbers in the timber 

 belt about Detroit, which is ninety-two miics west of 

 Brainerd, 



