Eleanor Colby

“ There is no fleet of fresh water passenger steamers in the world equaling those which call Detroit their home port, and our Detroit River is too fine and dignified to cut up any of the antics in which some rivers indulge. It never rises and messes up the city for it is too busy carrying its countless boats of precious freight. ”

“ Not far from Brooklyn Bridge is the Stock Exchange, which is the most famous business building in New York. We never knew that tame men could act as wild as they do there. It is where they buy and sell stocks and of course they are all anxious to make as much money as possible and everyone seems to be gesturing and screaming and no one seems to be listening. It is as exciting as a football game. ”

“ When you stand on the rim of the canyon, the river looks like a little thread of silver ribbon, but if you were to descend 6000 feet, you would discover that the Colorado is a wild, dashing, terrible river—so wild that only a few men have ever tried to launch their boats on it, and some of those few have lost their lives in the attempt. ”

“ Grown-ups talk a lot about "SEEING AMERICA FIRST." They say that this is the most wonderful land in the world and that everyone ought to see it before going to any other country. That is exactly what we Berry Wagon Boys are going to do, and as we travel we are going to write this little book for other boys and girls to read.
Our home city, Detroit, is as interesting as any place we shall visit. We love to hear of the days when Cadillac and his hundred men landed here and built their fort and how within a year six thousand Indians had camped within sight of the stockade. ”

“ The Grand Canyon of Arizona does not look like a real place. It seems like a place for giants, everything is so huge and wonderful. It is as though some great giant had dug his house out of solid rock. ”

“ Today we Berry Wagon Boys have seen the oldest living thing. It began to grow at least 2000 years before Christ was born, and will probably be living thousands of years from now. If it could talk, it could tell wonderful stories of things it saw when the world was young, but it can only stand and wave its arms gently when the wind blows, for it is just a tree. It stands with many other giant cedar trees in Sequoia Park, California, and until a hunter discovered it in 1879, probably no white man had ever seen it. ”

“ Great barges full of iron and copper ore, small steamboats tugging a whole line of lazy big barges, fine sailing vessels looking exactly like picture-book ships, and little naptha launches that came out and played around our big steamer when she neared a port. The great whaleback steamers looked like angry sea monsters snorting smoke out of their high stacks, but they are really kindly creatures for they carry immense loads of wheat or ore from the Lake Superior region to the southern and eastern ports. ”

“ People used to think that they had to go to Switzerland to see the most beautiful lakes in the world, but before long the Swiss will get the habit of "Seeing America First," for the lakes of Glacier Park are as fine as those in the Alps. There are tiny little ones high up among the mountains and large ones in the valleys and they are so deep and clear and still that they are like mirrors. ”

“ Detroit does not look much as it did then. It is now one of the leading Metropolitan Cities of the United States, and is growing as fast as Jack's famous beanstalk. It has grown from 400,000 to 800,000 within the past ten years, and it is lucky that there is lots of room for it to stretch in, for when people once get the craze for living in Detroit, no other place satisfies them.
We always take visiting friends to see the sights of Belle Isle, our island park. ”

“ Think of a park containing mountains two miles high, cataracts higher than Niagara, great canyons, and geysers which are the wonder of the world. There are hundreds of these geysers which are huge natural fountains spouting mud, boiling water, steam, and minerals. They burst out of the ground and then sink back leaving pools where wonderful colors seem to be painted on the rock. Each geyser has its own name and its own habits. Old Faithful used to spout every sixty minutes to the very second, but lately takes a little more time. ”

“ In many places tobacco is grown under great tents which make the fields look like an army encampment.
A cotton field is a great sight. The plants come up about to our waists and the fluffy tufts of white cotton pop out of the green pods or bolls just as chestnuts burst out of their burrs. The negro cotton pickers go up and down the rows many times, for the cotton does not all ripen at the same time. ”

“ Here you would almost forget whether it is summer or winter for up on the mountains you are in the land of perpetual snow, while down in the valley it is like the finest summer day and birds and flowers are as plentiful as on a June morning. ”

“ If we could stay here longer we should join a camping party, for they have great fun living in tents, fishing, hunting, tramping over the trails, and climbing glaciers. We will do our glacier climbing when we get to Ranier Park.
Uncle Sam has given the American people eleven national parks covering over seven thousand square miles of the finest scenery in the world, and Rainier Park in the State of Washington, is one of the most wonderful of these. Think of a park containing one mountain nearly three miles high, and having 28 rivers of ice or "glaciers" flowing down its sides. ”

“ It would be foolish for us to try to describe the scenery because grown-ups have tried it and failed, but we would like to tell about the Hopi Indians who live in their funny little huts near the hotel and who may be seen weaving baskets, making jewelry and pottery, and dancing their queer dances, but this page will not hold any more words.
It must have been a pretty dark old world before people found out about making kerosene from petroleum, for candles and queer little lamps burning lard, sperm-oil, or camphine, furnished all the light there was at night. ”

“ Today it is grown in many states and almost every land, but the United States raises more than any other country, and when we speak of the wealth of our nation, we must include tobacco because its sale here and abroad brings in vast sums of money.
Tobacco seeds are as small as grains of sand, and we BERRY WAGON BOYS have held in our hands enough seeds to furnish plants for a large plantation. A field of tobacco is a beautiful sight, for the plants grow quite high and have huge, smooth, dark green leaves. ”

“ Commonwealth Avenue is famous for its width and costly homes, and Brookline, the finest part of the city, is said to have more wealth and beauty to the square foot than any other city in the United States. The roads around Boston are fine and besides the interesting buildings, lovely parks, and historic spots, one is constantly catching glimpses of the blue harbor. ”

“ An architect said to us: "New York has a wonderful skyline." He explained that the "skyline" is the silhouette that the buildings make against the sky. In some cities the buildings are so nearly one height that the skyline is level and uninteresting, but in New York there are tall sky-scrapers, low buildings, domes, towers, and smokestacks, so that the skyline is full of variety. The picture shows the skyline of lower New York as we saw it from Brooklyn Bridge, which is the oldest bridge connecting Brooklyn with Manhattan. ”

“ On some of the railroads oil is used instead of coal in the engines, and oil is also used in large quantities to keep the roadbed hard and free from dust. In many parts of the country there are fine oiled auto pikes. All of these things take a lot of petroleum, and it is a lucky thing for America that she is the oiliest country in the world. ”

“ We do not wonder that this part of the park is called "Paradise Valley."
Fishing here on the Columbia River is not just a sport. It is a business which brings in millions of dollars a year. There are single factories where a half a million cans of salmon are put up in one day, and over a hundred million dollars worth of salmon have been taken from the Columbia river since the white man first came here. ”

“ If a person were very old and had seen all the sights in the world, he might possibly auto over 200 miles of smooth pavement in Washington, visit the Capitol, White House, Department Buildings, and Arlington without having a thrill, but it would be a dried-up old Methuselah who could go through the Library of Congress without getting excited. ”

“ You would not think that with all this boiling water there could be any lakes of cold water, but the Yellowstone Lake is as clear and cold and its fish as fine as any you could find in the world. People claim that they have caught fish in the lake and then without moving a foot have cooked them in a pool of boiling water. We could believe this only we do not think the soldiers would let anyone fish there. Soldiers are stationed all around the park to keep tourists from carrying off souvenirs. ”

“ After the meat is prepared for the market, it is kept two days in a great chilling room where ten thousand sides of beef can be chilled at one time.
It was interesting to see the sausage meat being pressed into the intestines of the pigs, for the big machines can fill a mile of skins a minute. We saw them making lard, too, and are proud to say that American lard is shipped all over the world and is considered the best. The reason that American meat products are so good is because the inspectors do not allow any carelessness. ”

“ This factory was the father of the nineteen huge factories in which the International Harvester Company now makes every machine that a farmer needs for any season and any crop." We saw only three of these plants, but when we had been through the McCormick Works, the Deering Works, and the steel mills and had seen all the wonderful things that are done in those factories, we did not wonder that America is famous for its farm implements. ”

“ It seems dreadful to cut down trees which have been growing so long, yet occasionally one is made into lumber. After standing for a thousand years or more in the forest, it must seem strange to be cut into sections, loaded on flat cars, and started on a journey to some distant place to be made into ship masts or furniture or some other thing of which the tree never dreamed when it stood in its home on the slope of the Sierras. ”

“ The American flag never looked better to us than when we saw it floating at Arlington, the National Cemetery, where 16000 soldiers are buried. Our country honors its heroes here and by many fine monuments, and buildings, in the parks and squares of Washington. ”

“ In the stock yards of Chicago, there are over twenty miles of streets filled with huge pens, each pen containing hundreds of cattle, pigs, or sheep. While they are waiting to be killed, they are fed on good food and watered with pure artesian water, so their last hours are made as pleasant as possible. ”

“ The large salmon are called chinook, and one of these fish weighing eighty pounds is not an unknown thing, though their average weight is about twenty pounds. There are many small kinds of salmon, so the chinook is called "the King of Salmon."
The baby fish are hatched way up in the mountain streams and as they grow friskier and larger, they swim down the stream into the Columbia river and on to the ocean where they stay about four years till they are quite grown up. Then they get homesick for the scenes of their childhood, and, choosing their mates, they start back to a sort of "home-coming." ”

“ Farmers used to kill their own stock and sell the meat in the nearest town, but now there are great meat-packing centers to which they ship the live stock and where it is turned into canned meat or sent in refrigerator trains or ships to all parts of the world, and because of the intense cold in which it is kept, the meat will remain fresh for months. The packing industry amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. ”

“ Almost every farm in the United States has some cattle, hogs, and sheep, and out in the far west there are huge ranches where thousands of cow-boys are employed to care for the great herds of cattle. In Texas there is a ranch larger than the whole state of Connecticut. ”

“ When a big gusher is struck, it sometimes spurts out a thousand barrels of oil a day, and you may be sure that no one is allowed to be careless with matches on the oil fields, for if a gusher or an oil tank gets afire, it is almost impossible to stop it, and immense damage is done. ”

“ If the creatures could know how very useful they are to be, it would be quite a comfort to them, for besides being made into dried, canned, smoked, or fresh meat, they furnish materials for fertilizer, brushes, oils, glue, lard, leather, hairpins, mattresses, and many other things. ”

“ The oil is piped from the oil fields or taken in huge tanks to some city to be made into kerosene, gasoline, benzine, and scores of other useful articles. Nothing is wasted, for from the left-overs, perfumes, chewing-gum, and lots of other surprising things are made. ”

“ The seeds are not wasted for the oil is pressed out and sold to be used, as olive oil is used in cooking and salad. Sometimes this oil is sold to men who get mixed in putting on the labels and instead of marking the bottles of oil with American labels, they get marked as fancy olive oil from Italy. ”

“ The settlers learned from the Indians how to grow the tobacco and before long the great plantations of Maryland and Virginia were bringing a lot of wealth to the colonists, and people even paid their taxes in tobacco. ”