Joel Cook

“ The city extends upon a level sandy plain, stretching back from the bluff shore along the river, has broad streets crossing at right angles, with small parks at the intersections, and many trees border the streets and fill the parks, so that it is fairly embowered in foliage, thus presenting an attractive and novel appearance. This adornment makes Savannah the most beautiful city of the coast—the oak, palmetto and magnolia, with the holly, orange, creeping ivy and clustering vines, setting the buildings in a framework of delicious green. ”

“ Upon it live the multi-millionaires of Cleveland, the finest residences being upon the northern side, where they have invested part of the profits of their railways, mills, mines, oil wells and refineries in adorning their homes and ornamenting their city. This splendid boulevard, in one way, is a reproduction of the Parisian Avenue of the Champs Elysées and its gardens, but with more attractions in the surroundings of its bordering rows of palaces. Here live the men who vie with those of Chicago in controlling the commerce of the lakes and the affairs of the Northwest. ”

“ One veteran teamster relates his experience of a night at the tavern on the mountain side—thirty six-horse teams were in the wagon-yard, one hundred mules in an adjoining lot, a thousand hogs in another, as many fat cattle from the West in a field, and the tavern crowded with teamsters and drovers—the grunts of the hogs, the braying of the mules, the bellowing of the cattle and the crunching and stamping of the horses, "made music beyond a dream." ”

“ The great Pillsbury A mill, which turns out ten thousand seven hundred barrels a day, is the world's champion flour-mill. It is a marvel of the economical manufacture, the railway cars coming in laden with wheat, being quickly emptied, and then filled with loaded flour-barrels and sacks for shipment. Machinery does practically everything from the shovelling of wheat out of the car to the packing of the barrel or sack with the product. This huge mill stands in relation to the flour trade as Niagara does to waterfalls. The other great Minneapolis industry is the lumber trade. ”

“ Now, this island is mainly a pleasure-ground, having spacious and shady groves, while the canal, crossing it from the Susquehanna to the Juniata, goes directly through an extensive Indian mound and burial-place. We will enter the fastnesses of the Alleghenies by the winding gorge of the "beautiful blue Juniata," flowing through magnificent scenery from the eastern face of the main Allegheny range out to the great river. It breaks down ridge after ridge, stretching broadly across the country, and presents superb landscapes and impressive mountain views. ”

“ The prevailing tint is a light yellow, almost sulphur color, with veins of white marble and bright red streaked through it. The colors blend admirably, while the cascade in the background seems enclosed in a setting of chocolate-brown rocks, contrasting picturesquely with the brighter foreground. Throughout the grand scene, great rocky columns and pinnacles arise, their brilliant hues maintained to the tops, and the scattered pines clinging to these huge columnar formations give a green tinge to parts of the picture. ”

“ Then, as the crops ripen and are garnered, and the wealth of the prairie is turned into food for the world, there comes with the advancing autumn the ripening of the greatest crop of America, and the mainstay of the country, the Indian corn. ”

“ Across in Allegheny City, where most of these ore-bringing roads go out, about one hundred acres in the centre of the city are reserved for the attractive Allegheny Park, one portion rising in a very steep hill, almost at the edge of the Allegheny River. Upon its top, seen from afar, stands a Soldiers' Monument, a graceful column, erected in memory of four thousand men of Allegheny County who fell in the Civil War. Soldier statues guard the base, and look out upon the smokes and steam jets of the busy city below, and thousands climb up there to enjoy the grand view. ”

“ Logs jam the upper river, where the booms catch them for the sawmills, and subterranean channels conduct the water in various directions to the mills, and discharge their foaming streams below. There is no romance in the rumble of flour-rollers and the buzz of saws, but they mean a great deal of profitable business. The force exerted by the falls at low water is estimated at one hundred and thirty-five thousand horse-power. ”

“ Everywhere an almost dead level, the numerous railways cross and recross the surface in all directions at grade, and are easily built, it being only necessary to dig a shallow ditch on either side, throw the earth in the centre, and lay the ties and rails. Nature has made the prairie as smooth as a lake, so that hardly any grading is necessary, and the region of expansive green viewed out of the car window has been aptly described as having "a face but no features," when one looks afar over an ocean of waving verdure. ”

“ Rising in Otsego Lake in New York, it flows over four hundred miles down to Chesapeake Bay, receives large tributaries, its West Branch being two hundred miles long, rends all the Allegheny Mountain chains, and takes a great part of the drainage of that region in New York and Pennsylvania, passes through grand valleys, noble gorges and most magnificent scenery, and yet it is so thickly sown with islands, rocks and sand-bars, rapids and shallows, as to defy all attempts to make it satisfactorily navigable excepting by lumber rafts, logs and a few canal boats. ”

“ Along this famous peninsula the sea rolls with ceaseless beat upon some of the most gorgeous beaches of the American coast. To the glories of tropical vegetation and the charms of the climate, Florida thus adds the magnificence of its unrivalled marine environment. ”

“ A long breakwater protects the harbor entrance, and out under the lake is bored the water-works tunnel.
There extends far to the eastward, from a corner of the Monumental Park, Cleveland's famous street—Euclid Avenue. The people regard it as the handsomest highway in America, in the combined magnificence of houses and grounds. It is a level avenue of about one hundred and fifty feet width, with a central roadway and stone footwalks on either hand, shaded by rows of grand overarching elms, and bordered on both sides by well-kept lawns. ”

“ The whole country, north, south and west, is a network of railways and a maze of mines, having long rows of burning coke ovens lighting the sky with their lurid glare. Here are mined the Westmoreland gas coals. The valley of the Monongahela River, coming up from West Virginia, approaches from the southward, a great highway for coal boats out to the Ohio and the West, also receiving a large coal tribute from its branch, the Youghiogheny, flowing by crooked course through Fayette County. ”

“ An outer line of keys defends Tampa harbor from the storms of the Gulf. There are many popular resorts on the islands and shores of Tampa Bay, and regular lines of steamers are run to the West India ports, Mobile and New Orleans. All the surroundings are attractive, and a pleased visitor writes of the place: "Conditions hereabouts exhilarate the men; a perpetual sun and ocean breeze are balm to the invalid and an inspiration to a robust health. ”

“ Gradually overspread by a network of railways, the numerous "cross-roads" have expanded everywhere into towns and cities, almost all patterned alike, and all of them centres of rich farming districts. Coal, oil and gas have come to minister to its manufacturing wants, and thus growing into mature Commonwealths, this prolific region in the later decades has been itself, in turn, contributing largely to the tide of migration flowing to the present "Great Northwest," a thousand miles or more beyond. ”

“ The rended mountains, steep tree-covered slopes and frequent isolated sentinel-like hills rising from the glens, have all been moulded into rounded forms by the action of the elements, leaving few abrupt precipices or naked rocks to mar the regularity of the natural beauties. The valleys and lower parts of the mountain sides are generally cultivated, the fields sloping up to the mantle of forest crowning the flanks and summits of the ridges. Every change of sunshine or shadow, and the steady progress of the seasons, give new tints to these glens and mountains. ”

“ Every railroad of prominence sought an outlet or a feeder at Chicago, and the title of a "trunk line" was adopted for a line of rails between Chicago and the seaboard. The surrounding prairie for miles is crossed in all directions by railways, and a large part of the city and suburbs is made up of huge stations, car-yards, elevators, storehouses and cattle-pens, almost overwhelming visitors with the prodigious scale of their elaborate perplexity. ”

“ Toledo is built on the flat surface on both sides of the Maumee River and Bay, which make it a good harbor, stretching six miles down to Lake Erie. There are a hundred thousand population here, and this energetic reproduction of the ancient Spanish city has named its chief newspaper the Toledo Blade. The city has extensive railway connections and a large trade in lumber and grain, coal and ores, and does much manufacturing, it being well served with natural 425 gas. A dozen grain elevators line the river banks, and the factory smokes overhang the broad low-lying city like a pall. ”

“ Minnesota is well timbered, a belt of fine forests, chiefly pine, stretching across it, known as the Coteau des Bois, or "Big Woods," an elevated plateau with a rolling surface, having thousands of lakes scattered through it, fed by springs, while their outlets go into streams feeding the Mississippi, down which the logs are floated to the booms above the falls. The extensive sawmills will cut over four hundred and fifty millions of feet of lumber in a year. Thus the flour and 472 lumber have become the chief articles of export from Minneapolis. ”

“ The Gulf Stream is the best known of all the great ocean currents. The northeast and southeast trade-winds, constantly blowing, drive a great mass of water from the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean Sea, and westward through the passages between the Windward Islands, which is contracted by the converging shores of the Yucatan Peninsula and the Island of Cuba, so that it pours between them into the Gulf of Mexico, raising its surface considerably above the level of the Atlantic. These currents then move towards the Florida Peninsula, and pass around the Florida Reef and out into the Atlantic. ”

“ The capital was established at Springfield in 1837, an attractive city of about thirty thousand inhabitants, built on a prairie a few miles south of Sangamon River, a tributary of the Illinois, and from its floral development and the adornment of its gardens and shade trees, Springfield is popularly known as the "Flower City." There is a magnificent State Capitol with high surmounting dome, patterned 411 somewhat after the Federal Capitol at Washington. Springfield has coal-mines which add to its prosperity, but its great fame is connected with Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ Augustine, and in 1763 the British held Amelia Island, extending the little fort to almost its present proportions, and laying out a town behind it, while to the southward the Countess of Egmont established an indigo plantation, which flourished for a brief period. Spain ultimately got the island, and it came into American possession with Florida in 1821. A little town with sandy streets, a pretty park, much foliage, delicious air bringing the balsam of the pines and the tonic of the sea, and hotels accommodating the influx of winter visitors, make up the Fernandina of to-day. ”

“ When the railway route cuts into a butte, its interior is disclosed as a pile of red-burnt clay fragments mixed with ashes and sand. Little prairie dogs dodge in and out of their holes, but there is not much else of life. The boundary is crossed 483 into Montana, and the "Bad Lands" gradually give place to a grazing section. Here stands up the great Sentinel Butte, with its reddish-yellow sides, near the Montana border, and the railway route then descends from the higher region to the valley of the Yellowstone. ”

“ The broad expanse of prairie was low, level and treeless originally, but abundant trees have since been planted, and art has made little lakes and miniature hills, beautiful flower-gardens and abundant shrubbery, thus producing pleasure-grounds of rare attractions. Michigan Avenue and Drexel and Grand Boulevards, leading to the southern system of parks and Lake Shore Drive on the north side of Chicago River, are the finest residential streets. ”