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Show THE PARK REGION. The business manager of the Chicago Interior has recently been taking a vacation. He traveled away up in the region of the Northern Pacific Railroad about the head-waters of the Mississippi and the Missouri. Here is what he writes concerning the Park Region. If God ever made a fairer spot, He did not locate it on this planet. Those gently-rolling hills and ridges set with lakes which rippled and sparkled in the declining sun; those dark green groves, in clusters or solitary, great forest trees lifting their plumy foliage in the center and rounding off to the low hazels which fringed the edges; broad rolling fields of verdure flecked with the gold of billowy oats or wheat; the white of cottages or the red of barns, here and there, like stray blossoms lost in a meadow -- to say that we were delighted and overwhelmed with surprise would be the words for feelings which must go unexpressed. I acknowledge that I was as ignorant of the character of this region as an Alabama circuit rider is of theology. The trouble was that the geography of the country, as a science, had been exhausted in the puffery of the Northern Pacific Railroad bonds. And then General Hazen had prepared out minds for incredulity by his most asinine, or most malicious, I don't know which, defamation of the character of the soil and climate of this whole region. I am ashamed to confess that I was further influenced by the abuse which the New York Nation heaped upon certain of the religious press for admitting advertisements of these lands, in which their merits were understated rather than overstated. But never mind the Nation and other disagreeable things. How can we, when a bevy of young wild ducks has just swam out of that clump of sedge, and black bass, a four-pounder, has just leaped half a foot clear of the water, and Carleton has just pointed to a charming cottage on a hill, a mile or so off, with a broad lawn of yellow wheat. perhaps a hundred acres of it, in front. "That man, four years ago," said he, "was a book-binder in Boston. I told him about this country, and he gathered up his little savings, and yonder he sits, among rosy children and broad acres in peace and contentment." This Park Region extends southward fifty miles, northward, I judge, about twenty-five miles, though in the multiplicity of facts I did not get exact information of its northern boundary, and it is from twenty to forty miles broad. At no point of its whole extent are you [unreadable line] park and rolling verdure. Every acre of it is taken, though I learn that excellent bargains can be had of stupid Scandinavians and others who have no more appreciation of the beautiful than a cow. And here again the infernal ax is at work. I have no doubt that the Park Region, within reach of the railway, will be swept bare as the tops of the Sierras. Thank the Lord they cannot hew down the hills and burn up the lakes. |