“You’re come up to look after work on this North Pacific Railroad, I guess?” he commenced-he was a Southern Irish man, but “guessed” all the same—­“well, now, look here, the North Pacific Railroad will never be like the U.P. (Union Pacific) I worked there, and I know what it was; it was bully, I can tell you.  A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and bit the boss on the head with his shovel if the boss gave him any d——­ chat.  No, sirree, the North Pacific will never be like that.”

I could not help thinking that it was perhaps quite as well for the North Pacific Railroad Company and the boss if they never were destined to rival the Union Pacific Company as pictured by my companion; but I did not attempt to say so, as it might have come under the heading of “d——­ chat,” worthy only of being replied to by that convincing argument, the shovel.

A good night’s sleep and a swim in the St. Louis river banished all trace of toil.  I left Fond-du-Lac early in the afternoon, and, descending by a small steamer the many-winding St. Louis River, soon came in sight of the town of Duluth.  The heat had become excessive; the Bay of St. Louis, shut in on all sides by lofty hills, lay under a mingled mass of thunder-cloud and sunshine; far out in Lake Superior vivid lightnings flashed over the gloomy water and long rolls of thunder shook the hills around.  On board our little steamboat the atmosphere was stifling, and could not have been short of 100 degrees in the coolest place (it was 93 at six o’clock same evening in the hotel at Duluth); there was nothing for it but to lie quietly on a wooden bench and listen to the loud talking of some fellow-passengers.  Three of the hardest of hard cases were engaged in the mental recreation of “’swapping lies;” their respective exchanges consisting on this occasion of feats of stealing; the experiences of one I recollect in particular.  He had stolen an axe from a man on the North Pacific Railroad and a few days later sold him the same article.  This Piece of knavery was received as the acme of cuteness; and I well recollect the language in which the brute wound up his self-laudations:  “If any chap can steal faster than me, let him.”

As we emerged from the last bend of the river and stood across the Bay of St. Louis, Duluth, in all its barrenness, stood before us.  The future capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of Japan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorriest spectacle of city that eye of man could look upon-wooden houses scattered at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out of a reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and lumber standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs and passable only by crazy looking planks of tilting proclivities—­over all, a sun fit for a Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever.  Still, in spite of rock and swamp and icy winter, Yankee energy will triumph here as it has triumphed else where over kindred difficulties.