To stand at the head of two thousand miles of steamboat navigation along the line of a single river is in itself, were there no city, an inspiration.  And when we contemplate that more than ten thousand miles of inland navigation attaches to this great river and its tributaries, at the head of which stands the beautiful city of St. Paul, we do not marvel at the dreams of splendor and of power already haunting the thinking population of this vast interior valley.  A few brief years and the sceptre of political empire will have passed forever into the hands of this people without question, and ere long thereafter we confidently predict that the seat of government will surely follow.  We know that the population along the Atlantic coast deride this idea; and, while having shared heretofore like opinions with them, yet, on reflection, we believe the child is born who will live to see this an accomplished fact.

FOOTNOTES: 

[A] We have counted the Pacific Main Line and the Branch Line as separate roads, and likewise have assumed, that the Milwaukee and St. Paul terminates here.  These roads are now owned by the North Pacific Railroad Company.

CHAPTER V.

CLIMATE.

The climatic divisions of the country.—­Periodical rains.—­Prevailing winds of the continent.—­Changes of temperature.—­Consumption in warm climates.—­Cold, humid atmospheres.—­What climate most desirable for the consumptive.—­The dry atmosphere of the interior.—­Dry winds of the interior.—­Table of rain-fall of the whole country.

Until a comparatively recent date the climate of the continent was held, by all of the more learned in matters of physical geography and climatic law, to have but one general characteristic; but these conclusions have been found to be utterly erroneous, and now it is known to be susceptible of division into three great and entirely distinct areas, each being highly marked, and leaving, on these various surfaces, peculiar evidence of their existence.

Instead of an oceanic climate prevailing over the entire continent, it is found to have but very narrow limits along the Pacific coast of the United States, being broken entirely from the interior by the elevated mountain ranges, conforming to them throughout their entire extent, and having a sweep from near the thirty-sixth parallel to Sitka and the Aleutian Islands, away to the extreme northwest.

The second division embraces the great interior basin lying between the ranges of one hundred and twenty degrees and ninety-two degrees west longitudes, having a general trend from the southwest, at San Diego, to Hudson’s Bay in British America, in the northeast.  This vast district is paralleled by that of the interior climate and character of the continent of Asia in its elevation, aridity, and great extent, and may be known as the true continental or Asiatic climate