.

"Northwest" is a shifting, uncertain designation. The term has been used
to cover the whole stretch of country from Pittsburg to Puget Sound,
north of the Ohio River and the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude.
Popularly it signified the old Northwestern Territory--including Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin--until about the time of the
Civil War. In the decade following the war, Illinois and Iowa were
largely in the minds of men who spoke of the Northwest. From 1870 to
1880, Iowa, Kansas, northern Missouri, and Nebraska constituted the most
stirring and favored region--the Northwest _par excellence_. But the
past decade has witnessed a remarkable development in the Dakotas; and
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana, with Iowa and Nebraska,
are perhaps the States most familiarly comprised in the idea of the
Northwest. These States are really in the heart of the continent--midway
between oceans; and perhaps by common consent the term Northwest will, a
decade hence, have moved on and taken firm possession of Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, while ultimately Alaska may succeed to
the designation.

[Illustration: ALBERT SHAW.]

But for the present the Northwest is the great arable wedge lying
between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and between the Missouri
River and the Rocky Mountains. It is a region that is pretty clearly
defined upon a map showing physical characteristics. For the most part,
it is a region of great natural fertility, of regular north-temperate
climate, of moderate but sufficient rainfall, of scant forests and great
prairie expanses, and of high average altitude without mountains. In a
word, it is a region that was adapted by nature to the cultivation of
the cereals and leading crops of the temperate zone without arduous and
time-consuming processes for subduing the wilderness and redeeming the
soil.

SETTLING THE NORTHWEST.

This "New Northwest," in civilization and in all its significant
characteristics, is the creature of the vast impulse that the successful
termination of the war gave the nation. No other extensive area was ever
settled under similar conditions. The homestead laws, the new American
system of railroad building, and the unprecedented demand for staple
food products in the industrial centres at home and abroad, peopled the
prairies as if by magic. Until 1870, fixing the date very roughly,
transportation facilities followed colonization. Th