er withdrew to the westward, or gave up their business.

The growth in the carrying line has since become immense throughout the
state, and may be judged when I say that there are now five strong daily
lines to Chicago, the Burlington, the Omaha, the Milwaukee, the
Wisconsin Central and the Chicago Great Western, and three
transcontinental lines departing daily for the Pacific Coast, the
Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and the Sault Ste. Marie
(connecting with the Canadian Pacific). Besides these prominent trains,
there are innumerable lesser ones connecting with nearly every part of
the state. More passenger trains arrive at, and depart from, the St.
Paul Union Depot than at any other point in the state. They aggregate
104 in, and the same number out every day. Many--perhaps the most--of
these trains go to Minneapolis. The freight trains passing these points
are, of course, less regular in their movements than the scheduled
passenger trains, but their number is great, and their cargoes of
incalculable value.

LUMBER.

A large portion of Minnesota is covered with exceptionally fine timber.
The northern section, traversed by the Mississippi and its numerous
branches, the St. Croix, the St. Louis, and other streams, was covered
with a growth of white and Norway pine of great value, and a large area
of its central western portion with hard timber. At a very early day in
the history of our state these forests attracted the attention of
lumbermen from different parts of the country, principally from Maine,
who erected sawmills at the Falls of St. Anthony, Stillwater and other
points, and began the cutting of logs to supply them. Nearly all the
streams were navigable for logs, or were easily made so, and thus one of
the great industries of the state had its beginning. Quite an amount of
lumber was manufactured at Minneapolis in the fifties, but no official
record of the amounts were kept until 1870. An estimate of the standing
pine in the state was made by the United States government for the
census of 1880, which was designed to include all the standing pine on
the streams leading into the Mississippi, the Rainy Lake river, the St.
Croix, and the head of Lake Superior; in fact, the whole state. The
estimate was 10,000,000,000 feet. When this estimate was made, it was
accepted by the best informed lumbermen as approximately correct. The
mills at Minneapolis and above, in the St. Croix valley, and in what was
c