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  [Illustration:

  SEEING AMERICA FIRST

  WITH THE BERRY BROTHERS

  WRITTEN BY ELEANOR COLBY

  ILLUSTRATED BY F. W. PFEIFFER

  NIAGARA-BUFFALO. COPYRIGHT 1917 BY BERRY BROS., INCORPORATED DETROIT.]


Grown-ups talk a lot about "SEEING AMERICA FIRST." They say that this
is the most wonderful land in the world and that everyone ought to see
it before going to any other country. That is exactly what we Berry
Wagon Boys are going to do, and as we travel we are going to write this
little book for other boys and girls to read.

Our home city, Detroit, is as interesting as any place we shall visit.
We love to hear of the days when Cadillac and his hundred men landed
here and built their fort and how within a year six thousand Indians
had camped within sight of the stockade. Detroit does not look much as
it did then. It is now one of the leading Metropolitan Cities of the
United States, and is growing as fast as Jack's famous beanstalk. It
has grown from 400,000 to 800,000 within the past ten years, and it is
lucky that there is lots of room for it to stretch in, for when people
once get the craze for living in Detroit, no other place satisfies them.

We always take visiting friends to see the sights of Belle Isle, our
island park. They are amazed at the wonderful fish in the big aquarium
and interested in the zoo, the public bath house with its 800 rooms,
and the beautiful casino. After taking them to a fine lunch at the Boat
Club, we auto around the five and one-half miles of shore drive, and
they "oh" and "ah" till it sounds as though they were taking a singing
lesson.

There is no fleet of fresh water passenger steamers in the world
equaling those which call Detroit their home port, and our Detroit
River is too fine and dignified to cut up any of the antics in which
some rivers indulge. It never rises and messes up the city for it is
too busy carrying its countless boats of precious freight.

Detroit is a great manufacturing city, and it is quite likely that the
flowers and vegetables in your garden, the medicine that cures you when
you are sick, and the auto that you ride in, came from our city, for
Detroit leads the world in these manufactures.

One thing is certain, if the varnish on your floors and furniture is
the best that can be bought, it came from BERRY BROTHERS.

  [Illustration:

  DETROIT

  The River Front

  Soldiers' Monument]

Canada is larger than the whole United States including Alaska, and
probably it would keep on forever if the Pacific ocean did not stop it
on the west, the Arctic on the north, and the Atlantic on the east.

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and the Parliament buildings are among
the finest buildings in the world. Just to look at them makes one think
of kings and queens and all sorts of grandeur. We found it hard to
imagine that a little over a century ago, terrible Indian massacres
were taking place here. The Hurons and Algonquins used to come down the
Ottawa river with their canoes loaded with furs, and the cruel Iroquois
used to lie in wait to torture them in order to get those pelts.

Montreal, on the St. Lawrence, is another beautiful city. Here we saw
great ocean steamers unloading freight from all parts of the earth.
The harbor of Montreal was the first port in the world to be lighted
with electricity, so that the loading of steamers can go on by night as
well as by day. They put in as many hours as possible, for during four
months of the year the river is frozen so that no commerce can go on.

In the old Chateau de Ramezay, which used to be the governor's
residence, were signed the papers which made the colony an English
instead of a French one.

A hundred and seventy two miles beyond Montreal lies Quebec. No, it
does not "lie," for it stands way up on a high bluff above the St.
Lawrence. This bluff is called the Citadel and is one of the strongest
fortresses in the world. It is sometimes called "the Gibraltar of the
Western Hemisphere."

Quebec is divided into two parts called the "Lower Town" and the "Upper
Town," so that the city seems to have an upstairs and a downstairs. You
can climb up or down through some queer, crooked, narrow street like
Mountain Street or Breakneck Stairs, or can ride in a big "lift" which
is the English word for elevator. The Lower town is very picturesque
and artists like it, but we boys think the Upper town is much more
cheerful and beautiful.

We often read of walled cities, but until we saw the ruins of the old
wall in Quebec, we had never seen a walled city.

  [Illustration:

  Chateau de Ramezay MONTREAL

  The Citadel QUEBEC

  Old City Wall QUEBEC

  Parliament Hill OTTAWA

  Old Street QUEBEC]

We are visiting Aunt Penelope who lives in a part of Boston which is
called the "Back Bay." The waters of the bay used to roll right where
her house stands, but by filling in with earth the Bostonians made the
land and some of the finest buildings in the city stand on this "made
land."

We can see the golden dome of the State House from our window and in
walking over to see the building we went through the Public Garden. It
seems like a magical spot, for yesterday the flower beds were filled
with violets and crocuses, and today those are gone and tulips are in
their places. When these begin to fade, other blooming plants will be
set out.

In the old part of Boston are some very narrow crooked streets and
people say these were once the path made by cows across the meadows.
There are very few of these streets left and the newer part of Boston
has some of the finest streets in the world. Commonwealth Avenue is
famous for its width and costly homes, and Brookline, the finest part
of the city, is said to have more wealth and beauty to the square foot
than any other city in the United States. The roads around Boston are
fine and besides the interesting buildings, lovely parks, and historic
spots, one is constantly catching glimpses of the blue harbor.

Climbing up the 295 winding stone steps of Bunker Hill Monument was
"some climb," but the view from the top was wonderful.

Old North or Christ Church is interesting because from its belfry the
two lanterns were hung as a signal to Paul Revere to start on his
famous ride, and from Old South Church the patriots who took part in
the Boston Tea Party started. They disguised themselves as Indians so
that the British would not recognize them. It took a lot of courage to
pitch that cargo of tea into Boston Harbor, and if I could choose a
Boston ancestor, I would choose one of those brave men.

One of the most historic spots in Boston is Faneuil Hall. It was given
to the town by Peter Faneuil as a place in which to hold town meetings,
and the most fiery speeches of those old Revolutionary patriots were
made in this old building which is called the "Cradle of Liberty."

  [Illustration:

  Faneuil Hall

  Old North Bridge at Concord Mass.

  Christ Church

  State House BOSTON

  Old South Church]

Harvard is the oldest university in America. It was founded sixteen
years after the Pilgrims landed. In Memorial Hall we saw over a
thousand students eating dinner. The collection of glass flowers at
Harvard is famous. There is only one man in the world who knows how to
make them, and unless he tells someone before he dies, his secret will
be buried with him. He has made flowers exactly like those in all parts
of the world.

We went up to New Haven to see Yale, for these two universities have
been rivals ever since Yale was founded fifty years after Harvard.
The wonderful old elms on the campus are famous, but we Berry Wagon
Boys would rather see a football game between Yale and Harvard than to
see all the glass flowers or historic elms in the world. The Harvard
fans would wave their deep crimson pennants and yell: "Rah-Rah-Rah (9
times) Harvard!" Yale champions would wave the Yale Blue, and shout:
"Rah-Rah-Rah (9 times) Yale!"

Although Princeton is much smaller, its students love it just as well,
for of course a fellow would not love his mother any less because she
did not weigh 400 pounds. Anyway, in athletics, the orange and black of
Princeton are as well known as any college colors and their yell has
cheered Princeton boys to victory on many gridirons: "'Ray, 'Ray, 'Ray!
Tiger, Tiger, Tiger! Sis, Sis, Sis! Boom, Boom, Boom! Ah, Ah, Ah!
Princeton! Princeton! Princeton!"

The buildings of Cornell University at Ithaca, N. Y., are at the top
of a high hill and the campus is as fine as any in America. When Ezra
Cornell founded this university he said: "I would found an institution
where any person can receive instruction in any subject," and when we
had been through the buildings we decided that his wish had come true.
The Cornell colors are red and white, and their yell is: "Cornell! I
Yell, Yell, Yell, Cornell!"

West Point, is the finest military school in the United States and we
wish we had space to tell about the wonderful drilling we saw there. It
is way up on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson. The West Point colors
are black, gold, and gray, and their yell is "Rah, Rah, 'Ray! Rah, Rah,
'Ray! West Point! Ar-may!"

  [Illustration:

  GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

  The Campus at Cornell

  Memorial Hall Harvard

  West Point Military Academy

  Model of Yale Buildings

  Nassau Hall Princeton]

There is not very much of Old New York left. The great sky-scrapers
have crowded out most of the ancient landmarks, but there are a few
relics. For instance, way down town is the Sub-Treasury building. It
looks like a nice dignified old gentleman dozing and dreaming of the
past, while the great high buildings around it with their rushing life
are like hustling boys and girls, full of energy and spirit.

Another old-timer is Fraunces' Tavern. In Washington's day it was the
most popular tavern in New York. When the British evacuated New York
there was a great celebration, and that night General Washington dined
at Fraunces' Tavern. A few days later he went there to say good bye to
the generals who had served so bravely during the Revolutionary War.
Those small-paned windows have looked out on over a century and a half
of New York life, and if the old walls could speak, they could tell
thrilling stories.

The most historic house in New York is the Jumel Mansion. In
Washington's time it was the handsomest house in the city, and besides,
it had a fine situation way up on Harlem Heights overlooking the river.
It was there that General Washington made his headquarters. It is
what grown-ups call "very quaint," and the glass for the windows and
the hand-painted paper for the walls came over from France. We saw
the narrow hall where the sentry paced back and forth as he guarded
Washington's slumber, and the council chamber where the general and his
staff decided so many questions. There is the cupboard where Andre,
the spy, hid, but the secret passage down to the river has been closed
because of the river rats.

After the war the Jumels, (some wealthy French people) bought the
house, and later Madame Jumel married the famous Aaron Burr. Jerome
Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor Napoleon, once visited Madame Jumel
in this house, and many other distinguished people have slept under its
roof. It is the most interesting house we have ever seen, and someway
it has made United States history seem more real than it does in the
school books.

Anyway, when at sunset we went down to the harbor and looked out at
the Statue of Liberty, she seemed to sort of belong to us and to all
American boys and girls.

  [Illustration:

  Dobb's Ferry

  Fraunces' Tavern

  THE OLD-NEW YORK

  Jumel Mansion

  Harbor and Statue of Liberty

  Sub-Treasury-Assay Office]

An architect said to us: "New York has a wonderful skyline." He
explained that the "skyline" is the silhouette that the buildings make
against the sky. In some cities the buildings are so nearly one height
that the skyline is level and uninteresting, but in New York there
are tall sky-scrapers, low buildings, domes, towers, and smokestacks,
so that the skyline is full of variety. The picture shows the skyline
of lower New York as we saw it from Brooklyn Bridge, which is the
oldest bridge connecting Brooklyn with Manhattan. It is over a mile
long. The bridge was designed by John Roebling, but he died before it
was begun. His son took his place, but he worked so hard planning and
superintending the work that in three years he became an invalid. Then
he took a house overlooking the bridge, and from his invalid chair
he watched through a telescope and directed all the work till it was
completed ten years later.

Not far from Brooklyn Bridge is the Stock Exchange, which is the most
famous business building in New York. We never knew that tame men could
act as wild as they do there. It is where they buy and sell stocks and
of course they are all anxious to make as much money as possible and
everyone seems to be gesturing and screaming and no one seems to be
listening. It is as exciting as a football game.

After all the wild noises of the Stock Exchange, we went to the most
quiet place in the city, Grant's Tomb. We thought it would look like a
cemetery, but it is a beautiful white granite building high up above
the Hudson. The inside of the building is finished in white marble and
there are the great red porphyry tombs of General Ulysses S. Grant and
his wife. People who have traveled across the sea say that Napoleon's
Tomb is more showy, but we were satisfied with Grant's Tomb. Someway it
made us proud of America and its heroes.

By this time the sun was setting behind the Palisades on the other side
of the river, and those great cliffs looked like pictures of castles on
the Rhine. The Hudson is far wider and more beautiful than the Rhine,
though, which is another good reason for "seeing America first."

  [Illustration:

  Manhattan Skyline

  Brooklyn Bridge

  NEW YORK CITY

  Grant's Tomb

  Stock Exchange]

One of the finest parts of SEEING AMERICA FIRST is the trip around the
Great Lakes. They are so large that people call them "inland seas," and
when you are out of sight of land, it is just like being on the ocean.
Our steamer was what grown-ups call "a floating palace," and we learned
many interesting things as we went along.

We never saw so many kinds of boats before. Great barges full of iron
and copper ore, small steamboats tugging a whole line of lazy big
barges, fine sailing vessels looking exactly like picture-book ships,
and little naptha launches that came out and played around our big
steamer when she neared a port. The great whaleback steamers looked
like angry sea monsters snorting smoke out of their high stacks, but
they are really kindly creatures for they carry immense loads of wheat
or ore from the Lake Superior region to the southern and eastern ports.
Another kind of boat is known as a "rabbit," and the pictures on the
opposite page show you these queer craft.

People had told us that Lake Superior is twenty feet higher than Lake
Huron, and we boys were dreading the plunge which our steamer would
have to make, but it was as quiet as a mill-pond, for our boat merely
sailed into a sort of box or "lock" and the water was slowly lowered
till we sailed out on Lake Huron without even a jolt. There are locks
between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, too, for Niagara Falls would not be
very easy for a steamer to climb or descend.

It is wonderful to watch the loading and unloading of the huge freight
barges. There are great derricks which reach out giant arms and pick up
monstrous loads and carry them up or down to deck or dock.

Before the Erie Canal was built, the steamers could only go as far as
Buffalo and there the freight had to be taken from the boats and loaded
on trains in order to be sent farther east. The Erie Canal crosses New
York state like a great water boulevard and connects with the Hudson at
Albany and a boat sailing from Chicago can go clear to New York City
and get a glimpse of the ocean before starting back to the inland seas.

  [Illustration:

  Mouth of the Erie Canal at Buffalo N. Y.

  TRAFFIC ON THE GREAT LAKES

  _the "Rabbit"_

  Copper-Ingots-at Houghton-Mich.

  "Whaleback" Steamer

  Types-of Lakecraft]

We Berry Wagon Boys thought we had seen big machinery before, but when
we went to the huge steel mills at Gary, Indiana, we felt about as
small and unimportant as a couple of undersized ants standing before
the Pyramids of Egypt!

Gary is called "the steel capital of the world," yet only a few years
ago the spot where the city stands was just miles of dreary sandy beach
on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Columbus discovered America
all ready-made, but Judge Gary and the other men who were in the big
steel company did not discover Gary, they actually made it! Way up in
the Lake Superior country were enormous stores of ore, but there was no
coal and no limestone, so the ore had to be taken far away to be made
into steel, and the freight made the steel very expensive. These men
decided to find a place where the materials could be brought together
more cheaply. It had to be on the lake, so that steamers could haul the
ore. It had to be near several railroads, so that they could bring the
coal and limestone. It had to be near a big city so that there would be
a near-by market for the steel. Besides, they needed a lot of space to
grow in. They bought 9000 acres and seven miles of that barren shore
25 miles from Chicago and they set their designers to work. The whole
thing was built on paper before they began to build it out of concrete
and cement. If anything was in their way, they just moved it. They had
to move a river and a hundred miles of railroad track. Even then they
had to build four of their big blast furnaces right out in the lake.
It cost over two million dollars just to get things ready for the
buildings.

If you were to go to Gary today and see the fine city they have built
for their workers to live in, the paved and electric-lighted streets,
the pretty homes, the parks, the wonderful steel plants, the fine
harbor and the docks where great steamers are always loading and
unloading, you would find it hard to believe that all of these had
grown up out of that sand in ten years.

  [Illustration:

  Furnaces & Stoves

  THE-STEEL-PLANT-AT-GARY INDIANA

  Billet Mill

  Charging Platform of the Open Hearth Furnaces]

Until today all that we Berry Wagon Boys knew about meat was that we
liked our steak rare and our pork well done, and we never thought where
all the meat comes from or how it is prepared for the market. Here
at the Union Stock Yards of Chicago we have learned many interesting
things. Almost every farm in the United States has some cattle, hogs,
and sheep, and out in the far west there are huge ranches where
thousands of cow-boys are employed to care for the great herds of
cattle. In Texas there is a ranch larger than the whole state of
Connecticut.

Farmers used to kill their own stock and sell the meat in the nearest
town, but now there are great meat-packing centers to which they ship
the live stock and where it is turned into canned meat or sent in
refrigerator trains or ships to all parts of the world, and because of
the intense cold in which it is kept, the meat will remain fresh for
months. The packing industry amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars
a year.

In the stock yards of Chicago, there are over twenty miles of streets
filled with huge pens, each pen containing hundreds of cattle, pigs, or
sheep. While they are waiting to be killed, they are fed on good food
and watered with pure artesian water, so their last hours are made as
pleasant as possible.

If the creatures could know how very useful they are to be, it would
be quite a comfort to them, for besides being made into dried, canned,
smoked, or fresh meat, they furnish materials for fertilizer, brushes,
oils, glue, lard, leather, hairpins, mattresses, and many other things.
The packers say that they can use every part of an ox but its kick and
every part of a pig but its squeal.

After the meat is prepared for the market, it is kept two days in a
great chilling room where ten thousand sides of beef can be chilled at
one time.

It was interesting to see the sausage meat being pressed into the
intestines of the pigs, for the big machines can fill a mile of skins
a minute. We saw them making lard, too, and are proud to say that
American lard is shipped all over the world and is considered the best.
The reason that American meat products are so good is because the
inspectors do not allow any carelessness.

  [Illustration:

  Scene in Chilling Room

  Cattle. Union Stock Yards

  Meat Inspection

  Rendering Lard

  STOCK YARDS AT CHICAGO

  Filling Sausage]

Chicago has so many fine sky-scrapers that we Berry Wagon Boys had
almost passed the splendid Harvester Building with just a glance when
the man we were with stopped us and said: "Take a good look at that
building, for if a boy had not had ideas and perseverance, it would
never have been built. His name was Cyrus McCormick, and he lived in
Virginia. In the blacksmith shop on his father's farm, Cyrus and his
father used to make lots of labor-saving things and the boy decided
that he would invent a machine which would harvest the wheat better and
more quickly than could be done by hand. He spent every spare minute
working on the invention and was twenty-one years old when he saw his
first reaper at work in the harvest field. He thought that every farmer
would want to buy one, but it was ten years before he sold his first
machine. Soon after this he sold another and after that, the orders
came so fast that he went out west to the little city of Chicago, which
was quite young in 1847, and built his first factory. This factory was
the father of the nineteen huge factories in which the International
Harvester Company now makes every machine that a farmer needs for any
season and any crop." We saw only three of these plants, but when
we had been through the McCormick Works, the Deering Works, and the
steel mills and had seen all the wonderful things that are done in
those factories, we did not wonder that America is famous for its farm
implements.

People complain a lot about the high cost of living, but if the grain
had to be planted and plowed and harvested by hand, I guess the
American kiddies would have to eat their bread and jam without the
bread.

  [Illustration:

  INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER CO. CHICAGO

  _McCormick Works_

  Deering Works

  The Harvester Building

  _Steel Mills_]

We Berry Wagon Boys are visiting our Uncle Silas who owns a great farm
of fifty thousand acres in the northwest. When we look out over the
big wheat fields that stretch for miles, it is like looking out over a
great yellow sea, only the waves are made of wheat instead of water.

Uncle Silas says that wheat is among the earliest known foods, and
that bread is the earliest known cooked food. The people of Egypt
were eating wheat bread four thousand years ago, only it was not like
the bread we have today. It was called "koscoussoo," and consisted of
flour and water cooked together in a basket over boiling water. Wheat
was brought to America by our forefathers, and George Washington was a
great wheat grower for those days. He had a mill at Mount Vernon and
shipped flour to the West Indies.

When Uncle Silas and Aunt Mollie came west thirty years ago, this
country was just bleak prairie and one could travel miles without
seeing a sign of human life. They lived in a mover's wagon while
building a sod house. After three years they built a four-room house
and they were as proud as kings. As fast as they made any money they
bought more land, so now they own miles of this wonderful country.

It is great to see the threshing machines out here. They mow down those
wheat heads just as the great machine guns across the sea mow down the
armies. Some of these machines are drawn by twenty or thirty horses,
and it takes as good a horseman to handle all of those horses as to do
chariot races at a circus. One of these threshers comes along through
the grain like a great giant, and with its huge claws and arms and
feet, it cuts the wheat, threshes it, puts it into bags, and weighs it.

The grain is shipped to some city and stored in enormous elevators
until it is sold to the millers to be made into flour.

Uncle Silas says that the life of the modern farmer is far from "slow."
There is something doing every minute, and when he looks out over
those fields of waving wheat and realizes that he is growing enough
food there to keep thousands of people happy and healthy, he would not
exchange places with anyone.

  [Illustration:

  Seeding

  Bonanza Farming

  WHEAT FIELDS OF NORTH DAKOTA

  Threshing]

  [Illustration: BIRDSEYE VIEW BERRY BROTHERS, Inc., DETROIT FACTORIES

  In 1858 Thomas and Joseph H. Berry, then young men of Detroit, made
  their first kettle of varnish. The first batch was thirty gallons.
  It was good honest varnish, and so from that this business grew. The
  industry at the beginning was small. Today, we occupy 43 buildings,
  covering seven acres. With the growth of the business the fame of
  Berry Brothers' Varnishes, and other products has spread to every
  corner of the civilized world. Instead of the little 30 gallon kettle,
  we now have 45 kettles with a capacity of 11,500 gallons. The Company
  has a storage capacity of 1,250,000 gallons.

  BERRY BROTHERS

  (INCORPORATED)

  World's Largest Varnish Makers]

  [Illustration:

  Animals in the Park

  YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

  Giant Geyser

  Yellowstone Falls

  Eagle Nest Rock

  Cleopatra Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs]

Most boys and girls think of a park as a little plot of ground with
a fountain in its center and neat little flower beds arranged primly
around. The Yellowstone Park is almost as large as Connecticut, and
Uncle Sam has given it to America so that no one can ever spoil
its beauty by building factories or cities there. Think of a park
containing mountains two miles high, cataracts higher than Niagara,
great canyons, and geysers which are the wonder of the world. There are
hundreds of these geysers which are huge natural fountains spouting
mud, boiling water, steam, and minerals. They burst out of the ground
and then sink back leaving pools where wonderful colors seem to be
painted on the rock. Each geyser has its own name and its own habits.
Old Faithful used to spout every sixty minutes to the very second, but
lately takes a little more time. He is getting old, but he still sends
up a column of boiling water and steam 150 feet high, which is "going
some." The Giant deserves its name for it spouts 200 feet, while the
Black Growler fusses and mutters a lot but does very little real work.
The Constant sends up a spout every minute with only a few seconds for
rest in between.

You would not think that with all this boiling water there could be
any lakes of cold water, but the Yellowstone Lake is as clear and cold
and its fish as fine as any you could find in the world. People claim
that they have caught fish in the lake and then without moving a foot
have cooked them in a pool of boiling water. We could believe this only
we do not think the soldiers would let anyone fish there. Soldiers
are stationed all around the park to keep tourists from carrying off
souvenirs. Some tourists would run away with everything but the geysers
if they had a chance. A geyser would be pretty hard to carry in ones
suitcase.

This great park has plains where bison run wild, great cliffs where the
eagles rear their young, and forests where Mr. Grizzly makes himself
quite at home. He even comes up to the hotels and carries off garbage
and though he seems quite tame, we boys did not feel like getting too
familiar with him.

  [Illustration:

  View from Mt. Jackson

  _Lake McDermott—from Many Glacier Camp_

  Blue Lake

  Blackfeet Indians

  _Chief "Three Bears"_

  GLACIER NATIONAL PARK]

Glacier Park is way up at the northern edge of Montana. If it were
a little farther north, it would be a Canadian citizen instead of
being subject to Uncle Sam. It was the favorite hunting ground of the
Blackfeet Indians but about 27 years ago copper was discovered there
and Uncle Sam thought that the mines should be properly opened so he
bought the land. There was not enough copper to make mining pay, but
there was a stock of scenery so large that it would last forever, so
Uncle Sam gave the land to his big family for another playground and
the Blackfeet Indians now live on a reservation east of the park.

There is lots of big game among the mountains, and the Rocky Mountain
sheep and mountain goats seem able to climb up the steep sides of the
rocks as easily as a fly goes up a wall.

The park is named from its 60 glaciers, but is even more famous for its
250 lakes. People used to think that they had to go to Switzerland to
see the most beautiful lakes in the world, but before long the Swiss
will get the habit of "Seeing America First," for the lakes of Glacier
Park are as fine as those in the Alps. There are tiny little ones high
up among the mountains and large ones in the valleys and they are so
deep and clear and still that they are like mirrors. The streams are
wonderful, too. At the Triple Divide, the water separates and goes in
three directions. One stream flows to the Pacific, another to Hudson
Bay, and the third to the Gulf of Mexico.

Perhaps you think that tourists have to endure a lot of hardship to
visit this wild spot, but if you could see some of these hotels (built
like Swiss chalets), and could eat some of the meals they serve, you
would change your mind. The fish from these mountain lakes have a
flavor that beats anything we have ever tasted, and we have lived
beside the Great Lakes all our lives. If we could stay here longer we
should join a camping party, for they have great fun living in tents,
fishing, hunting, tramping over the trails, and climbing glaciers. We
will do our glacier climbing when we get to Ranier Park.

  [Illustration:

  MOUNT RAINIER PARK-STATE OF WASHINGTON

  Snow Fields

  Tatoosh Mountains

  Mt. Rainier from Indian Henry's Camp

  Alpine Flowers]

Uncle Sam has given the American people eleven national parks covering
over seven thousand square miles of the finest scenery in the world,
and Rainier Park in the State of Washington, is one of the most
wonderful of these. Think of a park containing one mountain nearly
three miles high, and having 28 rivers of ice or "glaciers" flowing
down its sides. Thousands of years ago Mount Rainier was a hot-tempered
old fellow and he and the smaller peaks in his range spent their time
belching out fire, but at last in a frightful fit of passion, Mount
Rainier blew off his entire head and where his brains were is now a
huge crater filled with thousands of feet of ice. The other volcanoes
put out their fires long ago, too, and now they all have snowy beards
on their wrinkled old cheeks.

We climbed up one of the glaciers and it surely was "some climb."
Everyone in the party used an alpine stock and it gave us fellows a
kind of shaky feeling in our knees when we could look down a wall of
ice a thousand feet deep into a great crevasse or crack. We were glad
to stand pretty close to the guide who was big and strong and who knows
these glaciers as we boys know the streets of Detroit. We never knew
before that ice can flow like water only much more slowly. The center
of a glacier moves down the mountain about 16 inches a day. There
are tiny little insects living in this ice. We saw them through the
microscope and they were hopping around as though their feet were cold.
There are wee pink plants growing in the ice in some places and they
make the ice look rose . They are so small that you cannot see
them without a microscope.

Rainier Park is one of the famous wild flower gardens of the world.
Blooming at the very edge of the snow fields are miles and miles of
wonderful flowers. There are daisies, columbine, larkspur, and many
others and they are much taller and finer than those in common gardens.
Grown-ups tell us boys that if we associate with great people we shall
grow to be like them, and perhaps these flowers grow so big and tall
from living so near Mount Rainier and the great cedars and firs. We do
not wonder that this part of the park is called "Paradise Valley."

  [Illustration:

  Filling Cans by Machinery

  Salmon Wheel

  Warehouse full of Salmon

  _Salmon Spawning_

  COLUMBIA RIVER SALMON INDUSTRY

  Cooking Retort]

Fishing here on the Columbia River is not just a sport. It is a
business which brings in millions of dollars a year. There are single
factories where a half a million cans of salmon are put up in one day,
and over a hundred million dollars worth of salmon have been taken from
the Columbia river since the white man first came here.

The large salmon are called chinook, and one of these fish weighing
eighty pounds is not an unknown thing, though their average weight
is about twenty pounds. There are many small kinds of salmon, so the
chinook is called "the King of Salmon."

The baby fish are hatched way up in the mountain streams and as they
grow friskier and larger, they swim down the stream into the Columbia
river and on to the ocean where they stay about four years till they
are quite grown up. Then they get homesick for the scenes of their
childhood, and, choosing their mates, they start back to a sort of
"home-coming." It takes a long time, for the current is strong, but if
they are lucky enough to miss getting caught and canned, they arrive at
the "spawning place" after several months, and lay their eggs, and soon
their little fish children are starting out to see the world as their
parents did before them.

The salmon are caught with traps, nets, and water wheels, and ninety
thousand fish have been caught at once in one of the large netted traps
while one wheel has caught fifteen thousand fish in a day. These wheels
are covered with netting and are turned by the swift current of the
river, which raises the fish into the air and tosses them into the boat.

When the boat is full, it is unloaded at the canning factory at the
edge of the river. The Chinese men who kill the fish are very swift,
and the machines which clean the salmon can handle about forty-five a
minute. They are then cut into pieces by machinery before being packed
into cans, and in these cans the salmon is steamed till thoroughly
cooked.

We went through the warehouse of a great canning factory, and it seemed
as though there could not be enough people to eat all that fish, but
Columbia river salmon always finds a market. It is famous everywhere.

  [Illustration:

  El Capitan 3600 ft.

  Bridal Veil Falls

  _Yosemite Falls_

  The Three Brothers

  THE YOSEMITE VALLEY]

There is no country in the world which has kept for its people such
playgrounds as we have in the United States. Probably that is because
we are the only people who have an Uncle Sam. A king or an emperor
would never dream of putting great tracts of land aside for his
subjects to enjoy without paying a cent of toll or a penny of taxes,
but our Uncle Sam has given his nephews and nieces hundreds of miles of
the most wonderful land in the world and these huge parks belong to you
and to us just as much as they do to the Astors and Vanderbilts.

The Yosemite Park is one of the finest of our National Parks. It is
nearly in the center of the state of California. Here you would almost
forget whether it is summer or winter for up on the mountains you are
in the land of perpetual snow, while down in the valley it is like the
finest summer day and birds and flowers are as plentiful as on a June
morning. There are all sorts of trees, too. Some of them are giant
redwood trees, cousins of the big sequoias. As you go higher and higher
in a mountainous country, the trees grow smaller and smaller until they
become dwarfs. Our guide showed us trees fully sixty years old whose
trunks were no larger than a pencil.

The largest mass of solid rock in the world is in Yosemite Park. The
Indians used to worship it as the great chief of the valley and the
early Spaniards named it El Capitan which means "The Captain." On a
clear day the people in the San Joaquin valley sixty miles away can see
this giant rock.

The cascades of the Yosemite Park are among the finest on earth.
The Bridal Veil is like a shower of lace or mist and is called "the
birthplace of the rainbow," because there are so many rainbows playing
in the spray. One of the cascades is called by the queer Indian name
of Lung-oo-too-koo-ya. The Yosemite Falls would make Niagara seem like
a dwarf so far as height is concerned, though a much larger volume of
water flows over the rocks at Niagara than at Yosemite Falls.

  [Illustration:

  General Sherman 280 feet high

  Logs on Flat Cars

  The Grizzly Giant Mariposa Grove

  SEQUOIA PARK-CALIFORNIA

  In The Giant Forest]

Today we Berry Wagon Boys have seen the oldest living thing. It began
to grow at least 2000 years before Christ was born, and will probably
be living thousands of years from now. If it could talk, it could tell
wonderful stories of things it saw when the world was young, but it can
only stand and wave its arms gently when the wind blows, for it is just
a tree. It stands with many other giant cedar trees in Sequoia Park,
California, and until a hunter discovered it in 1879, probably no white
man had ever seen it. This hunter named the tree "General Sherman,"
and it surely looks like the commanding officer of this huge tree
regiment. It is a sequoia tree 279 feet high and so large that twenty
men standing with outstretched arms can just reach around it.

The Grizzly Giant, the biggest sequoia in Yosemite Park, is much more
shaggy-looking and battered than the general, and its heart has been
eaten out by fire, but it is a brave old giant and keeps right on
living in spite of that painful accident.

The sequoias are named after Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian who invented
an alphabet and a written language for his tribe. These trees will
surely "keep his name green" long after any other monument would have
turned to dust. The sequoias are sometimes called "the Methuselahs of
the forest," but that old Bible character only lived to be 969 years
old, and these giant trees are mere babies at that age.

We boys think the sequoia forest the most solemn place we were ever in.
The trees tower up so high above you and make you feel so sort of small
and new and useless! Then there is scarcely a sound, and you cannot
hear your own footsteps on the soft carpet of pine needles.

It seems dreadful to cut down trees which have been growing so long,
yet occasionally one is made into lumber. After standing for a thousand
years or more in the forest, it must seem strange to be cut into
sections, loaded on flat cars, and started on a journey to some distant
place to be made into ship masts or furniture or some other thing of
which the tree never dreamed when it stood in its home on the <DW72> of
the Sierras.

  [Illustration:

  Hopi Point

  Side Walls of THE GRAND CANYON

  The Cambrian Plateau—_North from Grand View Point_]

The Grand Canyon of Arizona does not look like a real place. It seems
like a place for giants, everything is so huge and wonderful. It is as
though some great giant had dug his house out of solid rock. He did not
make the walls smooth, but chiseled them out in strange shapes like
castles and towers and temples, and he made the sides so steep that for
thousands of years no human being dared to go down into his cellar.
Instead of leaving the walls gray, he stained them with purples and
pinks and browns and reds, and yellows, so that Joaquin Miller, the
California poet, called the Grand Canyon a "paint pot 218 miles long
and 15 miles wide." Our giant was a thirsty old fellow, so he let the
Colorado river flow through his cellar. When you stand on the rim of
the canyon, the river looks like a little thread of silver ribbon, but
if you were to descend 6000 feet, you would discover that the Colorado
is a wild, dashing, terrible river—so wild that only a few men have
ever tried to launch their boats on it, and some of those few have lost
their lives in the attempt.

The Indians found several trails leading into the canyon, but they did
not tell their secret to the pale-face. However, when the white men
=did= discover the trails, they spread the good news and now you can go
to the very rim of the canyon in a Pullman car, can stay at a splendid
hotel, and can make the descent to the bottom of the canyon in perfect
safety, for there are guides to lead the way and sure-footed little
donkeys to carry you. The "hurricane deck" of one of these mules is not
the most comfortable place to spend a day, but the views one gets on
the trip are worth all the trouble. These pictures can only give you a
faint idea of the wonders of the Grand Canyon.

It would be foolish for us to try to describe the scenery because
grown-ups have tried it and failed, but we would like to tell about the
Hopi Indians who live in their funny little huts near the hotel and who
may be seen weaving baskets, making jewelry and pottery, and dancing
their queer dances, but this page will not hold any more words.

  [Illustration:

  OIL FIELDS OF TEXAS

  Opening a Gusher]

It must have been a pretty dark old world before people found out about
making kerosene from petroleum, for candles and queer little lamps
burning lard, sperm-oil, or camphine, furnished all the light there was
at night. All that time there were great lakes of petroleum down deep
in the earth, but when it oozed out to the surface, people thought it
was a nuisance and often abandoned their greasy farms. Later these same
farms were worth a fortune.

It was a Pennsylvania man who first decided to bore for oil, and people
thought him a little bit flighty to do such an unheard-of thing. When
his oil well began to spurt out 35 barrels of oil a day, and people
learned how valuable this oil was, the whole country got excited and
in almost every neighborhood someone bored for oil. Of course in many
states they were disappointed, but vast fortunes have been made from
the oil wells of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas,
Oklahoma, California, and Texas.

The Texas oil fields we visited were interesting although very greasy
and smelly. The great derricks made the fields look as though a lot of
war vessels were lying at anchor, for they resemble the masts of modern
battle ships. These derricks hold the heavy steam drills which bore
down into the earth. When a big gusher is struck, it sometimes spurts
out a thousand barrels of oil a day, and you may be sure that no one is
allowed to be careless with matches on the oil fields, for if a gusher
or an oil tank gets afire, it is almost impossible to stop it, and
immense damage is done.

The oil is piped from the oil fields or taken in huge tanks to some
city to be made into kerosene, gasoline, benzine, and scores of other
useful articles. Nothing is wasted, for from the left-overs, perfumes,
chewing-gum, and lots of other surprising things are made. These are
called by-products.

On some of the railroads oil is used instead of coal in the engines,
and oil is also used in large quantities to keep the roadbed hard and
free from dust. In many parts of the country there are fine oiled auto
pikes. All of these things take a lot of petroleum, and it is a lucky
thing for America that she is the oiliest country in the world.

  [Illustration:

  THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY IN KENTUCKY & TENNESSEE

  _Seed Head_

  Curing Barn

  A Field of Ripe Tobacco

  Frame for Hauling Tobacco]

Among all the sights that Columbus and his men saw in the new world,
nothing amazed them more than to see the Indians "eating fire and
breathing smoke from the nostrils," but evidently the explorers were
not very much afraid to learn the trick from the Indians. When they
went back to Spain they took a lot of tobacco with them, and the
Spanish men and women soon had the smoking habit. It was Sir Walter
Raleigh who started the fashion in the court of Queen Elizabeth in
England. It seems as though he might have found something more useful
to do. The custom grew and spread all over the world. It is lucky for
us that the early explorers did not get the scalping habit along with
the tobacco habit or by this time we Americans would be a scalpless
race!

The settlers learned from the Indians how to grow the tobacco and
before long the great plantations of Maryland and Virginia were
bringing a lot of wealth to the colonists, and people even paid their
taxes in tobacco. Today it is grown in many states and almost every
land, but the United States raises more than any other country, and
when we speak of the wealth of our nation, we must include tobacco
because its sale here and abroad brings in vast sums of money.

Tobacco seeds are as small as grains of sand, and we BERRY WAGON BOYS
have held in our hands enough seeds to furnish plants for a large
plantation. A field of tobacco is a beautiful sight, for the plants
grow quite high and have huge, smooth, dark green leaves. When the
leaves grow yellow, the farmers cut off the stalks and hang them on
sticks or wires, and when the leaves are stripped from the stems they
are hauled to the "curing barn" to be "cured" or dried. These barns
are kept hot all of the time, until the leaves are cured when they are
started off to market.

In many places tobacco is grown under great tents which make the fields
look like an army encampment.

  [Illustration:

  COTTON-FIELDS-OF-ALABAMA

  Cotton Gin

  Cotton Compress]

A cotton field is a great sight. The plants come up about to our waists
and the fluffy tufts of white cotton pop out of the green pods or bolls
just as chestnuts burst out of their burrs. The <DW64> cotton pickers go
up and down the rows many times, for the cotton does not all ripen at
the same time.

We saw loads and loads of cotton being taken to the ginhouse where
the cotton gin picks out all the seeds and leaves the snowy cotton
ready to be pressed into bales. The seeds are not wasted for the oil
is pressed out and sold to be used, as olive oil is used in cooking
and salad. Sometimes this oil is sold to men who get mixed in putting
on the labels and instead of marking the bottles of oil with American
labels, they get marked as fancy olive oil from Italy. This must be
very humiliating to the cottonseed oil, for it cannot speak a word of
Italian and is ashamed of the lie that is printed on its front.

When the cotton is taken out of the gin, it is ready to go to the
compress and be pressed into bales or huge bundles. A bale is about the
size of a traveling man's sample trunk and the cotton is squeezed in so
tightly that the bales have to be wrapped in burlap and bound with iron
bands to keep the cotton from bursting out. These great bales weigh
about five hundred pounds and we have seen the river boats loaded down
to the water's edge and railroad stations piled high with them. They
are sent to the cotton mills in various parts of our own country and
in foreign lands to be made into cloth. People all over the world use
cloth that once grew on our southern plantations. When we learned this,
we looked at the fluffy tufts with new interest. Perhaps this tuft
would be woven into a Kimona for a Japanese girl. Maybe that one would
someday be in the sail of a fishing boat off New Foundland or a tent on
the Sahara Desert, or a sheet on a hospital cot in San Francisco or New
York.

Cotton is grown some in other countries, but American cotton is
considered the best and brings in great wealth to our Uncle Sam.

  [Illustration:

  Reading Room Library of Congress

  Arlington Cemetery

  South Front of White House

  Lincoln Memorial

  Mount Vernon

  CITY OF WASHINGTON]

In SEEING AMERICA FIRST, we have left Washington till the last just as
you have cake and ice cream to wind up a dinner.

The capitol is like a great marble palace and it would be easy to get
lost in those long corridors. We saw the House of Representatives with
the congressmen sitting at their desks like grown-up schoolboys in a
very handsome school-room. We climbed into the huge dome, and we went
into the Senate Chamber. The most impressive place was the Supreme
Court with the Chief Justices in their long black silk robes. We
wondered how people ever dared to break any American laws.

We walked a mile on Pennsylvania Avenue to get to the White House,
where the President lives and has his business offices. It certainly is
a fine place and its grounds and rooms are very grand and stately.

The American flag never looked better to us than when we saw it
floating at Arlington, the National Cemetery, where 16000 soldiers are
buried. Our country honors its heroes here and by many fine monuments,
and buildings, in the parks and squares of Washington. Some of these,
like the Lincoln Memorial, are very fine.

If a person were very old and had seen all the sights in the world, he
might possibly auto over 200 miles of smooth pavement in Washington,
visit the Capitol, White House, Department Buildings, and Arlington
without having a thrill, but it would be a dried-up old Methuselah who
could go through the Library of Congress without getting excited. We
heard a man say as he stood on the great stairway, "It is so wonderful
that it takes all my words away!"

Best of all was our trip to Mount Vernon, the home of Washington
for forty years. It is an old-fashioned white colonial house on the
banks of the Potomac river. We walked through halls where Washington
had walked, saw the queer old kitchen and brick oven where his meals
were cooked, the dining room and banquet hall where the Washingtons
entertained, and the room where "The Father of his Country" died. He
is buried out in the garden he loved so well and thousands of tourists
visit the spot each year.

We Berry Wagon Boys are as proud of being Americans first as we are of
SEEING AMERICA FIRST! We hope that all American boys and girls feel
just the same about it.

[Illustration]




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:


  Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_.

  Emboldened text is surrounded with equals signs: =bold=.

  Inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been standardized.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Seeing America First, by Eleanor Colby

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