Lead was the main item of freight, although the first tricklings
of the great flood of Iowa and Illinois wheat were beginning to run the
metal a close second. To show what an event it was, I need only say that
there were delegates at the celebration from as far east as Cleveland;
and folks said that a ferry was to be built to bring the railway trains
into Dubuque. And the best of all these dreams was, that they came true;
and we were before many years freed of the great burden of coming so far
to market.
During the next winter the word came to us that the railroad--another
one--had crept as far out into the state as Iowa City, and when the
freighting season of 1856 opened up, we swung off to the railhead there.
Soon, however, the road was at Manchester, then at Waterloo, then at
Cedar Falls, and before many years the Iowa Central came up from the
south clear to Mason City, and the days of long-distance freighting were
over for most of the state; which is now better provided with railways,
I suppose, than any other agricultural region in the world.
I couldn't then foresee any such thing, however. They talk of the
far-sighted pioneers; but as far as I was concerned I didn't know B from
a bull's foot in this business of the progress of the country. I
whoa-hawed and gee-upped my way back to Monterey Centre, thinking how
great a disadvantage it would be always to have to wagon it back and
forth to the river--with the building of the railway into Dunlieth that
year right before my face and eyes.
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