Pacific had gotten a track laid clear
through to Breckenridge, so as to connect with Commodore Kittson's
steamboats. When Hill first reached Saint Paul, there was no
agriculture north of that point. The wheat-belt still lingered around
Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. The fact that seeds can be
acclimated, like men and animals, was still in the ether.

The Red River Valley is a wonderfully rich district. Louis Agassiz first
mapped it and wrote a most interesting essay on it. Here was a wonderful
prehistoric lake, draining to the south through the Minnesota and
Mississippi Rivers, and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. By a volcanic rise
of the land on the southern end, centuries ago, the current was turned
and ran north, making what we call the Red River, emptying into Lake
Winnipeg, which in turn has an outlet into Hudson Bay.

Agassiz came up the Mississippi River on a trip in Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-five. The boat he traveled on was one for which James J. Hill was
agent. Naturally, it devolved on Hill to show the visitors the sights
thereabouts. And among these sights happened to be our friend Kittson,
who, full of enthusiasm, offered to pilot the party across to the Red
River. They accepted and ascended to Fort Garry. Agassiz, full of
scientific enthusiasm, wrote out his theory about the prehistoric lake.
And science, now, the world over, calls the Red River Valley, "Lake
Agassiz." With Louis Agassiz was his son Alexander, a fine young man
with pedagogic bent, headed for his father's place as Curator of the
Museum at Harvard.

From Winnipeg the party was supplied an Indian guide, who took them
across to Lake Superior. Then it was that Alexander Agassiz saw the
wonders of Lake Superior copper and Lake Superior iron. And Harvard lost
a professor, but the world gained a multimillionaire. Louis Agassiz had
no time to make money, but his son Alexander was not thus handicapped.

The report of Agassiz on the mineral wealth of Lake Superior
corroborated Mr. Hill's own opinions of this country, which he had
traversed with dog-sleds. Money was scarce, but he, even then, made a
small investment in Lake Superior mineral lands, and has been increasing
it practically ever since. A recent present to the stockholders of the
Great Northern of an iron tract worth many millions of dollars had its
germ in that memorable day when James J. Hill met the Agassiz party on
the levee in Saint Paul and unconsciously changed their route