Saint-Gaudens

Augustus, the greatest of modern sculptors. Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1848. His father was French; his mother, Irish. His parents brought him to New York in infancy. At the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a cameo cutter. At nineteen he had the good fortune to go to Paris and study in the French School of Fine Arts. Returning to America he established a home at Cornish, Vermont, where he died August 3, 1907. Saint-Gaudens is no doubt the greatest American sculptor. He studied his art abroad and part of his work was done abroad, but through it all he was American in thought and American in sympathy. His first work of note was a Hiawatha. His favorite productions were American: Admiral Farragut in Madison Square, New York City; the Shaw monument at Boston; an equestrian statue of Sherman in Central Park, New York; the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park, Chicago; and, perhaps greatest of all, the Puritan, a memorial statue erected in honor of Deacon Chapin at Springfield, Massachusetts. In all these, merely the more notable of his American subjects, St. Gaudens exhibits sincerity, power, and nobility of feeling. He is never weak. He shares with the cartoonist the gift of catching the popular belief, and expressing the popular conception of his subjects. We feel that one of ourselves has wrought Sherman and Lincoln and the Puritan in lasting bronze. Although intensely American, Saint-Gaudens enjoyed an international reputation. He fashioned a figure of Robert Louis Stevenson for the city of Edinburgh, and a tablet, Amor Caritas, for the French Luxembourg. See Sculpture

St. Germain, a town of France. It is situated on the Seine, a few miles below Sevres and Saint Cloud. The castle and terrace of St. Germain command the valley of the Seine, and afford one of the finest views in Europe. The ancient castle, now a museum of antiquities, was a favorite residence of the French monarchs; whence the French court was called the Court of St. Germain, just as the English court is still called the Court of St. James from the palace of St. James, London. Louis XIV, Margaret of Navarre, and other royal personages were born here. After the English Revolution James II of England and other members of the Stuart family lived here in exile in a sort of dependence on the French king. The royal buildings are now used as barracks and as a military prison. See St. Cloud; St. Denis; Versailles; Paris

St. Gotthard, sant goth'ard, a group of mountain peaks in the central Alps. The pass of St. Gotthard lying at its foot is a lofty, barren valley leading from Lake Lucerne to the valley of the Ticino on the Italian side. The greatest altitude of the pass is a trifle less than 7,000 feet. As in the famous pass of St. Bernard, shelter is afforded by a hospice. At certain seasons of the year the traveler is exposed to snowstorms and avalanches. Up to the beginning of the present century, this was the most frequented of the Alpine passes. In 1832 an excellent carriage road was constructed. The importance of having direct railway communication between Germany and Italy led to the construction of the great St. Gotthard railway tunnel. The tunnel was begun in 1872 at both ends. Eight years were required to complete the work. Two thousand five hundred workmen were employed daily. The cost was $11,350,000. This tunnel is nine and one-fourth miles in length. The central point is 3,786 feet above the sea level. It passes directly under the village of Andermatt, and its middle point is 6,076 feet below the crest of a mountain. The tunnel is twenty-eight feet broad and twenty-one feet high. It has a double line of rails. Trains require twenty minutes to pass through the tunnel. A current of fresh air passes through constantly, so that it is unnecessary to close the car windows. Powerful lanterns, fourteen in all, are hung at intervals to light the way.

Scarcely less interesting than the pass and the tunnel are the engineering methods adopted to enable trains to reach the entrances of the tunnel. The valley of the Ticino, on the Italian side, as well as that of the northern stream, which empties into Lake Lucerne, is too steep for railway trains. The track has been lengthened in each case by excavating spiral tunnels in the sides of the valleys. The train enters a tunnel in the solid rock, passes around an interior loop, and reappears at a point over the spot where it entered the mountain side. There are no less than three of these underground spirals on the Lake Lucerne side of the mountain. There are four in the valley of the Ticino. Each of these interior loops gives the railway an increased length of a mile or two, and enables the track to rise correspondingly.

See Tunnel; Cenis; Simplon

St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic 1,200 miles off the west coast of Africa. It is a volcanic cone rising from the bottom of the Atlantic and terminating in a plateau 2,700 feet above sea level. At the time of its discovery in 1502 the island was covered with heavy forests of ebony and other valuable tree, but the combined efforts of the goat and the lumberman have reduced the heights to a rain-washed barren. Before the opening of the Suez Canal, St. Helena was in the route of ships bound for Cape Town, Australia, and India, and was an important place of call. It is still a naval coaling station. Area, 47 square miles; permanent population, 3,000; soldiers, 1,532; churches, 8; schools, 8; imports, $500,000 a year. A postal system is reinforced by telephone lines and eighty miles of telegraph lines. An ocean cable touches the island on its way to Cape Town. In 1651 the island was occupied by the East India Company and later became a British possession. In 1815 Napoleon was banished to St. Helena. He died here in 1821. During the late South African War 5,000 Boer prisoners were held here until the close of hostilities. See Napoleon

St. Joseph, in size, the third city in Missouri. It is the county seat of Buchanan County. It is located on the east bank of the Missouri River, about 130 miles below Omaha and fifty miles above Kansas City. It is the center of a rich agricultural section and has a large wholesale business. Ten railroads center here. A half million pieces of baggage are handled annually. A bridge constructed at the cost of three-quarters of a million spans the Missouri. St. Joseph is one of the great stock centers. There are five packing houses slaughtering three-quarters of a million cattle and as many sheep yearly. Nearly two million hogs are marketed at St. Joseph annually. A fur post was established at St. Joseph by a French trader in 1826. The town was incorporated in 1845. In 1909 there was a population of 125,000. The city is growing rapidly. An imposing courthouse has the unusual shape of a Maltese cross. The city is well provided with churches, hospitals, public schools, a city hall, market, public library, and opera houses. The high school building is one of the finest edifices of the sort in the West. The city owns its own electric plant and water system. Water is taken from the Missouri above the Mississippi and is clarified in settling basins and purified by the Jewell system of filtration. There are over forty miles of electric street railways.

St. Lawrence, a river and gulf of North America. The St. Lawrence system occupies one of the great drainage basins of the world. The area is about 530,000 square miles. The water surface of the gulf, the river, the Great Lakes, and their tributaries falls little short of 100,000 square miles. From the source of the St. Louis River in Minnesota to the mouth of the gulf at Anticosti Island the total distance is about 2,200 miles. In direction and location, the St. Lawrence of North America corresponds to the Amazon of South America. Named from the source to the mouth, the different portions of the true St. Lawrence system are known successively as the St. Louis River, Lake Superior, Sault Ste. Marie, Lake Huron, St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Niagara River, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence proper, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. All in all this is the greatest body of fresh water on the globe.

The gulf is a deep estuary formed by the subsidence of the coast. It is, in fact, a drowned river. For length, breadth, and depth the estuary is the greatest in the world. The main channel extends inland a distance of 250 miles to Quebec, affording passage to the largest seagoing vessels. Ships of considerable size ascend as far as Montreal. Navigation above that point is facilitated by means of canals. The chief tributaries of the St. Lawrence proper are the Ottawa and the Saguenay on the Canadian side, and the Richelieu from the American side. The descent from Lake Ontario to Quebec is about 230 feet. Immediately below Lake Ontario the river is divided into numerous channels by the Thousand Islands. There are between 1,000 and 2,000 of these islands. They are beautiful spots of verdure. The locality is noted as a summer resort. A few miles above Montreal occur the rapids of Lachine. The total descent exceeds that of Niagara Falls. Shooting Lachine Rapids on a steamer is one of the delights of the summer tourist. The volume of the St. Lawrence varies but slightly with change of season.

See Montreal; Quebec; Saguenay

St. Louis, the metropolis of Missouri. In population, the fourth city of the American Union. It occupies a rolling tract on the west shore of the Mississippi, twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri. It has a river frontage of nineteen miles. The river bank is paved with cobble stones and is provided with floating wharves for steamboats. Passenger packets run up the Mississippi as far as St. Paul, and ply regularly to New Orleans and Cincinnati. The river business has fallen off of late, and is confined chiefly to the transportation of coal and other heavy freight. Twenty-seven lines of railway reach the city. Most of the eastern trains enter over the Eads Bridge, one of the most remarkable railroad bridges in the world. Others cross by means of the Merchants' Bridge, a few miles above.

All passenger trains use the Union Station. It is one of the largest and best arranged stations in the world. The cost of the structure was $4,500,000. Each train backs into the mammoth train shed and stands upon one of thirty-two parallel tracks. The trains stand at the street level. Incoming passengers pass out through an elegant waiting room. All mail and express matter is dropped by means of elevators to subterranean passages below, where wagons wait to receive it. The building is owned by a company in which the various railroads are stockholders. The cost of operation is charged up to the railroads according to the number of cars run in and out of the station. It is understood that the annual charge per car is somewhere between one and two dollars. The cars of suburban trains that make frequent trips are counted at one-third of their actual number.

A somewhat similar arrangement has been effected for handling a great part of the railroad freight of the city. A large number of the heaviest shippers rent quarters conveniently arranged along a system of platforms provided with switches, elevators, and trucks, all under one local management. Cars of incoming freight are delivered at this depot. Employes of the depot unload the cars, place the freight on trucks, and deliver the trucks at the doors of the various receivers. In like manner, the shippers load trucks at their doors and deliver them to the depot employes, who, in turn, load cars. There are hundreds of employes and a seemingly endless number of trucks, all moving at the same time. A strict system prevails, however. Both railroads and shippers are able to depend to a minute on the time schedule which has been arranged. The advantages of such a system are manifest. A merchant who has goods coming in by several different railroads has them all delivered at the door of his warehouse with the utmost dispatch. All that a wholesaler desiring to ship over a dozen freight lines has to do is to pile the goods on as many different trucks and to push them when loaded to the door of his warehouse. The employes of the depot attend to all details of loading and bring the merchant his receipts from the various railroads. This freight depot is known as the Cupples depot. It was designed by Samuel Cupples and Robert Brookings, two wealthy merchants. They have given the entire premises, together with several adjacent blocks in which shippers have warehouses, to Washington University, the leading educational institution of the city.

In many other respects, the affairs of the city are managed on a high plane. Water is pumped from the Mississippi River, near the mouth of the Missouri, into immense settling tanks from which it is forced in turn into the city mains and into an elevated reservoir. Although the water of the Missouri has a turbid yellow appearance, it comes from the settling tanks as clear and sparkling as crystal. It was until recently accounted of the best quality, but since the sewage of Chicago has been emptied into the Mississippi River through the Illinois, the authorities of St Louis have been much alarmed for the purity of the water supply.

The city has three large hotels, the Lindell, the Southern, and the Planters. The latter has the form of a Greek cross. It occupies an entire block, with an entrance on each of the four surrounding streets. The four corners are occupied for business purposes. In the days before the Civil War the central corridor was the scene of slave auctions. The United States custom house and postoffice, courthouse, Merchants' Exchange, and the Four Courts are imposing buildings.

There are 170,000 volumes in the Free Public Library. Andrew Carnegie has recently given the city a million dollars for the erection of a new building. The Mercantile Library, designed originally for the use of clerks, owns 127,000 volumes. It has one of the pleasantest reading rooms in the United States. A complete system of public, high, and normal schools is maintained. A dozen ward schools, a normal school, and a high school are set apart for the exclusive use of colored people. Washington University, already mentioned, is a heavily endowed, thrifty institution of higher learning. It possesses the usual schools of law, engineering, medicine, dentistry, etc. There are also several preparatory schools and colleges under private and public management, including St. Louis University and the College of Christian Brothers--Catholic institutions. Mary Institute is a school for young ladies.

The manufacturing interests of St. Louis are extensive. Among the important manufactures are those of iron, steel, glass, flour, sugar, beer, bags, tobacco, breakfast foods, boots and shoes, furniture, sash and doors, carriages, wagons, foundry productions, hardware, and agricultural implements. St. Louis is also a center of the meat-packing industry. The red brick manufactured in the city is of excellent quality.

Taking river and rail together, the amount of freight that passes through St. Louis is something enormous. It is an important center in the handling of coal, wheat, flour, tobacco, cotton, sugar, salt, lumber, live stock, and other heavy freight. The coal docks are capacious. The capacity of the grain elevators reaches far into the millions. St. Louis is the leading American market for hardwood lumber.

A French trading post was established on the present site of the city in 1764. In 1803, when the United States came into the possession of St. Louis by the cession of Louisiana, the population of the town had grown to about 1,000, half of whom were negroes. There were at this time about 200 houses, occupying one or two crooked streets parallel to the river. Thirty years later the population was about 6,000. The development of the Missouri country and the overland trade with Santa Fe gave St. Louis its real start. In 1900 the population was reported at 575,238. The estimate for 1909 was 686,369.

See Eads; Mississippi; Steamboat; Shaw'S Gardens; Lead

St. Patrick. See Patrick; Saint

St. Paul, the capital city of Minnesota and the seat of Ramsey County. Its site is on the bluffs of the Upper Mississippi, a few miles below the Falls of St. Anthony, 1,915 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and, at the levee, 695 feet above sea level. It is practically at the head of river navigation, although a series of government locks and dams are under construction with a view to permitting boats to reach the foot of the Falls. The city occupies a slightly area of fifty-five square miles and adjoins Minneapolis, the boundary between the Twin Cities, as St. Paul and Minneapolis are called, being the center of a street. This street is also the boundary line between the counties of Ramsey and Hennepin.

When first seen by white men an Indian village occupied a coulee, since locally known as Pig's Eye. The Indian name of the city was, by translation, "White Rock," having reference to the white sandstone cliffs which border the river. French traders visited the spot in 1658. In 1766 Jonathan Carver of Connecticut claimed to have made a treaty with the Indians according to which he was ceded Carver's Cave, including the present site of the city. During Jefferson's administration, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike purchased a considerable tract of land, now occupied by St. Paul and Fort Snelling, from the Indians for sixty gallons of whiskey. Congress afterward donated the Indians the sum of $20,000 in cash. By 1840 there were two hundred settlers, chiefly Frenchmen, who lived by hunting and fishing, and by trading with the Indians.

In 1849 St. Paul was designated the capital of the new territory. There were at that time thirty-two buildings. In the early settlement of the Northwest St. Paul was the central trading post, holding the key to communication with the East and to the trails and ox-cart routes penetrating the West. The early trade of St. Paul was transacted chiefly with Indians, French trappers, and the garrison of Fort Snelling. Both Indians and soldiers were supplied with whiskey. Groceries, clothing, ammunition, tobacco, firearms, axes, and other implements were exchanged for furs. In fact, the early prosperity of St. Paul was founded largely on the fur industry. It is still an important seat of the manufacture of furs, claiming in this respect to rank as the center of the native fur trade of North America. The furs of the Red River Valley of the North were brought here to market. The arrival of the first steamboat in spring and the coming of the French halfbreeds and Indians, with their creaking ox carts and loads of furs and pemmican, were the events of the year.

The business portion of St. Paul of today is built in a valley flanked by hills that rise to a height of three or four hundred feet, and form a picturesque residential district from favored points on which a beautiful view may be had of the Father of Waters winding its way to the sea. The State Capitol, an imposing building of architectural beauty, constructed mainly of white Georgia marble, crowns one of these hills. The capitol, which was over thirteen years in building, cost $5,000,000. American artists, including La Farge, Pyle, Volk, Blackfield, Simmons, Millet, Walker, Cox, and Zogbaum, have contributed to its decorations. A graceful dome rises 220 feet above the foundation. Upon a commanding site in the residence district, a Roman Catholic cathedral, built of native granite, to cost almost as much as the capitol and rivaling it in architectural beauty, is under construction. The military reservation of Fort Snelling with its historic fort, the State Fish Hatchery, and State Agricultural Fair grounds are other points of interest.

St. Paul has a system of picturesque and beautiful parks, having a total area of 1,478 acres. The most popular of these is Como Park of 425 acres inclosing two connected lakes; the most interesting historically is Indian Mounds Park overlooking the Mississippi, so called by reason of the characteristic monuments built by the aboriginal inhabitants of the region. Along the wooded bluffs of the Mississippi for one-third of its course through the city a driveway connecting with the principal streets of a beautiful residence district has been laid out. A similar driveway on the opposite bank of the river gives a bird's eye view of the capital of the state.

St. Paul has electric lights, electric railways, fine hotels, several federal buildings, a public library, a Young Men's Christian Association building, a Young Women's Christian Association building, a country market-place, and other improvements for which progressive Western cities are noted. The city owns a public auditorium with a seating capacity of 10,500. Besides an excellent system of public schools there are in St. Paul several colleges and universities, including Hamline University, maintained by the Methodists, Macalester College by the Presbyterians, and St. Thomas, a military school maintained by the Catholics. It has both public and private hospitals and sanitariums. Its special pride is its public baths for which an island in the Mississippi has been set apart. In addition to bathhouses with pools for both sexes, there are on the island outdoor gymnasiums for boys and girls and a free day nursery. The city is supplied with water from several lakes in its vicinity whose natural supply is augmented by artesian wells. The system has been provided at a cost of $5,000,000. Eleven million gallons of pure water are supplied daily through 328 miles of mains. A network of sewers provides adequate drainage.

St. Paul is a natural railroad center. Ten trunk lines with 54,000 miles of track center here, making the Minnesota Transfer in the district midway between the two cities the entrepot for freight between the East and the West. The fact that all trains arriving at and departing from St. Paul use the Union Station, gives the city an advantage over its rival, Minneapolis, in the transfer of Passengers.

St. Paul is a port of entry. The goods inspected here annually by the United States custom officers are valued at between $4,000,000 and $5,000,000. Tea shipped directly from Japan is a large item. St. Paul is an important distributing center for clothing, groceries, and machinery. The wholesalers claim a business of $5,000,000,000 a year. There are important manufactures of furniture, stoves, hats, boots and shoes, macaroni, and linseed oil. Meat packing is an important industry. The number of manufacturing plants, large and small, is over six hundred. Their combined annual output is valued at $150,000,000. Fifty-two newspapers are published in St. Paul, several of these in German and Scandinavian. According to the United States census of 1900, the population was 163,065. The city is growing rapidly. The state census of 1905 returned a total of 197,023. The population returned in 1910 was 214,744. The following are additional statistics: