This was until 1816 the principal establishment of the British Northwest Company upon these waters, and is now applied to the same purpose by the American Fur Company.
From Lac au Sable, we ascended the Mississippi to the Upper Red Cedar Lake, which may be considered as the head of the navigation of that river. The whole distance, 350 miles, is almost uninhabitable. The first part of the route the country is generally somewhat elevated and interspersed with pine woods. The latter part is level wet prairie.
The sources of this river flow from a region filled with lakes and swamps, whose geological character indicates a recent formation, and which, although the highest table-land of this part of the Continent, is yet a dead level, presenting to the eye a succession of dreary uninteresting objects. Interminable marshes, numerous ponds, and a few low, naked, sterile plains, with a small stream, not exceeding sixty feet in width, meandering in a very crooked channel through them, are all the objects which are found to reward the traveller for the privations and difficulties which he must encounter in his ascent to this forbidding region.
The view on all sides is dull and monotonous. Scarcely a living being animates the prospect, and every circumstance recalled forcibly to our recollection that we were far removed from civilized life.
From Lac au Sable to the mouth of the St. Peter's, the distance by computation is six hundred miles. The first two hundred present no obstacles to navigation. The land along the river is of a better quality than above; the bottoms are more numerous, and the timber indicates a stronger and more productive soil. But near this point commence the great rapids of the Mississippi, which extend more than two hundred miles. The river flows over a rocky bed, which forms a continuous succession of rapids, all of which are difficult and some dangerous. The country, too, begins here to open, and the immense plains in which the buffaloes range approach the river. These plains continue to the Falls of St. Anthony.
They are elevated fifty or sixty feet above the Mississippi, are destitute of timber, and present to the eye a flat, uniform surface, bounded at the distance of eight or ten miles by high ground. The title of this land is in dispute between the Chippewas and Sioux, and their long hostilities have prevented either party from destroying the game in a manner as improvident as is customary among the Indians. It is consequently more abundant than in any other region through which we travelled.
From the post, at the mouth of the St. Peter's, to Prairie du Chien, and from that place to Green Bay, the route is too well-known to render it necessary that I should trouble you with any observations respecting it.
The whole distance travelled by the party between the 24th of May and the 24th of September exceeded 4,200 miles, and the journey was performed without the occurrence of a single untoward accident sufficiently important to deserve recollection.
These notices are so short and imperfect that I am unwilling to obtrude them upon your patience. But the demands upon your attention are so imperious, that to swell them into a geographical memoir would require more time for their examination than any interest which I am capable of giving the subject would justify.
I propose hereafter to submit some other observations to you in a different shape.