of sawed lumber.  Screens are built as a protection against wind, and a caboose stands somewhere in the centre, or according to western parlance it might be called a cabin.  Sometimes the raft will be running in a fine current; then only a couple of hands are on the watch and at the helm.  The rest are seen either loitering about observing the country, or reclining, snugly wrapped up in their blankets.  Some of these rafts must cover as much as two acres.  Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane was not a much greater phenomenon.

LETTER IX.

 Shores of lake superior.

Description of the country around Lake Superior—­ Minerals—­ Locality of a commercial city—­ New land districts—­ Buchanan—­ Ojibeway—­ Explorations to the sources of the Mississippi—­ Henry R. Schoolcraft—­ M. Nicollet’s report—­ Resources of the country above Crow Wing.

Crow Wing, October 7, 1856.

There is one very important section of this territory that I have not yet alluded to.  I mean that part which borders on Lake Superior.  This calls to mind that there is such a place as Superior City.  But that is in Wisconsin, not in Minnesota.  From that city (so called, yet city in earnest it is like to be) to the nearest point in this territory the distance by water is twelve miles.  The St. Louis River is the dividing line for many miles between Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The country round about this greatest of inland seas is not the most fertile.  It is somewhat bleak, on the northern shore especially, but is nevertheless fat in minerals.  On the banks of the St. Louis River the soil is described, by the earliest explorers as well as latest visiters, to be good.  The river itself, though it contains a large volume of water, is not adapted to navigation, on account of its rapids.

Those who have sailed across Lake Superior to the neighborhood of Fond-du-Lac appear to have been charmed by the scenery of its magnificent islands and its rock-bound shores.  Most people, I suppose, have heard of its beautiful cluster of islands called the Twelve Apostles.  One peculiar phenomenon often mentioned is the boisterous condition of its waters at the shore, which occurs when the lake itself is perfectly calm.  The water is said to foam and dash so furiously as to make it almost perilous to land in a small boat.  This would seem to be produced by some movement of the waters similar to the flow of the tide; and perhaps the dashing after all is not much more tumultuous than is seen on a summer afternoon under the rocks of Nahant, or along the serene coast at Phillips Beach.