stream. But the Falls of St. Anthony, a
few miles above St. Paul, interrupt all navigation, and the course of the
river for a considerable distance above the fall is full of rapids and
obstructions. Immediately above and below St. Paul the Mississippi River
receives several large tributary streams from north-east and north west;
the St. Peter's or Minnesota River coming from near the Coteau of the
Missouri, and the St. Croix unwatering the great tract of pine land which
lies West of Lake Superior; but it is not alone to water communication
that St. Paul owes its commercial importance. With the same restless
energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the
future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching
out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited
prairies and pine forests of the North. There is probably no part of the
world in which the inhabitants are so unhealthy as in America; but the
life is more trying than the climate, the constant use of spirit taken
"straight," the incessant chewing of tobacco with its disgusting
accompaniment, the want of healthier exercise, the habit of eating in a
hurry, all tend to cut short the term of man's life in the New World.'
Nowhere have I seen so many young wrecks. "Yes, sir, we live fast here,"
said a general officer to me one day on the Missouri; "And we die fast
too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of
course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid
seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere
from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity
of the surrounding prairies, its hotels--and they are many--are crowded
with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they
seek, but the majority come to Minnesota only to die.

Business connected with the supply of the troops during the coming winter
in Red River, detained me for some weeks in Minnesota, and as the
letters which I had despatched upon my arrival giving the necessary
particulars regarding the proposed arrangements, required at least a week
to obtain replies to, I determined to visit in the interim the shores of
Lake Superior. Here I would glean what tidings I could of the progress of
the Expedition, from whose base at Fort William, I would be only 100
miles distant, as well as examine the% chances of Fenian intervention, so
much talked