uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the
sections. When the sun rose we were well into Minnesota, the-most
northern of the Union States. Around on every side stretched the great
wheat lands of the North-west, that region whose farthest limits lie far
within the territories where yet the red man holds his own. Here, in the
south of Minnesota, one is only on the verge of that great wheat region.
Far beyond the northern limit of the state it stretches away into
latitudes unknown, save to the fur trader and the red man, latitudes
which, if you tire not on the road, good reader, you and I may journey
into together.

The City of St. Paul, capital and chief town of the State of Minnesota,
gives promise of rising to a very high position among the great trade
centres of America. It stands almost at the head of the navigation of the
Mississippi River, about 2050 miles from New Orleans; not that the great
river has its beginning here or in the vicinity, its cradle lies far to
the north, 700 miles along the 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