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 of in the American newspapers, as likely to place in peril
the flank of the expeditionary force as it followed the devious track of
swamp and forest which has on one side Minnesota, and on the other the
Canadian Dominion.

Since my departure from Canada the weather had been intensely warm:
pleasant in Detroit, warm in Chicago, hot in Milwaukie, and sweltering,
blazing in St. Paul, would have aptly described the temperature, although