try, so that the following spring was a new era for our county. The first, as also every other steamboat that season, came crowded-deck and cabin-to the utmost capacity. Prescott at this time, had three large three-story public houses, which were filled from first floor to garret, and with these, but a small portion could be thus accommodated. Citizens threw open their doors to the families, thereby protecting them until shelter could be provided. The ware-houses were converted into sleeping apartments, and the levee as well as the prairie back of town, into a kitchen; thus were hundreds provided for during the season. The village of Prescott this year, took its position among the business points of the State. Public houses, ware-houses, stores, mechanic shops and dwellings, were seen springing up as if touched by some magic wand for their existence. Three steam saw-mills were commenced, one by Messrs. PEWETT & LOEHNER, one by D. W. STRICKLAND, and one by COPP & MAXSON, all of which were pushed forward to completion the following year, and which are now furnishing lumber to the place and the surrounding country.

But the season of 1855 presented quite a new order of business for town and country. Previously a very large majority of the farmers of the country, purchased all their provisions, and grain, either from the old settlers, or merchants in town. This year, their farms were sufficiently cultivated to furnish a large surplus; daily the different roads leading to Prescott, might be seen lined with loaded teams, conveying the productions of the land to market-Prescott, being the principal shipping point on the Mississippi, for North-Western Wisconsin. This enabled the farmers to commence improvements in the way of farm building, as also adding to the amount of their cultivated lands, while its effect in the country, is scattered over the whole. It gave to the markettown a new impetus-such an one as the market-towns upon Lake Michigan received, when the adjacent country began to pour in its surplus for market. Our merchants were enabled

to expand very much in business, a wholesale trade brought into demand, and our ware-houses loaded with flour and grain, most of which are taken to the west side of the Mississippi, to supply that vast territory recently opened for settlement. While many thousands of dollars have been expended in the erection of mills, business houses, shops, and dwellings, it is probable that more than double the amount would have been expended, had it been possible to have obtained lumber sufficient. Prescott, like all other towns in the Upper Country, suffered from this cause this year.

The village of Prescott is located in the north-west corner of the State, at the junction of the Mississippi river and Lake St. Croix. The streams are about one thousand feet wide, with an average depth of 15 feet. The bank slopes easily to the river, forming an excellent levee, and rises in a vertical ledge generally along the Lake. The entire front is nearly in the form of a crescent. The lower part of the village ascends gently from the Lake and river for a distance varying from thirty to sixty rods; it then rises about seventy feet, and there spreads out into a beautiful prairie, half a mile in width. This elevation is also semi-circular. The front is worn out

in scolloped shape, and upon the summit of each " scollop" the Indians have erected mounds. From every portion of this prairie, the most charming views are presented-long stretches of the Mississippi, up and down the river, dotted with islands, with bold, precipitous banks, and the green prairies and rounded hills of Minnesota stretching away far in the distance. Lake St. Croix, too, opens a long vista of gorgeous scenery. No description, however, would give an adequate impression of the beauties of the place. Nearly opposite the center of the water front, there is a narrow, low peninsula, stretching southward, between the river and the Lake, called Point Douglas, and some half a mile up the river there is a small village of the same name, containing two stores, a hotel, and several dwellings.

Since the survey of COPP & MAXSON, mentioned in the foregoing pages, there have been three additions made to the town; one bordering on the Lake shore, and one on the river, by Messrs. HILTON DOE and GEORGE SHAZER, the oldest resident farmers in the vicinity, and another in the south-eastern part of the town, by ALVAH FOWLER. In these additions there are very desirable building sites, many of which have been sold, during the past season, to persons designing to erect dwellings next year. Near the Lake, Mr. DoE has erected a large and handsome dwelling house, and laid out grounds, which he intends to adorn with fruit and shade trees, flowers and shrubbery, at an early day. The town proprietors have made very liberal provisions for sites for public buildings and grounds; they are located on the prairie near the center of the town. The public square alone contains 360 square rods. Mr. DoE designs to lay out another addition, in the northwestern part of the town, and will also reserve ample grounds for religious and educational purposes.

HUDSON, AND ITS TRIBUTARY REGION.

BY T. DWIGHT HALL, OF HUDSON.

If the reader will take the pains to consult a map, he will observe, that between the navigable waters of the Mississippi and those of Lake Superior, which, with their connections, form the two longest lines of inland navigation in the world— there intervenes a tract of country, somewhat more than one hundred miles in length. At the nearest point to the latter, which can be reached by steamboats, such as usually navigate the Upper Mississippi, stands the city of Hudson. Nothing can be more obvious to one well acquainted with the geography of our country, than that, whenever easy and rapid means of communication shall be opened between those two points, there must of necessity, grow up at each of them, a city of great commercial importance, since the whole trade between those two great channels of inter-communication, which span a Continent and furnish a highway for a nation teeming with population, wealth and enterprise, must then inevitably pass through, and center at those points. Were they, therefore, situated in the midst of a morass, and backed by a country as waste and barren as the great Sahara, yet, whenever a quick and easy transit could be made between them, we should predict with equal certainty, their rapid growth, and speedy expansion, to the rank of commercial cities. But to Hudson at least, nature has been far more bountiful of her favors.

Place your thumb in a position, as it were, at the mouth of Willow river, and with the index finger, describe an arc, the

chord of which shall be the shore of Lake St. Croix, and you have nearly the shape of the level plat on which the town is situated; and surely a more convenient and beautiful spot on which to build a city, could seldom be found. Raised so high as to be far above any high-water mark, yet so low and so gradual in its rise, as to make the water even at the lowest stages, easy of access-penetrated in its center by a clear and beautiful stream, which furnishes abundant water power-its circumference composed of "bluffs," which seldom rise so abruptly, as not to be capable of being easily transformed into handsome and convenient situations for residences, and being cut through by numerous ravines, which furnish excellent routes for thorough-fares to and from the surrounding country-and having spread out before it, for a mile in width, the silvery sheet of Lake St. Croix, with its picturesque and commanding opposite shore, and on whose waters the largest river-boats may, at all times, float-beauty and convenience seem blended together here, to an extent which could scarcely be equalled.

This beautiful spot, marked by nature as the site of a future city, early attracted the attention of the pioneers of the St. Croix Valley, and in the fall of 1848, AMMAH ANDREWS, PHILIP ALDRICH, JAMES SANDERS and JOSEPH ABEAR, laid out a tract of about thirty acres, near the mouth of Willow river, under the name of Buena Vista. At that time, only three or four rude huts served to distinguish the town site, from the wild country, in which, for miles around, there was scarcely a habitation.

St. Croix county, the county seat of which was soon after fixed at "Willow River," then included the greater portion of North-Western Wisconsin, and all that part of Minnesota, which lies between the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers, St. Paul being then one of the election precincts in that county. All this territory, according to a census taken by Dr. ALDRICH in 1845, contained only 1419 inhabitants.