Carver followed the route of Joliet and Marquette through Green Bay and up Fox River to the great town of the Winnebagoes, where he found the Indians presided over by a queen instead of a sachem. Carver speaks of the extreme richness of soil and abundance of cultivated products and wild game, mentioning grapes, plums, Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, watermelons, and tobacco from cultivation; fish from the lake; wild fowl so abundant that frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes together, while deer, bears, and beavers were very numerous. The usual portage was made by him from the Fox to the Wisconsin River, into which his canoes were launched on the 8th of October. Seven days carried him to Prairie-du-Chien, at the junction of the Wisconsin and Mississippi, which was at that time a town of some three hundred families and had become a great trading mart for the adjacent tribes, who assembled in great numbers annually in the latter part of May. [Illustration: _The falls of_ St. Anthony _in the River_ MISSISSIPPI, _near 2400 Miles from its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico._ (From Carver's Book.)] At Prairie-du-Chien Carver parted with the traders, who were to winter at that point, and obtaining a Canadian as interpreter and a Mohawk Indian as a servant, he purchased a canoe, and on October 19th, proceeding up the Mississippi, he fell in with a straggling band of Indians which barely failed of plundering him. November 1st brought him to Lake Pepin, near which he discovered what appeared to be the remains of extended intrenchments, centuries old, as he thought, but which are now known to be Indian mounds, probably erected as sites for their wigwams, so as to keep them above the annual overflow and inundation. The coming of winter and the forming of river ice obliged him to quit his canoe opposite the mouth of the St. Peter, or Minnesota River, whence by land he reached the Falls of St. Anthony on November 17, 1766, probably the first white American to visit them. The noise and appearance of the Falls of St. Anthony impressed Carver very strongly, and his account of them is worthy of reproduction in view of the changes that have taken place within the past one hundred and thirty years: "This amazing body of waters, which are above 250 yards over, form a most pleasing cataract; they fall perpendicularly about thirty feet, and the rapids below, in the space of 300 yards more, render the descent considerably greater; so that when viewed at a distance, they appear to be much higher than they really are. "In the middle of the Falls stands a small island about forty feet broad and somewhat longer, on which grow a few cragged hemlock and spruce trees; and about half way between this island and the eastern shore is a rock lying at the very edge of the Fall, in an oblique position, that appears to be about five or six feet broad and thirty or forty long."