I reached this old French town on the twelfth of February. The town and settlement adjacent extended over a prairie nine miles long, and from one to two miles broad, a beautiful plateau of land, somewhat sandy, but for many years abundantly productive, furnishing supplies to traders and to the military post established there. It also furnished two cargoes of grain to be used as seed by the starving settlement at Selkirk, which were conveyed thither by way of the Mississippi, St. Peter and Red rivers. The earliest authentic mention of the place refers to the establishment of a post called St. Nicholas, on the east bank of the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Wisconsin, by Gov. De La Barre, who, in 1683, sent Nicholas Perrot with a garrison of twenty men to hold the post. The first official document laying claim to the country on the Upper Mississippi, issued in 1689, has mention of the fort. This document we transcribe entire: "Nicholas Perrot, commanding for the king, at the post of the Nadouessioux, commissioned by the Marquis Denonville, governor and lieutenant governor of all New France, to manage the interests of commerce amongst the Indian tribes and people of the Bay des Puants (Green Bay), Nadouessioux (Dakotahs), Maseontins, and other western nations of the Upper Mississippi, and to take possession in the king's name of all the places where he has heretofore been, and whither he will go. "We, this day, the eighth of May, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine, do, in the presence of the Reverend Father Marest, of the Society of Jesus, missionary among the Nadouessioux; of Monsieur de Borieguillot (or Boisguillot), commanding the French in the neighborhood of the Ouiskonche (Wisconsin), on the Mississippi; Augustin Le Gardeur, Esq., Sieur de Caurnont, and of Messeurs Le Sueur, Hibert, Lemire and Blein: "Declare to all whom it may concern, that, being come from the Bay des Puants, and to the lake of the Ouiskonches, and to river Mississippi, we did transport ourselves to the country of the Nadouessioux, on the border of the river St. Croix, and at the mouth of the river St. Pierre (Minnesota), on the bank of which were the Mantantans; and further up to the interior to the northeast of the Mississippi, as far as the Menchokatoux, with whom dwell the majority of the Songeskitens, and other Nadouessioux, who are to the northeast of the Mississippi, to take possession for, and in the name of, the king of the countries and rivers inhabited by the said tribes, and of which they are proprietors. The present act done in our presence, signed with our hand and subscribed." Then follow the names of the persons mentioned. The document was drawn up at Green Bay.