The history of the West has presented some remarkable facts, contrary to the ordinary experience of human progress. It is assumed, as an historical fact, in European or Asiatic progress, that the growth of towns and states must be slow. It requires generations to bring them to maturity, and even imperial power has failed to create cities, without the aid of time and gradual increase. But, this has been reversed in America. We cannot take it for granted that because the natural site of a town is now clothed with the forest, and remote from habitations, that it will not become a prosperous city, within a half-dozen years. For, we know that in the Northwest, cities have arisen on a substantial basis, to a numerous population, in a space so brief that history has no record of their existence, and the school maps no name for the place of their being. Chicago which commenced its growth in 1834, had a population in 1857, of 100,000, Milwaukee in twenty-one years rose to 50,000, St. Paul in fifteen years to 15,000; Keokuk in eighteen years to 15,000, Grand Rapids in twelve years to 8000; Saginaw city in twenty-two years 4000, and Superior city in the short space of two years to 4000. We thus see, that, in the Northwest, cities do grow up, in the midst of the wilderness, and the wilderness itself soon blooms as the rose. To say, then, that a point affording every natural and commercial advantage for the growth of a large city is not _now_ a city, is to say nothing against its position or prospects. Within the memory of a generation the five great States, (which have heretofore been termed the Northwest,) contained less then a half a million of people, and Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, were not even dots on the map of States. A mission or a military fort was all they could boast. These States now contain six millions of inhabitants, and the towns on the lake shore two hundred and fifty thousand. But to present the point of growth, in the clearest point of view, let us consider it dependent wholly on that of the surrounding country. This we can tell almost precisely. We know the rate of growth in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Canada West. Canada West in 1840, had a population of 640,000, in 1850, of 982,000, and in 1857, 1,100,000, Michigan in 1840, was 212,000, in 1850, 397,000, and in 1857, 700,000. The population of Wisconsin in 1840, was 30,000, in 1850, it was 305,991, and in 1857, it was 600,000. The increase in Minnesota in seventeen years was 200,000.