"Of Minnesota, and its productiveness, less is known. As three-fourths of that rich and beautiful country, and the regions around the heads of the Mississippi, must contribute to the commercial importance of Mackinaw, let us glance at its agricultural capacity and prospects. Minnesota, of which we heard but yesterday, has now two hundred thousand inhabitants, produces this year two millions of bushels of wheat. St. Paul, its principal town has fourteen thousand inhabitants, and far to the northwest from St. Peters to the Red River, and Assinibone, the settlers are crowding in to till farms and create towns, where but recently the wild wolf and the wilder savage, alone possessed the face of the earth. In latitudes higher than that of Mackinaw, Michigan or Canada West, settlements are forming, and it requires no flight of imagination to see that beautiful land of lakes, rivers, forests, and prairies,--cold as it may be in winter--settled, tilled, and civilized. The fact of its rapid progress in population, is sufficient proof of its agricultural capacity; but we shall again refer to the testimony of actual observers. Turning to Mr. Ferris's first description of the Northwest, we find his summing of the climate, and agricultural advantages of Upper Minnesota. 'Minnesota is destined to become a great agricultural, and grazing region. Its upland and lowland plains would support a dairy that would enrich an empire. All the principal grains, and roots thrive there in great vigor, as high toward the north as Pembina, below the dividing line between the United States and British America. Latitude does not always indicate the climate as has already been shown. The character of the soil has great influence upon the temperature of the air. A quick warm soil makes a warm atmosphere. The autumns of Minnesota are greatly lengthened out by the Indian summer, that smoky, dreary, balmy season, which protects the surface from frost, like a mantle flung upon the earth. The cold nips the vegetation, about as early along the Ohio, as along the St. Peters. The winters of Minnesota are cold; but then they are still and calm, and the icy air does not penetrate, as it does in a windy climate.' "In the brief review of the agricultural advantages of that great northwestern region, whose centre of commerce must ever be at Mackinaw; we have arrived at the certain fact, that except small portions of the Superior country, where mining and mines absorb all other interests, no country in the northern part of America or Europe, has greater advantages. It is filled with inexhaustible springs, and streams; fertile in soil, rich in production, and only needs the cultivating hand of man, to render it capable of sustaining such dense populations as now inhabit the same isothermal parallel in Prussia and Poland.