As pioneers of this wilderness route, we met with marked attention from all, and passed some agreeable days at St. Paul, Fort Snelling, Minneapolis, St. Anthony, and their numerous points of interest. Our homeward route was by the Mississippi River to Prairie du Chien, where old Fort Crawford, then a mere tenement, commands the confluence of the Wisconsin River with the Father of Waters. This sail of three hundred miles consumed forty-eight hours. The river banks recede and advance in lake-like expanses along its winding course, and their richly wooded heights, crowned with red sandstone, resemble the ruined Rhine castles. The sail through Lake Pepin, and between the States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, was varied by frequent and thriving towns and villages. From Prairie du Chien--a picture of straggling despair--by the Milwaukie and Prairie du Chien Railroad, and the Northwestern Railroad, two hundred and twenty-two miles, we reached Chicago, and passed through a crowd of beautiful towns, in a State scarce a generation since reclaimed from the Indians. Familiar railroads transported us from Chicago to Detroit, Niagara, Albany, and New York. Our whole distance of travel in three weeks was thirty-four hundred and forty-one miles. It was brief, but spiced with adventure, and over a field of vast interest, present and future. Our beautiful country, made one and indivisible by the great and good Author of its existence, through its mighty natural features, has, among its chief grandeurs, this water system of the great northern lakes, the frontier of the ever-progressive and patriotic West and North. In dimensions, sublimity, and beauty, by the consent of all, it is without parallel on earth. A volume of the purest fresh water is gathered in Lake Superior, without visible, adequate supply, to a depth of one thousand feet, with a length of near five hundred miles, and average breadth of one hundred and sixty miles, on a bottom lifted six hundred feet above sea level.