PURSUITS. 155 



distributed ; and perhaps ninety in each hundred actually 

 realize much less than this, while a few make fortunes. 



In the northeastern part of this district, on lands south of 

 Lake Superior, lately purchased from the Chippewas, is a 

 body of copper ore, supposed to be the richest in the world. 

 It is almost pure in some specimens : so that, as taken from 

 the earth, it was wrought into church vessels by some of the 

 French w^io first visited the place ; and a portion of the 

 large rock deposited in the ground of the War Department at 

 Washington has been polished so as to present the appear- 

 ance of sheet copper. Many companies and individuals have 

 taken leases of the govermnent, and commenced operations 

 there. Some of them have had good success, and have found 

 silver as well as copper. This will no doubt soon be an 

 important business, and give regular employment to many 

 persons. The iron and coal will also at no distant time be 

 worked ; and in Clinton and Jackson counties, in Iowa, in 

 the great coal district in Illinois, and perhaps on the Des 

 Moines, in Iowa, wdll be a great number of laborers engaged 

 in quarrying coal, and in digging and working iron. 



In the territories of Iowa and Wisconsin, which comprise 

 the principal part of the district subject to these notes, the 

 channels of industry are not yet shaped by the small and ir- 

 regular streams that have only partially occupied them. The 

 business of the country has hardly yet taken a direction ; and 

 all the secondary pursuits, trade, the mechanic arts, the pro- 

 fessions, have not acquired the consistency or development 

 of matured form. The professions are doubly stocked ; the 

 other pursuits are many of them not sufficiently filled ; there 

 is that languor in industry and enterprise, necessarily conse- 

 quent upon a rapid growth. The circulation is sluggish — 

 the arteries are not well filled with a healthy fluid. Money 

 is wanting, wealth, means, men, enterprise, are needed, to 



