ON THE WISCONSIN RIVER. 517 
sin meanders through low alluvial lands. At the ferry, above the Portage, the drift- 
terrace is fifty to sixty feet high, with a light sandy soil on the top, inferior in 
quality to the adjacent bottom-lands. Behind this terrace of drift, the hills rise to 
the height of two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet. . 
Wherever the drift-hills approach the river, its banks are lined with boulders. 
About seventeen or eighteen miles above Winnebago Portage, the drift-hills attain 
a height of one hundred and twenty-five feet, with sandstone, F. 1, cropping out 
near the base. On Section 15, Township 13, Range 6, there is an exposure of 
sandstone on both sides of the river, which is the commencement of the Dalles of 
the Wisconsin River. The rock near the base is a soft, thick-bedded, white sand- 
stone, easily denuded ; this passes upwards into a yellow and ferruginous sandstone, 
of coarser grain, some of it almost oolitic, and the superior strata present, for a 
short distance, remarkable cross-lines of deposition. 
Opposite Dell Creek, the wall of white, yellow, and brown sandstone is twenty 
feet high, and increases to thirty feet in a few hundred yards, in one mile to 
eighty feet, in three miles to one hundred feet, and in three and a half miles to 
one hundred and thirty feet. At this latter point, the rocks are traversed by dark, 
ferruginous bands, and again show cross-lines of deposition. 
A mile above this, the Wisconsin River becomes contracted to seventy feet, being 
hemmed in by walls of sandstone, between which the waters rush with great 
velocity. Half a mile above this, the height of the sandstone is eighty feet, and 
the upper beds assume a reddish aspect, like those of the Dalles of Kettle River. 
The length of the Dalles is about five or six miles, in which the height of the 
rocky walls varies from forty to one hundred and twenty feet, and in many places 
the rocks are washed and weathered into a variety of curious, fantastic shapes, 
often presenting the appearance of columns, surmounted by cornice and architrave, 
with intervening arches. In some instances the current has cut from the main 
cliff isolated masses, which now form islands, with precipitous sides, fifty to sixty 
feet high. 
The soil on the tops of the cliffs is so sandy as to be almost unfit for cultivation, 
and supports a growth of small red pines and stunted oaks. 
At the head of the Dalles, the rocks are one hundred and twenty feet high on the 
left, and seventy feet on the right bank. On the left, the sandstone continues, with 
about the same elevation, for about half a mile, when the main range leaves the 
river, sending out rocky spurs, which appear at intervals for about a mile further. 
On the right, the bluffs bear away from the river, immediately at the head of the 
Dalles, and can be traced for miles bounding the alluvial lands, which are nearly 
a mile wide in some places. The river now expands again to nearly its former 
dimensions, and meanders amongst a multitude of little islands. 
From the extensive sandy plains that now set in, many remarkable isolated 
peaks rise, at distant intervals, some of which are almost vertical, to the height of 
two hundred feet and upwards. The first encountered was about two miles above 
the Dalles, which is one hundred and eighty-five feet high, its sides and summits 
dotted with pines and oaks. The rocks composing it are like those at the Dalles, 
