236 THE GEOKGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLEEY. 



tables that may be put ioto it. This is certainly the richest section of country on 

 the continent, and those who live a few years to witness the result will be ready to 

 sanction my assertion that it is to be the mint of our country. — G. C. 



(See also No. 330.) 



In 1880 a city of Iowa with 18,434 population. 



327. Galena, a small town on the Upper Mississippi. Painted in 1835. 



Now in Joe Daviess County, Illinois. In 1880 liad a population of 

 7,019. 



328. Rock Island (viz, Fort Armstrong — established in 1819, abandoned May 4, 



1836), United States garrison, Upper Mississippi. Painted in 1835. 



In 1880 a city in Illinois witli about 16,000 population. 



329. Beautiful Prairie Bluffs, on the Upper Mississippi. Painted in 1835. 



(Plate No. 2'28, page 130, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Yeu>rs.) 

 To give an idea of the character of the scenes which I have * • • described 

 along the stately shores of the Upper Mississippi, I have hare inserted a river view 

 taken about one hundred miles below this place [Falls of Saint Anthony]. — G. C. 



330. Dubuque's Grave, on the Upper Mississippi. Painted in. 1835. (See also 326.) 



(Plate No. 229, page 130, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 

 Dubuque was the first miner in the lead mines under the Spanish grant. He built 

 his own sepulcher, and raised a cross over it on a beautiful bluff, overlooking the 

 river, forty years ago, where it now stands. 



Dubuque^s Grave is a place of great notoriety on this river, in consequence of its 

 having been the residence and mining place of the first lead-mining pioneer of these 

 regions, by the name of Dubuque, who held his title under a grant from the Mexican 

 Government (I think), and settled by the side of this huge bluff, on the pinnacle of 

 which he erected the tomb to receive his own body, and placed over it a cross with 

 his own inscription on it. After his death his body was placed within the tomb, at 

 his request, lying in state (and uncovered except with his winding-sheet), upon a 

 large flat stone, where it was exposed to the view, as his bones now are, to the gaze, 

 of every traveler who takes the pains to ascend this beautiful, grassy, and lily-cov- 

 ered mound to the top, and peep through the gratings of two little windows, which 

 have admitted the eyes, but stopped the sacrilegious hands, of thousands who have 

 taken a walk to it. 



At the foot of this bluff there is now an extensive smelting furnace, where vast 

 quantities of lead are melted from the ores which are dug out of the hills in all direc- 

 tions about it. — G. C. 



On Mr. Catlin's return from his voyage to the Upper Mississippi in 

 the fall of 1835, he visited the lead mines, and thus describes them: 



I hauled my canoe out of the water at Dubuque, where I found my wife, again in 

 the society of kind and hospitable friends, and found myself amply repaid for a couple 

 of weeks' time spent in the examination of the extensive lead mines, walking and creep- 

 ing through caverns, some eighty or one hundred feet below the earth's surface, decked 

 in nature's pure livery of stalactites and spar, with walls and sometimes ceilings of 

 glistening massive lead, and I hold yet (and ever shall), in my mind, without loss of 

 a fraction of feature or expression, the image of one of my companions, and the scene 

 that at one time was about him. His name is Jeffries ; we were in Lockwood's Cave ; 

 my wife and another lady were behind, and he advancing before me, Ms ribs, more 

 elastic than mine, gave him entrance through a crevice into a chamber yet unexplored ; 

 he dared the pool, for there was one of icy water, and translucent as the air itself. 



