REPORT AND ESTIMATE. 333 
embankment of eight feet high, and is occasionally stony. Granite boulders, at occasional 
intervals, are scattered over the surface. Side ditching is often necessary in flat and low 
places, but for the main part of the distance the excavation is high and gravelly. There is no 
rock excavation. Grades of thirty feet per mile will occasionally be required in the limited 
region of knolly, rolling country, but will not generally exceed ten feet. Crossing the tribu- 
taries of the Minnesota at their sources, the amount of bridging will be small; an estimate of 
two hundred feet on the small streams of the Crow, South Branch, and Chippewa rivers covers 
the whole. The culverts will be frequent, but small. The pine and wooded region is estimated 
to extend on this line eighty miles westward from the Mississippi. From this the supplies of 
timber will be mostly drawn. 
Stone is found in places only at the Mississippi. Granite boulders, which will supply culvert 
masonry, are found some sixty miles west of the Mississippi. For the small amounts of bridge 
abutments stone must be brought from the Mississippi, unless good materials are hereafter 
found more convenient. 
The Bois de Sioux will require a bridge of one hundred and forty feet; thence forward to 
the Missouri the distance is 426.7 miles, and the total rise is about seven hundred feet. The 
first part of this is over the plateau of the Bois de Sioux. 
BOIS DE SIOUX TO FORT UNION. 
The line westward from the Bois de Sioux passes south of the Shyenne and avoids the difficult 
crossing of that river referred to in the narrative. In the breaking up of the winter, and 
with the spring rains, the plateau of the Bois de Sioux is undoubtedly very wet and marshy, 
and to a great extent covered by a small depth of standing water. The Wild Rice river, and 
a branch of it which also runs through this plain, will require bridges of one hundred and 
twenty and one hundred feet. From south of the Shyenne to Mouse river tlie by is nearly 
uniform, gradually rising, in part undulating, but frequently marshy, and with many small 
lakes. James river is crossed by a bridge one hundred and twenty feet in length. тане is a 
general destitution of wood throughout this interval. The Bois de Sioux and Wild Rice rivers 
will furnish a small amount, and the Shyenne will supply sleepers for two hundred miles of the 
way, single track. We do not know that James river will furnish any, but wooded lakes 
occasionally aid in the supply. A supply can be procured from the Miniwakan lake. Mouse 
river is a large stream of water, and, after the Red River of the North, the most important on 
the route between the Mississippi and the Missouri. It flows in a deep, wide valley, upwards 
of two hundred feet below the prairie level, the bottom varying from a half mile to two miles; 
it is wooded, sometimes heavily, with elm, oak, ash, maple, &c. зы high and ман ма E 
cut up by deep coulées, extending back for wm е тагу gig As these coulées wou 
i ilroad line is located so as to hea A | 
be ET e s. ee sandstone crops out, wa near by, at the Maison du Chien, Mr. 
nce of excellent building sandstone. 
prc oe s E and twenty feet wide, and apparently as much " seven feet 
deep. The information collected as to its navigability was, from one кеген, that t erë. "n 
obstruction; from another, that one rapid existed in the course down to its ure wi sed 
river. This may be of great service in transporting materials, besides affording access 
4 fertile valley. 5 : 
petere ты” es id Fort Union the route erossed the Plateau du Cóteau du Missouri, 
