894 23". H. WINCHELL ON THE RECESSION 



immediately at the foot of the cataract two islands of very inconsi- 

 derable size, situated in the right channel also. The rapids com- 

 mence several hundred yards above the cataract, and continue about 

 eight miles below. The fall of the water, beginning at the head of 

 the rapids, and extending two hundred and sixty rods down the 

 river to where the portage-road commences, below the cataract, is, 

 according to Pike, fifty-eight feet. If this estimate be correct, the 

 whole fall from the head to the foot of the rapids is not probably 

 much less than one hundred feet"*. 



In 1823 Major S. H. Long again visited the Falls of St. Anthony 

 on his way up the Minnesota river and to Lake " Winnepeek," 

 under orders of the Secretary of War. Prof. Keating, of the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania, who accompanied him as geologist and 

 naturalist, thus describes the Palls : — " An island, stretched in the 

 river both above and below the fall, separates it into two unequal 

 parts, the eastern being two hundred and thirty yards wide, and the 

 western three hundred and ten. The island itself is about one 

 hundred yards wide. Prom the nature of the rock, which breaks into 

 angular and apparently rhomboidal fragments of a large size, this 

 fall is subdivided into small cascades, which adhere to each other 

 so as to form a sheet of water unrent, but composed of an alternation 

 of retiring and salient angles, and presenting a great variety of 

 shapes and shades ; each of these forms in itself a perfect cascade, 

 but when taken together in one comprehensive view they assume 

 a beauty of which we could have scarcely deemed them susceptible. 



Concerning the height of the fall and breadth of the 



river at this place, much incorrect information has been published. 

 Hennepin, who was the first European who visited it, states it to 

 be fifty or sixty feet high. It was this traveller that gave it the 

 name which it now bears, in honour of St. Anthony of Padua, whom 

 he had taken for the protector of his discovery. He says of it that 

 ' it indeed of itself is terrible, and hath something very astonishing/ 

 This height is by Carver reduced to about thirty feet ; his strictures 

 upon Hennepin, whom he taxes with exaggeration, might with great 

 propriety be retorted upon himself; and we feel strongly inclined 

 to say of him, as he said of his predecessor, ' The good father, I 

 fear, too often had no other foundation for his accounts than report, 

 or at least a slight inspection.' Pike, who is more correct than any 

 traveller whose footsteps we have followed, states the perpendicular 

 fall at 16| feet : Major Long measured it in 1817 with a plumb- 

 line from the table-rock from which the water was falling, and 

 found it to be the same. Mr. Calhoun measured it while we were 

 there with a rough water-level, and made it about fifteen feet. 

 The difference of a foot is trifling, and depends on the place where 



the measurement was made Below the fall the 



river contracts to about two hundred yards. There is a consider- 

 able rapid both above and below ; a portage of two hundred and 

 sixty poles in length is usually made here : the whole fall, or differ- 



* ' Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society 



