INTRODUCTION. 



xxm 



the corps, when unprovided with the necessary defence, have had our ears swelled 

 to two or three times their natural size, and the line of our hats marked, all round, 

 by the trickling blood. It was often necessary to rise many times, in the course of 

 the night, to allay the fever of the head, by repeated cold bathings ; and, at some 

 of the worst spots, we could scarcely have discharged our ordinary professional 

 duties at all, without the constant protection of musquito-netting, worn over our 

 head and face. 



The health, even of the more marshy portions of the District, seems better than, 

 from its appearance, one might expect. The long, bracing winters of these northern 

 latitudes exclude many of the diseases, which, under the prolonged heat of a more 

 southern climate, the miasm of the swamp engenders. Perhaps the healthiest por- 

 tion of the whole District, is along its northern limit, where it is coterminous to the 

 British dominions. At the Pembina settlement, owned by the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, to a population of five thousand there was but a single physician ; and he 

 told me, that, without an additional salary allowed him by the Company, the 

 diseases of the settlement would not afford him a living. 



Our own party occasionally suffered severely from sickness, consequent upon ex- 

 posure amidst almost impassable swamps. In 1849, not a single member of my 

 corps escaped obstinate intermittents. In 1848, Dr. Shumard was attacked with a 

 severe pleurisy, high up on the St. Peter's, beyond the reach of all medical aid. His 

 life being in great danger, he was received, for a few days, into the mission house, 

 at Traverse des Sioux, where the missionary, Mr. Hopkins, gave up to him his bed, 

 and treated him with the utmost kindness. Pie was then run down the river, day 

 and night, in a canoe, to Fort Snelling, where Captain Eastman, of the U. S. Army, 

 stationed at the fort, assigned to him, during his illness, apartments in his own 

 quarters. To the hospitable care of these two gentlemen and their families, Dr. 

 Shumard probably owes his life ; and I take pleasure here, in tendering to them, on 

 his behalf, his most grateful acknowledgments. 



Mr. B. C. Macy, in tracing the confines of the carboniferous formation between 

 the Iowa and Cedar Rivers, penetrated a region of ponds and swamps, through which 

 he waded, under a burning July sun, for many days, and contracted an obstinate 

 and dangerous intermittent, from the effects of which his health, even now, after 

 two years, has scarcely recovered. 



We lost, by death, but one man, of cholera, at Muscatine, in Iowa, in July, 1849. 

 Throughout the whole of that season, as the cholera was very prevalent over the 

 region of country we were surveying, we had great difficulties in inducing voyage urs 

 to risk the exposure of our trips, and had to offer extra pay, in order to obtain their 

 services at all. Gobert, the man we lost, was attacked while we were getting our 

 goods into the warehouse at Muscatine, about one o'clock in the clay. We could 

 not persuade the tavern-keeper to receive him into his house ; but we obtained, not 



