WISCONSIN. 
eral and wide-spread popularity, for it is equally 
known and appreciated in Europe as in this coun¬ 
try, are principally these :— 
1. It is throughout its entire length and breadth 
a perfectly healthy region. 
2. It possesses a uniformly, highly fertile soil, 
yielding all the ordinary products in great luxuri¬ 
ance, which are adapted to the latitude. 
3. It is peculiarly a wheat-producing country, 
having a soil nearly everywhere equally removed 
from a light sand or heavy clay, and abounding in 
limestone , which is scattered through the soil and 
intimately blended with it. This last character¬ 
istic will give to the soil, with proper manage¬ 
ment, an endurance of wheat, as lasting as time; 
and as wheat is to be the great staple of our north¬ 
western states, this is a consideration of the high¬ 
est importance. 
4. The water is pure and in most places abun¬ 
dant, yielding a full supply for cattle and the or¬ 
dinary wants of the settlers; while through all 
the northern portion, the finest mill-streams 
abound, and are ready to supply their mills and 
future manufactories with all the water-power re¬ 
quired to make it, what nature seems to have 
destined it hereafter to become in the hands of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, the manufacturing state 
for the west. 
5. The inexhaustible mines of lead which can 
be wrought for ages, not only to the profitable em¬ 
ployment of those directly engaged in digging, 
purifying, and sending the metal to market, but 
with equal profit to the farmer, who finds in the 
miners a demand for his products at remunerating 
prices. The successful working of copper mines 
will probably be added hereafter to those of lead. 
6. Its accessibility to market, having the Mis¬ 
sissippi on one side, and Michigan on the other, 
with «the Wisconsin and Fox rivers intersecting 
through the north, and connecting the former by 
a steamboat navigation, unbroken save at the 
Portage for one and a half miles, and the falls on 
the Fox, at the Grande and Petite Kaukalaus. 
These advantages combined, render it inferior to 
no new land ever offered to the enterprise of an 
intelligent people, and it is not to be wondered at 
that it enjoys a popularity never before accorded 
to a new state. 
But I wish to call the attention of emigrants to 
one consideration, which is seldom sufficiently 
weighed. It is the propriety of thoroughly set¬ 
tling the coast, especially near the harbors, before 
pushing their way far into the interior. This 
may be done with the strictest regard to their in¬ 
terest, even if the cost of the land much exceeds 
the government price. The relative advantages 
of two positions, one near and the other remote 
from a market, are readily seen on the most super¬ 
ficial estimate. Let us see the cost of transporting 
wheat from a farm 50 miles from a port. In an 
ordinary condition of the roads, it will take a man 
with a span of horses and wagon, three days to 
carry 40 bushels a distance of 50 miles and return. 
The lowest estimate for time and expenses, can 
not be less than $1.50 per day, or $4.50 for the 
trip, which is equivalent to a charge of 11^ cents 
per bushel on the wheat. If we assume 25 bush¬ 
237 
els per acre as an average yield, we shall have the 
annual cost of sending an acre of wheat to market 
$2.81, or the interest of nearly $50 per acre. To 
this consideration, we must add this much more 
important one; that on farms remote from a mar¬ 
ket, scarcely anything except wheat, wool, and 
meat, will bear transportation, while all the coarser 
products, oats, corn, roots, hay, &c., and all the 
minor ones, such as garden vegetables, poultry, 
eggs, fruit, &c., &c., will always command a ready 
and profitable sale in a thriving, populous village, 
where steamboats are daily stopping for supplies. 
We can thus readily see how a man may give $50 
an acre for land near a port, and make much more 
money out of his investment, than to pay $1.25 an 
acre for an equal or even a better quality, remote 
from it. Most of the land within 30 miles of the 
coast in the southern part of the territory, has been 
taken up, and can not now be bought unless at en¬ 
hanced prices. 
There is, however, a beautiful section of fertile 
land lying around the Manitouwoc river, 74 miles 
north of Milwaukie, which, owing to this place 
being somewhat out of the course hitherto run by 
steamboats, has been but partially settled, and the 
finest wheat-lands can now be taken up at govern¬ 
ment price. Senator Tallmadge has recently 
bought a farm on Lake Winnebago, about 30 miles 
west of Manitouwoc, having been tempted from 
the refinements and luxuries of an old country, 
and such a country, too, as Dutchess county, and 
the banks of our noble and picturesque Hudson, 
by the enchantments of Wisconsin. While there 
during the last summer, I met another gentleman 
from the southern part of Indiana, who assured 
me he could raise 75 bushels of com per acre over 
his whole farm, and that too without hoeing, and 
yet this farm he is abandoning for one in Wiscon¬ 
sin, for three reasons; to get nearer a market; in¬ 
to a healthy country; and where he can have 
schools for his children. One gentleman assured 
me he had been offered this season $10,000 in 
cash for his farm and stock, the former taken up 
but a short time since at $1.25 per acre. 
The activity, intelligence, and improvement, 
everywhere exhibited in a seven years’ settlement 
of this recent country, are almost incredible. In 
the spring of 1836, I visited this territory, then 
containing, probably, less than 5,000 white inhabi¬ 
tants ; now it is computed it has 100,000. Then, 
a few log-houses, scattered here and there at great 
distances along the uncultivated prairie, and al¬ 
most unbroken woodland, just served to remind 
the traveller that he was not in a region wholly 
unreclaimed from the wild beast and the savage. 
Now the comfortable house everywhere meets the 
eye, and the snug out-buildings and extended en¬ 
closures, with the luxuriant crops, and numerous 
herds of cattle, sheep, and pigs, with all the home 
comforts in prodigal abundance, give assurance that 
this is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey. 
All the improved breeds of animals are there found 
in large numbers and in great perfection. Many 
choice Short-Horns and Berkshires I saw near 
Southport, Milwaukie, Manitouwoc, and other 
places. 
If there be any feature that pre-eminently dis- 
