AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
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AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.—' Washington. 
ORANGE JUDD, A. M. \ IH $841L i ALLEN & Co., 1§9 Water-st. 
vol. xv. —No. 4.] NEW-YORK, JANUARY, 1856. [new series-No. ios. 
A TRIP TO THE WEST-No. 2. 
DUBUQUE-THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI. 
Dubuque is well situated on q high bottom 
of the west bank of the Mississippi, in Iowa, 
latitude 42J° North, and opposite the divid¬ 
ing east and west lines of the State of Illi¬ 
nois and Wisconsin. The position of the 
town is eligible, except the plain on which it 
stands is too narrow, extending back only 
eighty or a hundred rods from the shore, 
behind which the formidable stone-quarried 
bluffs rise almost perpendicularly two hun¬ 
dred feet, and then spread into fine rolling 
table-land far away west into the interior. 
These bluffs are pierced with deep ravines 
every mile or two, through which small 
streams gush along, swollen heavily after 
every rain, and debouch into the ever-chang¬ 
ing channel of the river. At times the bluffs 
impend directly above the stream, affording 
scarce room for a secure highway. At oth¬ 
ers they retreat farther back, leaving broad, 
sunny spots of great fertility, sites for noble 
farms or beautiful towns. Such an one is 
occupied by Dubuque. It is commodiously 
laid out, with wide streets, well built with 
brick and stone houses—many of them in a 
good style of architecture, and not a few in 
pretty taste. Several respectable churches 
and school-houses also decorate the town. 
It is an old settlement—for that country— 
the site having been occupied about the same 
time as Galena. Like Galena, too, it. has 
extensive lead mines on all sides for many 
miles out, and is the chief point of deposit 
on the west side of the river for their prod¬ 
ucts. The place has some 12,000 people, as 
the census just now completed foots up. 
Desirous of examining the mines, we pro¬ 
cured a companion, and went out a few miles 
west of the town for this purpose. Ascend¬ 
ing the bluff by a circuitous and rather steep 
road in the side of a ravine, we arrived at 
the summit, on which are built, scattered 
among the natural groves, many tasteful 
houses looking out over the town, the broad 
river, and the valley which lay beneath for 
several miles up and down, in the midst of 
which swept along the noble river cut into 
numeious channels by long, low islands cov¬ 
ered with water-willows, alders, and young 
growths of cotton-wood. The scene, warmed 
by the mild rays of an October sun, was soft 
and very beautiful, yet wild, and for the 
most part uncultivated, but enlivened by the 
occasional passing up or down of one of those 
fantastic-looking, low-hulled steamboats 
which plow their tortuous way over thes 
fitful waters. A straggling village extend¬ 
ing westward lay along the main road on 
the table land beyond the bluff. This, in 
“ old times,” was the stopping-place for the 
huge ox wagons which brought in the prod¬ 
uce of the country, and carried out, though 
in greatly diminished quantity of tunnage, 
the supplies landed at the lower town from 
the passing boats. We met numerous ox- 
trains with their rather rough-looking drivers 
coming in laden with wheat from many 
miles inland, which the present high price— 
a dollar a bushel, and upwards—had hurried 
out. These many ox wagons brought to 
mind a story told us some dozen years ago 
by Gen. Wilson, of New-Hampshire, at that 
time Surveyor General of Iowa, and resid¬ 
ing at Dubuque. On his arrival there, he 
took lodgings at the best tavern in the town 
—and none too good, at that—with a widow 
woman who kept it, and had been long a 
resident. He had observed the course of 
trade, the rough and helter-skelter habits of 
the miners who drew their loads of lead-ore 
into town with ox-teams, which, for the 
most part, were a sorry looking set. One 
day at the table, seated near the old lady 
and familiarly chatting, the General re¬ 
marked : “ Well, my good woman, what 
sort of a place is this mining country, after 
all ?” “ Why, I’ll tell you, Gin’ral,” respond¬ 
ed she ; “ its quite a tolerable place for 
hosses and men ; but its awful on wimmen 
and oxen !” We think, however, the oxen 
have a better time of it now than in those 
purely lead-hauling times, for they looked, 
for the most part, in quite good condition ; 
and as for the women, they appeared as gay, 
dressy, and fashionable, and quite as much 
at their own command as we passed them 
along the streets, as in any other of our 
bustling towns. Manners have mended 
somewhat, probably, with “ wimmen and 
oxen,” if not with “ hosses and men.” 
From the imperfect descriptions we had 
received of these “lead diggings,” we had 
supposed that they greatly defaced the sur¬ 
face and injured the agriculture of the min¬ 
ing neighborhoods. It is but little so, how¬ 
ever. Where lead is plentifully found, many 
spots have been dug into, but the usual 
course is to sink a shaft some feet into the 
earth, and indications of ore, or otherwise, 
will appear within a reach of fifteen, twenty, 
or thirty feet. If promising, the shaft is 
pursued ; if otherwise, it is soon abandoned. 
When a “ lead” is “ struck,” it usually runs 
in or near a horizontal line for some feet in 
depth and breadth. That “ lead” is then fol¬ 
lowed in whatever direction it pursues ; the 
ore taken out with picks, and brought in bar- 
rows, or otherwise, to the foot of the shaft, 
and drawn up in tubs by a windlass worked 
usually by horse or ox power. It is then 
washed to get off the adhering earth which 
surrounds it as it lies in veins in its bed, and 
sent away in wagons to the smelting fur¬ 
naces in or near the town. Water, for the 
purposes of washing, is generally found in 
the ravines, or by digging a few feet, and 
many times in the shafts themselves, where 
pumps have to be applied by ox or horse 
power to free them. Some of these ore- 
veins run hundreds of yards zig zaging be¬ 
neath the surface some distance. If these 
continue far, other shafts are opened from 
the surface down to them to admit air, and 
take out the ore. We were told of one shaft, 
through which and its continuous “ leads,” 
the fortunate owner has already cleared 
$60,000 over expenses, and was still in prof¬ 
itable work. 
In others, perhaps, half that amount has 
been expended without a dollar of compen¬ 
sation ; but so exciting is the occupation, 
that a digger hardly ever “gives up ” until 
either his last dollar is exhausted, or he has 
“ struck a profitable lead and even in the 
last hour of extremity has the toiling miner 
touched a vein which ultimately made his 
fortune ! The ore lies in all shapes of de¬ 
posit, from the boulder of many pounds’ 
weight, down to equal sided lamina no larger 
than a bean. It is of various purity, yield¬ 
ing from sixty to ninety per cent of pure 
lead, some of the scoria being simply the 
elastic skin that coats it as taken from the 
mines. Little shanties are built near the 
shafts for the occupation of the miners, who 
are mostly foreigners—either Welsh or Eng¬ 
lish. They seem to like the employment, 
and as cheerfully toil in the depths and 
damps, scores of feet under ground, as in 
the cheerful sunlight of heaven—a matter 
chiefly of education and habit, we fancy. 
The country lying off through the mining 
district is gently rolling, with timbered 
ridges interspersed, low bushes, and a sort 
of prairie, with short wild grass growing 
upon it. Hereabouts, however, it is mostly 
occupied in farms, the proprietors usually 
bargaining with the miners at a certain price 
in money for digging into their grounds, or 
taking a share of the ore, at the rate of a 
fifth or sixth of the produce. A shaft once 
abandoned, the proprietor fills it up and 
plows or plants it over. 
On our return to the town we visited a 
