74 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
out of its course that it may join hands with its fellow, and so 
unite the great waters of the east and the west. 
It is not strange, in view of this remarkable provision of 
nature, that, very early in the history of the state, the 
attention of far-seeing men should have been called to the 
feasibility of so far improving the navigability of these rivers 
as to make them a channel of commerce between the north¬ 
western states and the Atlantic seaboard—not strange that as long 
ago as in 1838 such improvement -was strongly recommended 
by Mr. Poinsett, secretary of war, “ for the purpose of facili¬ 
tating the transportation of troops and munitions of war, des¬ 
tined for the western frontier of the United States,” and a 
preliminary survey made under his direction by Col. Cram, of 
the topographical engineers, with the view of determining the 
character and cost of the required improvements. Nor is it 
strange that, in pursuance of repeated favorable reports and 
high official recommendations, grants of land in aid of the • 
work were ‘made in 1846, 1854 and 1855, so that, under the 
direction of the Fox Eiver Improvement Company, the Fox 
has been so far improved as to’ become a very important out¬ 
let for the products of a large section of the state, as v ell as 
inlet for such imports as have annually sought entrance at 
Grreen Bay; nor that the importance of an enlargement of 
said improvement and its completion through to Prairie du 
Chien has been declared by a great number of commercial and 
other conventions held in the leading cities of the northwest 
—including Chicago, Dubuque, St. Louis and even Louisville 
—within the past few years. 
On the other hand, it is hardly surprising, that in the early 
history of the west, and even down to these last years, the 
government of the United States, still somewhat unsettled in 
its policy as to improvements of this class, should have failed 
to take the work in hand and vigorously push it to a conclu¬ 
sion. 
But, within the past ten years, the improvement of the 
northwest has been so rapid, and the demand for cheap trans- 
