p. 814

Above the Portage or what is called the Upper Wisconsin, there are many rapids, affording waterpower which is brought into use in sawing the pine with which the whole country is more or less filled; Large quantities being rafted down to supply the less favored [in this respect] regions below, as far as St. Louis. Eighty miles above the Portage, are the "Pineries" where an extensive lumbering business is done, and a rail road is constructed two miles in length to conduct the logs from the pine grove to the river. At the Portage the Wisconsin river is four hundred yards wide, and at English Prairie it was measured by the surveyors and found to be five hundred and six yards and at the mouth it is six hundred yards wide.

From the Portage to the Mississippi it is bordered by high sandstone bluffs-from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height, constituting a scenery of great beauty and even grandure. The water is shallow and full of islands and shifting sand bars, and running with a very strong current, so that its navigation is difficult, but steamboats