Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/101

1857] Lake Erie, and from Detroit to Grand Haven, Milwaukee, and Prairie du Chien, the terminus of the only railroad at that time crossing the State of Wisconsin to the Mississippi River. I started at once and had a most interesting and enjoyable, but uneventful, trip of four and a half days to Prairie du Chien. There I took a passenger steamer up the Mississippi to my destination. I found the scenery formed by the banks of the river very picturesque. Going up stream and making many landings, we were over twenty-four hours on the boat. I believe that we reached St. Paul on the 15th of August.

The town had not over seven thousand inhabitants. I was struck with the beauty and other advantages of its situation and was at once satisfied it had a great future. At the levee there was a long line of steamboats, showing already an extensive local commerce. The Territory of Minnesota being then on the eve of admission to the Union as a State, the tide of immigration from the Eastern States had set strongly in that direction. Several boats arrived daily from below with crowds of seekers of political and other fortunes. The place was thronged with a floating population far beyond its residential. It consisted of two straggling business streets parallel to the river, gradually ascending to a plateau bordered by wooded hills, which had already been reached by the residence portion of the town and was considerably developed. From the plateau there was a magnificent prospect over the Mississippi valley and a large expanse of country to the west of it. There were two main centres of life in the community — the large brick hotel, at which I stopped, and the Territorial capitol. There was stir enough, to be sure, but who would have dared to prophesy that in a little over thirty years the small town would grow into a city of two hundred thousand people?

The complication in the constitutional convention that led to my journey was this: The Democrats were charged with having perpetrated frauds in the election and sent up five members from Pembina County (now part of North