these, the one legend of the river, the legend
of Winona, hints. A half-crazed Indian
maid, deserted by her lover, after listening
all day in her wigwam for his coming, and
wildly rousing the echoes with his name, is
supposed to have rushed to the top of a lofty
cliff, and flung herself thence into the water.
Such is the substance of most Indian legends.
This Maiden's Rock is a cliff, four hundred
feet in height, commanding a bold bend in
the river, and at such a distance from the
water, that the sceptical doubt whether
Winona could have cleared at a leap the rods
of rock and underbrush that intervene. But
travelling Young America rarely discredits a
tradition.

With the Maiden's Rock in full view, we
steamed through Lake Pepin, an expansion of
the river, some five miles wide and thirty-five
long, surrounded with gently-rolling, prosaic
hills, which are occasionally interrupted by
bluffs, rarely so grand as where the river
remained a river. As there is little or no
current in Lake Pepin, ice and loose logs collect
there in the spring to the great danger of
steam-boats, as the wrecks of several which
we saw attested.

The scenery of the remaining seventy miles
of our voyage, was more tame than what we
had been seeing, and we were becoming
surfeited with the Mississippi, when Monday
evening showed us Saint Paul upon the right
bank of the river, where it turns a sharp
angle and makes away to the westward.
Most of the passengers committed themselves
to the tender mercies of one of the hotel-runners,
who had boarded the Defiance, a
hundred miles below. But those of us, who
were suspicious, economical, or lazy enough,
not to be afraid of doing what looked mean,
as the American phrase runs, preferred
berths, whose good and bad qualities we had
tested, to experiments, and determined to
remain on board for the night. Scrambling
over steamboats and piles of lumber, we
presently stood upon the soil of Saint Paul,
between rows of ticket offices, belonging to
rival companies, and at the foot of a steep and
shattered slope of hills, covered with loose
dirt and stones, and channeled with deep
gulleys. Ascending, we came into the
principal business street, which stretches for
nearly two miles along the bank of the river,
and was, at ten o'clock in the evening, still a
blaze from end to end. We soon caught the
spirit of the place, and perceived that Saint
Paul with a resident population of not more
than fifteen thousand, was really one of the
foci of the West.

Saint Paul is the capital of the most
rapidly growing territory, with the exception
of Kansas, within the limits of the United
States. The place is a marvel. During the
season of navigation four or five steamboats land
full freights of passengers every day, and it is
estimated that not less than fifty thousand
emigrants pass through the town in the
course of the summer. The thirteen hotels,
two of which can accommodate not less than
six or eight hundred guests a-piece, are
constantly crowded to the eaves. Trade is
brisk between old and new settlers, and
land is the principal article of traffic. A
footing in every Dorado within the
territorial limits of Minnesota can be
purchased here. " Land, land, land! " burst
not more ardently from the lips of
Christopher Columbus, upon his first voyage,
than from those of the people of Saint
Paul and their customers, year in and year
out. The newspapers, of which there are
five or six, are crowded with the advertisements
of speculators; section-maps hang in
every place of resort: skilfully prepared
historical and topographical sketches of
new or projected towns in the back country,
illustrated with views of the place, as it is
to be, and informing the reader where he
may obtain a share in the venture, waylay
one at every turn. There are a few
handsome residences, which look quite inviting,
upon the upper one of the two plateaus,
upon which the city is built: but below, in
the city proper, is a howling wilderness of
speculators. As one picks his way along
the street, fording the brooks that cross it,
wading through an occasional quagmire,
stumbling over loose, protruding stones, and
trying to keep clear of the unfenced edge of
the precipitous river-bank, the words "Land
Office," in enormous capitals, are constantly
in his eyes. In buildings of Grecian, gothic,
mediæval, composite, and American-back-
woodsman styles of architecture, land is for
sale, and a grogshop is sure to stand open
next door, where seller and sellee are
chaffering over their glasses. Everybody
dabbles in land. The hotel-keeper tells the
stranger where to purchase: the attorney-
at-law makes it his chief business to draw
up the papers: the druggist owns a claim,
or a corner-lot, which he can be induced to
part with for three or four hundred per
cent advance upon the price which he gave
for it. I questioned a lad in a hardware-
store in the adjoining town of Minneopolis,
who was boarding himself at a Californian
rate, out of a salary of six hundred dollars
a-year, concerning his investments in land.

"I have made none here yet," he replied,
he had been in the place a fortnight; "but
in Saint Paul," where he had been receiving
a still smaller stipend for ten or twelve
months, " I own real estate."

Our German driver, from the stable,
casually remarked, that he must soon go up
country to look after a little property of
twenty-five acres, which he had recently
purchased. Everybody, in short, is a
freeholder, and borrows to become so, although
money commands, in the easiest times, two
per cent a-month. Everybody inflates a
balloon of his own, of which he is
determined to keep hold, until it rises.