The Minnesota pioneer. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn. Territory) 1849-1855, 1849-12-05
The Upper Mississippi.
rev. ALERT BARNES

IN the ttssf, hut almost m the centre or
our great nation. But when | stood
there, and reflected on the distance be-
tween that and the place OF my birth
and my home; on the prairies over
which | had passed, and the streani-.
the ''Father of Rivers up which |
had sailed some five hundred miles into
new and unsettled lapd--where the
children of the forest still live and roam
had views Of the greatness Of my coun-
try such as | have never had in the
crowded Capitals and the smiling villages
Of the East Far in the distance did
they then seem to be, and there came
over the soul the idea of greatness, and
yastness, which no figures, no descrip-
ton, had ever conveyed to my mind.
To an inexperienced tayeler, too, how
strange is the appearance OF all that
land Those boundless praries seem as
if they had been cleared by the patient
labor of another race of men-rcmov-
ing all the forests, and roots, and stumps,
and brambles, and smoothing them down
as if with mighty rollers, and sowing
tn en- with grass and 'flowers----a race
which then passed away, having built no
houses of their own, and made no fences,
and set out 10 trees, and established no
! landmarks, to lay the foundation of any
future claim. The mounds which you
here and there see, look, indeed, as ii
a portion of them had died, and had been
buried there: but those mounds, and
Ii IL l. L. T. l.,
together You ascend the Mississippi
amidst scenery unsurpassed III beauty
probably, in the world You see the
/, waters making their way along an iii
I terval Of from two to four miles in width
between bluffs of from hundred to five
J hundred feet in height. Now the river
makes its way along the eastern range
of bluffs and now the western, and
now in the centre, and now it divides it
self into numerous channels, forming
Thousands of beautiful islands---covercd
with long grass, ready fo. the Scythe of
the IN over Those bluffs, rounded with
t ste and skill such as could be initiated
by no art of man, and set out with trees
here and there gracefully arranged ike
orchards, seem to have been sown with
grain TO the summit, and are clothed
with beautiful! green. You look out in
stinctiyely for the house and barn; for
men, and women, and children-but
they are not there A race that is gone
seems to have cultivated those fields,
and then to have silently Disappeared
leaving them for the first man that should
come from the older parts of our own
country, or from foreign lands. to take
possession of them. 1t is only by u pro-
cess of reflection, that you are convinced
that il Is so. But it is not the work OF
man. 1t is God who has done it, when
there was no man therc--save the wan
dering savage, alike ignorant aad I'M
concerned as to the design of the great
processes Ill the land where he roamed--
God who did all this, that he might pre-
pare it Cor the abode Of civilized and
christian people. 34a- 1850 Hs@9
PRINrERs AND PRINTING.--J. L. Buck
ingham, Esq, in his series cf Remiuis-
ccnccs, in course of publication in the
Boston Courier, speaks of the import
ance ofthc printer to authors, as follows
Many, who condescend to illuminate
the dark weird with the fire of their ge-
Mus, through the columns Of ncwspa-
per- little think of the lot of the printer,
who, almost sufiocated by the smoke OF
lamp, sits up till midnight to correct his
false grammar, bad photography, aud
worse punctuation. have seen the az
gumonts of lawyers, in high repute as
scholars, sent to the printer in their own
handwriting, many words-and espcci-
ally technical and foreign terms-abbrc-
waited, words misspclled, and few or no
points, and those few, if there were any
entirely on. OF place.
| have seen sermons of eminent dl-
vines, sent to the press, without points or
capitals to designate the division of the
: sentences-sermons, which If published
with the imperectio of the manuscript,
would disgrace the printers devil if he
were the author. Suppose they had
been so printed. The printer would
have been treated with scorn and con-
tempt as an illiterate blockhead--as a
fellow better fitted to be wood-sawyeI
than printer. Nobody would have be-
lieved that such gross and palpable faults
were owing to the ignorance or careless
ness of the author
And no one but the practical printer
. knows how many hours a compositor,
and after him proof reader, is com
: PEELED to spend in reducing to readable
condition, manuscripts that the writer's
themselves would be puzzled to read!
ASEcDorE OF OLDEN TrMEs.-More
than Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court
of Massachusetts commenced It's session
early in the autumn, at Lenox, Berk-
shire county; thence, the arrange ments
were to hold sessions in all the counties
eastward, terminating at Nantucket and
Dukes county, embracing all of Massa-
chnsetts proper. This was called ''the
Fail Circuit" In the succeeding spring
the Circuit of the District of Maine was
held. thus completing the Circuit of the