friar, gave to these falls the name of St. Anthony, in honor of his patron saint.

The falls in the main channel are several rods above those in the eastern, the great volume of water having worn away the soft, crumbling rock much faster. The falls are at present seven miles from the mouth of the Minnesota, at Fort Snelling. An early voyager represents the falls as having been sixty feet in height, but I have been able to find no point between Fort Snelling and the present fall, where the geological formation warrants this conclusion; they are now but seventeen feet in height. However, Professor Owen mentions the discovery of a bed of drift, eleven feet in thickness, overlaying the limestone at the falls, extending half a mile below and east of the gorge. This formation is such as to warrant the conclusion that a lake once existed here, and that its outlet was a fall, much higher than at present, at or near Fort Snelling.

Of course, little evidence can be given of the rate of wearing from actual observation, but judging from the strata, the retrocession must have been comparatively rapid, and after a lapse of time, this beautiful fall must be converted into a rapid.

The last dislodgment of rock in the bed of the falls, occurred on the 5th of July last, when a large mass, fifteen feet wide and a hundred feet long, gave way, removing the fall up the stream, on the Minneapolis side, fourteen feet.

WASHINGTON TERRITORY.

THE honored name of Washington has been given to the extreme northwest Territory of the American Union, which was separated from Oregon by an act of Congress in the year 1853. This is the solitary instance in which any one of the forty States or Territories of the United States has borne the name of an individual. Both the rule and the exception are equally good. From the harbors of Puget Sound from the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and from the waters of the Columbia River is hereafter to go forth across the broad Pacific, a commerce and an intercourse which will diffuse the pure principles of that republicanism for which the patriot, the statesman, and the soldier, Washington, lived and labored; and it is becoming that the name of the Father of his country should be identified with the new State which is soon to bear so conspicuous a part in uniting the remote West of the new world with the remote East of the old.

The northern boundary of the Territory is the forty-ninth degree of latitude, from its eastern limit on the summit of the Rocky Mountains, to its intersection with the waters which pour from the Gulf of Georgia into the straits of Juan de Fuca. The bounds of the Territory then wind round the south end of Van

couver's Island till the Straits of De Fuca meet the ocean. The Pacific bounds it on the west; on the south the Columbia River is its boundary as far as to its intersection with the Wallawalla River, west of which the latitude of forty-six degrees bounds it till it meets the Rocky Mountains.

The Territory of Washington, though the one most remote from the center of the Union, is destined to assume in a few years a prominence second to none on the Pacific, and in half a century to rank among the most powerful and populous of the confederacy. Uniting the best opportunities for an immense commerce, extensive manufactures, and great agricultural industry, nothing is needed for a rapid growth of the Territory but men and capital. The rapid increase of facilities for travel is continually diminishing this obstacle, which will practically cease whenever any one of the several routes for steam travel to the Pacific shall be completed. No part of the Pacific coast possesses anything like the opportunities for commerce that is possessed by this Territory. Beside its frontage on the Pacific, it enjoys the inestimable advantage of a multitude of safe harbors on the broad waters of the estuary which penetrates the country for more than two hundred miles. The Straits of De Fuca alone, according to Commodore Wilkes, are ninety-five miles in length and eleven broad. Connected with this strait are several spacious inlets known as Hood's Canal, Puget Sound, Admiralty Inlet, and the Archipelago of Arro. These were carefully surveyed by Wilkes, who pronounces them unsurpassed by any estuary in the world, and represents them as comprising very many fine harbors and safe anchorages, which are entirely free from danger. The country around these waters, he says, is remarkably salubrious, and offers every advantage for the accommodation of a vast commercial and military marine, with convenience for docks and many sites for towns and cities easily supplied with water and surrounded with a back country rich in all the facilities for agricultural productions. Commodore Wilkes speaks with particular praise of the harbors and bays on the east side of Admiralty Inlet, ten of which he enumerates, which must eventually become places of considerable resort for vessels. The country between these waters and the Cascade Mountains may be cultivated into a garden-like fertility sufficient for a dense population. Nothing, he says, can exceed the beauty of these waters and their harbors. Spring tides rise eighteen feet, and neap tides twelve feet, affording every facility for the construction of dry dockswinters mild and of short duration, and harbors never obstructed by ice. Beside this, the Archipelago of Arro is represented as abounding in quarries of granite and sandstone, convenient of access and suitable for building. Another traveler expresses his belief that these waters will ultimately send out upon the ocean a greater number of able and skillful seamen than any other waters of equal extent in the entire world. The reason he assigns for this belief is the inexhaustible supply of good timber along the shores

of this great bay, and the unlimited amount of motive power which is furnished by the height of the tides. Of almost equal importance to the future prosperity of the Territory is the abundance of bituminous coal of proper quality for the use of steamers and for manufacturing purposes generally, which lies in the vicinity of these waters and is easily obtained.

The geological formation of the Territory is eminently favorable to the encouragement and development of manufactures. Although manufactures cannot, for many years to come, form a leading part of the industry of the country, yet its adaptation to this purpose must necessarily have considerable influence in inducing emigration to its soil. A map of Washington will show at a glance the extent of her resources in this respect. The serpentine course of the Columbia with its countless tributaries, extending from the Rocky Mountains on the east, to the most northerly limit of the Territory, and then crossing the country circuitously to its south limit, much of this long course being through a hilly, and in some cases a rocky country, affords mill-sites adequate to the supply of almost a continent. The Lewis River, the main tributary of the Columbia, furnishes a long line of water-power of great value and extent. The agricultural resources of the Territory being those which will first be brought into requisition are necessarily of primary importance. That part of the Territory lying between the Cascade range and the ocean is among the richest portions of the country. It is heavily timbered, and will need much labor to clear it for the plow. The fir, the spruce, and the cedar, some of them of immense size, abound in exhaustless quantities. No part of the Union equals this Territory in its supply of spars and other materials for ship-building.

Between the Cascade range and the Rocky Mountains lies fourfifths of the whole territory. This portion of the country is admirably adapted to grazing purposes. The grass and the water are unsurpassed-the climate is sufficiently mild to allow of winter exposure of cattle. Horses, horned cattle, and especially sheep can be raised in vast numbers under every advantage of soil and climate. In the natural elements of public prosperity, no State or Territory exceeds, and but few equal this youthful sister in the family of States. Fifty years ago Ohio, like Washington to-day, was the distant west, with here and there a feeble settlement of adventurous whites, surrounded by large and powerful tribes of Indians. In half a century, although in '54 containing less than four thousand souls, the latter will exhibit a population of millions of enterprising whites, as the facilities of travel and the access to the great markets of the world are immeasurably superior to what they were when Ohio was settled. At present the country is largely filled up with the aborigines, the most considerable of whom are the Nez Perces in the southeast, the Flatheads in the north, and the Wallawallahs in the south. Of the smaller tribes, there are not less than twenty-seven on and around Puget Sound,

varying in number from twenty-five or thirty to eight hundred, or more. Between the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound, there are but two tribes, numbering less than five hundred in all. West of the Caseade range the total number of Indians of every variety is supposed not greatly to exceed six thousand souls. The character of all these Indians is similar, as a general thing. They depend for subsistence chiefly upon fish, berries and roots. The rivers of Washington abound with the former. The waters of the Columbia; the streams which pour into the Sound and the Pacific; the inlets between Vancouver's Island and the main, and even the shoals outside of the ocean banks swarm with cod, halibut, and other fish of great value. These the Indians take in great numbers, exchanging the surplus beyond their own wants with the vessels which trade on the coast or with the settlers on Vancouver's Island and elsewhere in the neighborhood. These savages differ somewhat in their natural characteristics from those formerly inhabiting the Atlantic coast. The missionaries who have sought to introduce Christianity among them, represent them as generally indolent and selfish; as destitute of gratitude or affection, but as strongly inclined to imitate the whites in dress, manners, and modes of life. This latter trait furnishes some ground of hope that, under more favorable circumstances, and when the influence of permanent white settlements shall have taken the place of the pernicious influence of vagrant hunters and trappers, and interested traders, they may ultimately be made better rather than worse by their intercourse with whites. Esculent roots and berries serve them as an agreeable change in food, and are found in exhaustless quantities in the forests and on the plains. They spend their lives either floating about in their canoes or wandering in search of berries wherever they are most abundant. The climate is mild and healthy-a blanket and shirt being all the clothing they need to make them comfortable for a year. They are extravagantly fond of gambling, often carrying it to such excess as to part with their wives and slaves, their fish-spears and shirts. Slavery exists among them, and slaves taken in war from neighboring tribes constitute a principal part of their wealth. They are a cowardly people and only fight in a last extremity, when their cupidity is greatly excited or necessity in some way is laid upon them. When they want a thing, they will whine and beg for it; if still unsuccessful, they are willing to work for it, but if this also proves unavailing, they will fight for it. Much of their cowardice may be explained by the kind of food upon which they subsist. Their passion for ardent spirits is intense; and this great curse of the Indian race is furnished them in abundance by traders, over whom the agents of the government appear to exercise no very efficient control.

NEBRASKA.

In the remote West-so remote that a few years ago much of it was characterized in the maps of the United States as the great unexplored American Desert-lies a country that has suddenly shot up into great social and political prominence. The Territory of Nebraska-extending from the British Possessions on the North to Texas on the South; from the western limits of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa on the East to the eastern boundaries of New Mexico, Utah, and Oregon on the West-contains an area of four hundred and eighty-five thousand square miles. From this vast surface, in which sixty-two States of the size of Massachusetts might lay side by side, two Territories, ultimately to become States, have been formed, in which the institutions, the education, the morals, and the habits of republican freemen are being introduced. Heretofore reserved as the hunting-grounds and the homes of our aboriginal tribes-some of them hereditary denizens of the soil, and some the expelled bands from soil earlier coveted by the whites the country has been until lately legally shut up from the covetousness of the latter. Yet a few of that peculiar people, whose instinct for solitude, or whose more calculating dread of the ministers of the law, has made pioneers of the wilderness, had penetrated the outskirts of the country, to the number of nearly a thousand persons. In 1853, there was one white individual to every four hundred and eighty-five miles of territory. The first session of the Congress of 1854 will be memorable in the history of the country as the time when the formation, from this last home of the Indians, of two great Territories, agitated the North and the South on the ever perplexing question of the admission of slavery into their boundaries.

The Territory of Nebraska is bounded on the north by the British Possessions, on the south by Kansas, on the east by the Missouri River, and on the west by the summits of the Rocky Mountains; embracing within these boundaries three hundred and thirty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty-two square miles. The extension of territorial institutions over this vast country leaves but a trifling portion of the soil, once all their own, to the remnant of the ill-fated aborigines. Between the north boundary of Arkansas and the south boundary of Kansas is now the only portion of the great Union over which the civil institutions of the whites have not been extended. How long the cupidity of Christian America will restrain its powerful grasp from seizing this final memorial of the race whom we have supplanted, may not unreasonably be conjectured from our past policy. Until a territorial organization is effected, the entrance of every white into its boundary is a misdemeanor, exposing the intruder to summary ejectment and punishment. In spite, however, of this prohibition, some few have ventured in; and it requires no great foresight to see that the impunity of these few will serve as sufficient warrant for