them. Consequently, a large proportion of the settlers were compelled to either sell their improvements for what they could get, or pay from 25 to 50 per cent. for money to enter their lands.

"About this time Alex. Mitchell, Harvey Burchard, the Messrs. Ludington, E. Eldred, and other capitalists, came to Milwaukee, and purchased lots at $100 each, that had previously been sold from $1000 to $1500, and are now selling from $5000 to $15,000 each. From that day to this, the rise and progress' of Milwaukee has been steady and onward. The price of land has continued to advance with the increase of business, and nearly all who commenced business here at that time, and continued to the present, have become wealthy and independent."

MADISON, THE CAPITAL OF WISCONSIN.

The City of Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, and seat of justice of Dane, the largest and most productive county in the State, is situated on a rising ground, between two lovely lakes, and is the most magnificent site of any inland town in the United States. On the northwest is Lake Mendota, nine miles long and six wide; on the east Lake Monona, five miles long and three wide. The city is celebrated for the beauty, health, and pleasantness of its location; commanding, as it does, a view of nearly every characteristic of country peculiar to the West-the prairie, oak opening, mound, lake, and woodland. The surface of the ground is somewhat uneven, but in no place too abrupt for building purposes. The space between these lakes is a mile in width, rising gently as it leaves their banks to an altitude of about seventy feet, and is then alternately depressed and elevated, making the site of the city a series of gently undulating swells. On the most

elevated ground is the State House, in the centre of one of Nature's Parks of fifteen acres, overlooking the "Four Lakes" and the surrounding city. From this the streets diverge in every direction, with a gradual descent on all sides.

To the west, about a mile distant, is the State University, in the midst of a park of 40 acres, crowning a beautiful eminence. On the south side of Lake Monona is a spacious Water-Cure establishment, surrounded by an extensive grove, and presenting a very striking appearance on approaching the city. Around Madison, in every direction, is a well-cultivated, undulating country, which is fast being occupied by pleasant homes.

Daniel S. Curtiss, in his graphic work entitled Western Portraiture, has given us his impressions of Madison, as follows:

"At some time in our travels or observations, all of us have met with situations that were at once indelibly impressed upon the fancy as the paragon of all out-door loveliness and beauty-the place with which all others were contrasted, and to which they must bear some respectable degree of resemblance to be esteemed delightful locations. With many persons, Madison is that paragon of landscape scenery. As the brilliant diamond, chased around with changing borders, which sparkles on the swelling vestment of some queenly woman, so this picturesque city, with its varied scenery, sits the coronal gem on the broad and rolling bosom of this rich and bloom- ing State,"

The Chicago Journal thus candidly and truthfully speaks. of the "Four Lake Country:

"For a long time, 'as beautiful as Madison' has been a household word among tourists in the Northwest, but it is only a few weeks since we looked, for the first time, upon this piece of embossed work; embossed, as if Nature feared for the blindness of humanity, and so had given in raised characters this rare passage of poetry.

"True, the season in which we saw it was unfavorable; the wind was keen, and blew from some open window of the north; great patches of snow alternated with patches of withered grass; great panes of ice were set in over the lakes; the groves were leafless and birdless, and our approach toward the region had been slow and tedious.

"But notwithstanding all these discomforts, the capabilities of Madison could not be altogether disguised. Nobody could help seeing what a week of merry May, or a day or two of leafy June could do for its swelling, wood-crowned hills, its wide sweeps of crystal water, its beautiful gardens, and its broad avenues. Do what one will with a floor of a prairie; enamel it with flowers, dot it with shrubbery, meander it with paths, and, despite all, it is a flat still. You cannot conceal its poverty of resources; brooks will not run in it; smile it may, but it never shows a dimple; rocks there are none for rustic seats, nor mosses to cover them if there were; there are no trees of God's planting; there are no surprises of beauty, for all is revealed at a single glance. Not so Madison; it is rich in capabilities; almost all its loveliness is furnished ready to hand, and men have nothing to do but live in it.

"Located upon a grand billow of an isthmus, little less than a mile in width, between two sheets of water, Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, one containing some fifteen square miles, and the other about fifty; with its park-like surroundings, undulating away in the distance; the clusters of groves, and sweeps of lawn, and glimpses of water; on the west Lake Mendota, with its promontory, sacred to the uses of friendship, 'Pic-nic Point;' on the east Monona; here Waubesa, there Kegonoa, the Yahara, and yonder Wingra and Peshugo; as if, at some time, the toilet-glass of the evening star had been shattered by the red 'planet Mars,' or some such turbulent fellow in the planetary court, and so the fragments were strewn over the landscape just there; with all these features, and such as these, one may wander far through many a summer's day ere he will find a place like Madison, at which he can exclaim as did the Indian, enamored with the Paradise upon which he had noiselessly stolen, 'Alabama!'-here we rest."

Bayard Taylor wrote to the New York Weekly Tribune, in May, 1855, an account of his adventures in the West, in which he made the following mention of Madison: