Estimates of the amount of timber standing in the Valley are very conjectural. Some of the large firms place their limit of operations at five to ten years. But the history of pine timber in pine-growing countries, in many instances, proves that this timber may be reproduced, growing anew, after the original growth has been removed, if fires are kept subdued. The growth of protected timber is equivalent to a good interest on the investment. Our forests should be preserved and protected against fires and hunters, even if a penalty be imposed. With proper precautions, billions of valuable pine timber could thus be saved; and the same is true also of our almost equally valuable hardwood timber.

In 1819, Crawford county was organized under the administration of Gov. Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory; and that single county embraced within its bounds what are now the States of Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and the western part of Wisconsin. Judge James D. Doty, at the age of twentythree years, held the first district court, in 1824, at Prairie du Chien, the county seat. Under the jurisdiction of Crawford county tribunals, criminals were transferred from the upper Mississippi valley to Prairie du Chien for trial. The writer of this paper settled in Crawford county in 1837, sixty-two years ago. I have since continuously resided in what was old Crawford county, and during the last forty-nine years at Taylor's Falls. The boundary lines have been changed a number of times, leaving me, in 1899, in the State of Minnesota.

HISTORY OF PIONEER LUMBERING ON THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES, WITH BIOGRAPHIC SKETCHES.*

BY DANIEL STANCHFIELD.

PERSONAL NARRATION.

My earliest home memories and first experience of toil were associated with the pine woods of Maine, where I was born, in Leeds township, June 8th, 1820. Up to the age of fifteen years I attended school and worked on my father's farm, which he had purchased in Milo township, then part of the great forest region of Maine. Our work consisted largely in cutting down the timber and burning it to clear the farm, a few acres being thus added each year to the tract under cultivation and pasturage.

In the year 1839, responding to the call of Governor Fairfield, I enlisted, with the state militia company of which I was a member, and served eight months in the campaign for defense of the rights of Maine and of the United States in the establishment of the boundary between northern Maine and Canada.

During much of the time for the next five years I was engaged with lumbermen in cutting logs and driving them down tributaries of the Penobscot river, and also worked during parts of these years in sawmills.

In the autumn of 1844, I set my face toward the west, tak ing passage, September 1st, in the steamer Bangor, to Boston, thence going by railway to Albany, and by canal to Buffalo. The canal passage across the state of New York took seven days.

*Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, May 8, 1899.

Thence the trip to Chicago was by the steamer Nile, and we encountered a very severe storm on Lake Huron. Reaching Chicago, I was disappointed in the appearance of that far advertised city. Lots close west of the river could be purchased for two hundred dollars.

After a few days' stay in Chicago, I went on by stage to Belvidere, Illinois, near which place my elder brother George, who had come west earlier, was farming. His children were sick with the ague. According to my wish, he sold his property in Belvidere, and we together moved onward to a healthier location near Freeport, in northwestern Illinois, where he took a farming claim of government land.

During the following winter I explored the Galena mining region, and in the spring of 1845 went to the Wisconsin pineries. Two years of hard work in lumbering and sawing followed, with good investments of money partly brought from Maine and partly earned during these years. The spring and summer of the next year, 1847, found me rafting lumber down the Wisconsin river and thence down the Mississippi, selling it in Dubuque, Galena, Quincy, and St. Louis. As lumber bought in northern Wisconsin, rafted, and sold in these growing towns and cities along the Mississippi, brought large profits, I decided to return in the fall to the pineries and continue in this business.

ARRIVAL IN MINNESOTA.

While I was resting for a part of the summer of 1847, in St. Louis, after the sale of my lumber, the heat became so intense that I decided to leave for my voyage up the river. Just then Capt. John Atchison, with his steamer Lynx, arrived from New Orleans, carrying a cargo of government supplies for Fort Snelling, and having on board a pleasure party for the same destination. I secured a stateroom and joined the party. They were all southerners excepting myself, a jolly crowd of ladies and gentlemen. The captain of the boat supplied a brass band that played and entertained us all day, and then furnished string music to dance by in the evening. Thus the whole trip was spent in pleasure, and the time passed rapidly until we arrived at Fort Snelling.