The close of the Black Hawk War, so called, and the extinction of the Indian title to the rich prairie lands of Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, and west of the Mississippi in what is not Iowa, gave a new impulse to eastern emigration, and from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, could bee seen long lines of 'prairie schooners,' their white canvas tops shining in the summer sun, filled with tried mothers and towheaded children, and followed by droves of cattle, sheep and hogs, and on horseback boys and girls bringing up the rear, bout to 'Black Hawk's purchase,' while over the Lakes come pouring out from New York and New England and new installment of the restless but enterprising sons and daughters of the Pilgrims, as if bound to take possession of all the territory promised and guaranteed to their fathers by the British King, in a certain charter granting within certain parallels all the lands to the great 'Southern (Pacific) Ocean.' The banks of the 'Father Of Waters' soon swarmed with these hardy adventurers, and towns and villages sprang up as if by magic, while the virgin prairies in their rear gave evidence of their boundless fertility in the most exuberant crops of golden grain, the lead and cold mines gave up their long-hidden wealth and commerce, manufactures, mine gave up their long-hidden wealth and commerce, manufactures, science and the arts began to flourish. But no single locality of section of country possesses all the advantages. Nature reserves something for all, and as no man is so vile but that we can discover some good traits in him, so no region is so destitute but we can find some bounty lavished upon it from Nature's ample storehouse; and as the best men have some faults, so the richest countries lack some element of essential to the human wants. And thus it was with the rich and fertile West. With all its vast agricultural and mineral wealth, it lacked the lumber to fence the fields, store its grain, or build its farmhouses and barns. The scarcity and high price of this commodity was for many years a serious drawback to the progress of the farmers of Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa, and a large share of that used in the erection of the first houses built in Burlington, Muscatine, Davenport, Rock Island, Galena, and Dubuque, came from the Allegheny River, by raft to Cincinnati, thence by steamboat to its destination, and sold at $75 to $100 per 1,000 feet. And in the summer season, long lines of wagons, each drawn by six yoke of oxen, and laden with whitewood lumber from the Wabash country, could be seen winding over the prairies, and across the sloughs and rivers of Illinois, their drivers mounted ten feet high on the clear, white lumber and cracking their long 'sucker whips' over the lolling oxen, as they floundered of over quagmire, march and bottomless flag-pits to the far off embryo villages of Iowa; and these were the only available supplies of lumber for all that timberless region. But, as through nature's handiworks, there is no want of anybody or anything without an adequate supply, so the all wise Creator has so arranged that these treeless but luxuriant and smiling prairies of the West shall have a bounteous supply of pine, away up in the frozen regions of the North, with the currents of a hundred streams to bear it on to that wonderful river on whose bosom of two thousand miles floated the commerce of the West. No wonder then that the moment, or even before, the Government had extinguished the Indian title, swarms of adventurous Yankees, brought up the lumbering business, rushed up the rivers, out upon these hitherto unscathed forests, and, with axe, saw and cable, commenced the business that in a few years assumed gigantic dimensions, and now employs a very large share of the capital and industry of our growing State. The struggles and hardships encountered by the pioneers in the settlement of any new country bring them into very close - almost fraternal - relations with each other; and a common interest and common dependence in felt, even though separated by long distance, which, in their eagerness to secure the best natural positions, is seldom taken into account. Especially was it so with the settlers in this valley; the great expense and difficulty in getting here; their utter isolation - shut out for several months in the year from all intercourse or correspondence with the outside world - their nearest Post Office at Prairie du Chien, three hundred miles away; the winter's supplies frequently running so low that every pound was distributed - those who had much lending to those who had none - without any possibility replenishing until a boat came up in the spring; the immediate presence of powerful and sometimes turbulent and hostile bands of Indians on the north and west; the reckless and abandoned character of some of the immigrants; the total absence of legal and social restraint; all conspired to make every event of this early period full of interest to those who, coming at a later day, know nothing of those vicissitudes and experiences. Having migrated to the valley at a comparatively early day, and becoming intimately acquainted with all the first settlers, and with most of the noteworthy events, scenes, circumstances and incidents attending our incipient settlement and civilization, and being importuned by several ladies of this city, whose request I could not be so ungallant as to refuse, I have concluded to furnish for the columns of the FREE PRESS a reliable and readable sketch of our Valley's history as my time and ability will enable me to accomplish, although, to tell the truth, I feel it to be a very difficult task, from the fact that many abler pens than mine have at different times given detached portions of these narrations to the public, in writing up the business of our flourishing villages through the respective journals in whose interests they wrote. But I hope, notwithstanding, by grouping together all the facts and incidents into one continuous story, to make it both instructive and amusing.

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