This descriptive discussion of the Lake Superior country emphasizes geographical features and is directed primarily towards those interested in locating and exploiting the region's mineral deposits of copper and iron. Nevertheless, it is written as a travel narrative, with the author progressing along the shoreline areas, noting their scenic beauties and providing anecdotes and opinions along the way. The reader is told what to wear and what transportation facilities and amenities will be found en route. The book lists mining companies already functioning in the area and gives information about their management and the nature of their operations. Among other information, there is also a glossary of mining terms, a list of grantees, a short vocabulary of French and local Indian words, and a list of steamship and sailing vessels.

With Bayfield's chart showing the boundary line as established by Joint commission. Also a minute account of the copper mines and working companies and containing a concise mode of assaying, treating.

In 1850s America it was extremely uncommon, if not unheard of, for a woman to travel without an escort for her own pleasure. Railroads did not yet reach the Mississippi, rapids barred ships from Lake Superior, and American Indians still inhabited the frontier. Traveling from New York City to Lake Superior's shores, the Mississippi River, and the newly created Minnesota Territory was most definitely not the ideal vacation - or was it? A Fashionable Tour through the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi is the complete daily journal written by Juliette Star Dana, a 35-year-old wife and mother, during her nine-week pleasure tour over three thousand miles of the United States in the summer of 1852. Traveling the frontier roads of rivers and lakes with only a female companion and her teenage son, Juliette sought the scenic water-falls and shorelines along with such man-made sights as copper and lead mines, factories, military posts, and a prison. Juliette chronicles these places and the people therein - American Indians, soldiers, lawyers, and politicians - with engrossing detail and also describes the journey's numerous hardships of accidents, vermin, sickness, and disease. This one-of-a

The task of editing and annotating a nineteenth-century diary seemed straightforward at first, but as Robert Root assembled scattered fragments of lost history and immersed himself in background research, he became enmeshed in unexpected ways. When doubts arose about who really wrote the journal, Root found himself plunged into a mystery of lost identity, drawn ever deeper into the drama and complexity of forgotten lives and engaged in a quest at times both compulsive and quixotic. Part memoir, part meditation on the nature of biography, Recovering Ruth is the absorbing story of recovering a hidden past?and of learning firsthand the complications of intimacy that develop between a biographer and his subject.