The commerce of the county is carried on via. Fox river, which traverses its northern and western portions, and the Milwaukee & Horicon Railroad, which has its terminus at Berlin, and depots at Ripon and Brandon in Fond du Lac County, near its eastern border. A canal is in contemplation to unite the waters of Green Lake with those of the Fox river at the mouth of the Puckyan, which will introduce steamboat navigation into the very centre of the county, and into the midst of its best wheat-producing territory.

Telegraphic communication is held with the outer world by way of Berlin and Milwaukee.

In educational advantages this county will compare favorably with its neighbors, yet it is hoped that recent changes will lead to very great improvement in this respect.

INDUSTRY OF JACKSON COUNTY.

BY D. J. SPAULDING, BLACK RIVER FALLS.

This is, and has been, a lumbering district. The Agricultural portion of our county only began to be developed some five or six years since, but in that time has made fair progress.

At our recent Agricultural Fair there were 300 entries, and most of the departments were well represented. The swine were very fine, especially some of the Suffolk and Essex hogs. There were some fine draft and carriage horses, Devon and Durham cattle, Merino sheep, besides many fair grade cattle. The show of grain and roots was excellent. We were not very largely represented at the State Fair, only six entries being made from the County, but we took four first and second premiums on grain, not being represented in anything else, on account of the high prices of freights on the railroad. They charged us a little more than the grain was worth for carrying it to Madison, and full fare both ways for the person representing us.

Ours is mostly a wheat-growing county, on account of the

better price it brings in proportion to cost of transportation. Our wheat is pronounced as good as goes into the Milwaukee market; specimens of which often weigh 69 pounds to the struck bushel. The usual yield is about 25 to 30 bushels per acre, and often more. Sparta is our market. We raise mostly spring wheat, of the Club variety. Of late the Fife, Rio Grande, and other varieties have claimed some attention, but the first three are generally preferred among our farmers. Not much extra pains is taken in its cultivation. The ground is generally ploughed in the fall, and the wheat is harrowed in with a common square harrow in the spring, which finishes the work until harvest.

We have excellent crops of oats, rye, barley, potatoes and fair corn. Potatoes with us are generally large and mealy, yielding from one hundred to four hundred bushels per acre. The rot is not much known, except among the Meshannocks. We often get 80 bushels of oats to the acre; 50 bushels, however, being about the average on the heavy lands. These crops are mostly consumed in the lumber woods adjoining our county, and in Clark County, where a great amount of fine timber is cut for manufacture in Jackson and La Crosse Counties, and for mills on the Mississippi.

It is calculated that Black River and its tributaries will have at least 50,000,000 feet of lumber put in them this winter, which furnishes employment for a great many men in cutting, hauling, driving, rafting and manufacturing.

We have 22 saw mills, small and large, and 8 flouring mills, most of which have two or three runs of stone, and three or four of which are fine mills, capable of doing a great deal of work, and of doing it well.

We have iron works one mile above the Falls. The iron is of the finest quality and in the greatest abundance. The chief difficulty with the workers has been to get some material for fluxing, the ore being so rich that it seems almost impossible to separate the iron from the cinder; but I leave this to some one who understands it better.

The general surface of the county is good; the western and

northern portions being high rolling land and fine valleys, well watered, the principal of which is the Trempeleau. The ridges are mostly timbered with oak, and some patches of tamarac and pine along the streams and heads of branches. Scarcely a section of this but has its fine streams of water, or nice cold springs of soft water. Soil mostly loam or clay. On the east side of the river the land is mostly sandy, except the south tier of towns, which is mostly oak openings; and the fine crops testify to the excellent quality of these lands. North of this, for the most part, there is level sandy land, with occasionally an iron mound or sandstone ridge. Here are also some quite extensive cranberry marshes, and a number of small ones, tamarac swams, pine barrens &c. The pine along the streams is excellent and almost inexhaustible.

Our county contains some 4,134 inhabitants, three-fourths of whom I should judge were engaged in agriculture, and the remainder are lumbering and manufacturing.

Farmers have as yet only commenced building, although some fine houses and fine barns are found in traveling about the county. They are generally making calculations to build when they get their grain marketed. They still continue to enlarge their farms, and the new breakings around testify that new comers are making homes among us. Let them comethere is still room and land at fair prices.

INDUSTRY OF JUNEAU COUNTY.

BY J. T. KINGSTON, OF NECEDAH.

Juneau County, lying on the west side of the Wisconsin river, and adjoining Sauk County on the north, is almost wholly a level plain; the only exception to this being a small tract situate in the south and south-western portions of the county, which embraces a portion of the bluff range lying on and around the head waters of the Baraboo and Kickapoo rivers. The soil in the valleys in this bluff country is a deep black

loam, very productive for all kinds of grain grown in this latitude. The bluffs are also covered by a rich soil, producing a heavy growth of all kinds of hard timber known in this country. North of these bluffs, and extending to the Lemonweir river, a distance of from three to six miles, the country is, as before stated, very level, the soil mostly of rather a clay nature, and rather cold, owing to the near approach of the surface water, but as a general thing producing good crops of all small grains. North of the Lemonweir the same uniform level continues to the north line of the county; a great change in the nature of the soil, however, takes place. Starting from the mouth of that river and running up on the north side a distance of some twenty miles, is a strip of open swamp and meadow lands, from two to three miles in width, interspersed with here and there ridges and islands of dry land, covered mostly with a thick growth of small sized timber, chiefly birch, poplar, pin oak and gray pine.

The marsh lands are mostly without timber; near the streams producing an abundance of wild grass suitable for hay, but farther back valuable only for the production of cranberries. Following along the west bank of the Wisconsin, above the Lemonweir and up to the county line, is a strip of dry sandy land, from three to four miles in width, covered, excepting a few small prairies, with a thick growth of small gray pines, usually from six to ten inches in diameter, and valuable only as fuel and a poor quality of fencing. The whole western part of the county, extending from the Lemonweir north, is one uniform and almost unbroken marsh, occupying about a central position in what is known as the "Great Cranberry Marsh." Around the borders of this marsh, and along the margin of the Lemonweir, Yellow, Little Yellow rivers and Cranberry creek, is an immense amount of grass lands of a choice description, which must in time become of considerable value.

The streams of importance bordering on and passing through the county are the Wisconsin on the eastern border, the Lemonweir passing nearly east and west through the southern portion of the county, and emptying into the Wisconsin at the

head of the Big Dells, the Yellow river coming down through the county in a south-easterly direction and emptying into the Wisconsin about ten miles above the Lemonweir, the Little Yellow and Cranberry creek, both tributaries of Yellow river, the former emptying in about three miles from the mouth, and the latter some fifteen miles farther up.

South of the Lemonweir agriculture is carried on to a considerable extent, and is in fact the only business of any great importance in that part of the county; but north of that stream, with the exception of a settlement contiguous to the mouth of Yellow river, but little attention is paid to that branch of industry. The lumber business is the chief occupation of central and northern portions of the county. The mills, both steam and water, are situated on Yellow river, and receive their supply of logs chiefly from the pineries in Wood and Marathon connties. These pineries are sufficient to supply the present demand for many years to come.

With the exception of the bluffs above mentioned, and a small district in the south-eastearn corner, but little rock is found in the county, and that in detached points or elevations, rising in some instances to a highth of over 250 feet above the surrounding plain. Sand stone is the almost universal formation of the county, a few hills of more or less extent and elevation occur in the central part of the county of an entirely different formation; a combination, apparently, of granite and qnartz, thrown up, torn and shattered, evidently by some great subterranean convulsion. Owing to the total absence of limestone from the county, except, perhaps, in the extreme southwest, the water is uniformly soft, and pleasant to the taste.

Considerable deposits of iron ore are found in the middle and western portions of the county, but whether the quantity or richness of the ore would justify any farther attention in that direction, can only be determined by a competent judge.

The Census returns for Juneau County for the year 1860 report but one death to 174 of the inhabitants; showing conclusively that as to health this county stands equal to any other portion of the State.