Andrew McFarland Davis

Drawing on the author's diary, this narrative chronicles Andrew McFarland Davis's experiences as a member of an 1857 surveying expedition for a projected line of the La Crosse & Milwaukee Railroad from Portage, Wisconsin, to Lake Pepin. Davis himself was in charge of the expedition's level. From the camp near Silver Lake where it set out at the end of March, the team proceeded through Marquette, Waushara, Adams, Wood, Clark, Eau Claire, Chippewa, and Dunn Counties, changing the terminus for the proposed line as it went, and reconnoitering along the headwaters of the Red Cedar River with another survey team working from the other end of the line. On Tuesday, August 4, Davis's team took a keelboat from Eau Claire to Reed's Landing, and from there, a steamer to Prairie du Chien. The expedition reached its final destination on August 7, after more than four months of work. Davis describes the changing terrain as well as some of the journey's mishaps and discomforts, such as encounters with mosquitoes and gnats that seriously impeded his work. The book includes a map tracing the expedition's route.

From the book:"There are," says Father Brebeuf in his account of what was worthy of note among the Hurons in 1636, [Footnote: Relations des Jesuites, Quebec, 1858, p. 113.] "three kinds of games particularly in vogue with this people; cross, platter, and straw. The first two are, they say, supreme for the health. Does not that excite our pity? Lo, a poor sick person, whose body is hot with fever, whose soul foresees the end of his days, and a miserable sorcerer orders for him as the only cooling remedy, a game of cross. Sometimes it is the invalid himself who may perhaps have dreamed that he will die unless the country engages in a game of cross for his health. Then, if he has ever so little credit, you will see those who can best play at cross arrayed, village against village, in a beautiful field, and to increase the excitement, they will wager with each other their beaver skins and their necklaces of porcelain beads." "Sometimes also one of their medicine men will say that the whole country is ill and that a game of cross is needed for its cure. It is not necessary to say more. The news incontinently spreads everywhere. The chiefs in each village give orders that all the youths shall do their duty in this respect, otherwise some great calamity will overtake the country."