Note II-15 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: ST. PAUL TO LEECH LAKE, SEPTEMBER 22D, 1805-JANUARY 31ST, 1806.

St. Cloud, seat of Stearns Co.; population 8,000; East St. Cloud opp.; bridges; railroads converging by five tracks; rapids of 30,000 horse-power, dammed and utilized. This is a notable place, likely to become more so. The whole descent from the upper part of the town of Sauk Rapids to the lower part of St. Cloud, a distance of some 5 m., is 24 feet; of which Sauk rapids proper fall 17 or 18 feet in the course of a mile. Pike camps at the foot of these. "Grand Rapids" of the above text are mapped by Pike as "Big Rapids," the term also used by Lewis and Clark; they are Nicollet's Second rapids. When I last saw the place it was not easy to discern the natural course of the river, it was so jammed with logging-booms. The "more than 20 islands" which Pike passed to-day are in part included in the cluster called the Archipelago by Beltrami, now known as the Thousand isls., smallest and most numerous in the expansion of the river just below St. Cloud and above Mosquito rapids; the latter, not bad, are between a large island on the right and a creek that makes in on the left (S. 36, T. 124, R. 28, 5th M.). A short distance below these islands, probably not far from Mosquito rapids, and thus somewhere about opposite St. Augusta, was the above-named wintering place.