Note II-52 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: ST. PAUL TO LEECH LAKE, SEPTEMBER 22D, 1805-JANUARY 31ST, 1806.

I do not know that the exact site of Grant's N. W. Co. House has been recovered of late years; but there is no question of its location nearly or directly opposite the town of Grand Rapids, somewhere in the S. ½ of Sect. 21, T. 55, R. 25, 4th M. It doubtless stood on the first rising ground from the river—most probably, as I think, on the knoll that overlooks that curious expansion of the Mississippi into a pair of ponds or one small lake of hour-glass shape, across the constricted part of which the river flows. Grand Rapids is the seat of Itasca Co., and has become quite a town of late years, at least in comparison with any others for many miles thereabouts. It stands across the mouth of a small creek, whose name, if it have one, I could not learn, even when I was on the spot. It discharges from several small lakes. The rapids from which the town takes its name are not particularly "grand." Pike calls them a "ripple." "Kakabikons (or simply Kabikons) rapids, as I have laid them down on the map, have a fall of 9 feet in a distance of 80 yards," Nicollet, Rep. 1843, p. 63. The volatile Beltrami calls them "Sassicy-Woenne, or Thundering Rapids," II. p. 455. The Engineer chart marks the rapids 1247 below and 1252 above—a difference of only 5 feet. At the direct distance of 2½ m. below (E. S. E. of) the town is a village called La Prairie, of no consequence in itself, but occupying a notable place. This is the mouth of a comparatively large river, charted by Pike as "Meadow R. navigable for Bark Canoes 100 M." Long also maps it as Meadow r.; by Beltrami it is called Mushkotensoi-sibi or Prairie r., and this last is its present designation (duplicating the name of one of the tributaries of Sandy l.: see note49, p. 138). It is the translation of the Indian word which Nicollet in this connection renders Mashkudens, and which occurs in many forms, as Mascouten, Muscatine, etc. About 2 m. S. W. of Grand Rapids is Horseshoe l., one of the many small bodies of water which hover like satellites about Lake Pokegama: see next note. The D. and W. R. R. keeps on the N. side of the Mississippi, from La Prairie through Grand Rapids to Cohasset and Deer River, its present terminus.