A preliminary railroad survey in Wisconsin in 1857

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abundance did not last long.
We saw partridges and pigeons and one or two deer but naturally a large party Hieaw,ftg without attempt to sup¬ press the noise of its movements would not be likely to en^- oounter much game.  We saw but fe?; snakes until we got into the^creek district and there quite a number of prairie rattle snakes suffered on account of the natural animosity of man against their species.  At one camp on that creek eight or nine were killed.  We saw no elk, perhaps there were none there at that time, but we did see numerous antlers shed by the bucks, lying on the ground near our line.
The story of our summer's experience has been ex¬ tracted from a diary written day by day during our trip. Thor¬ oughly conversant with the fact that there was nothing of special interest in it, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites has insisted that it ought to be reduced to writing, and deposited in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.  As a corres¬ ponding member of that society, I yield to the secretary on this point, hoping that his judgment may prove to be better than mine, and that this account of our surveying expedition may have value enough to justify his opinion that it ought to be preserved.