About this record
Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, an Italian nobleman and soldier, went into voluntary exile after political intriques and the death of close friends in his native land. After arriving in Philadelphia, he voyaged down the Ohio to St. Louis, and then took the first steamboat to travel the upper Mississippi. Obsessed with discovering the source of the Mississippi, he traveled extensively in northern Minnesota in the summer of 1823. He later journeyed to New Orleans, Mexico, through the Caribbean, and back to the northeast before returning to Europe in 1826. In this excerpt from his travel narrative, Beltrami describes the first steamboat trip on the upper Mississippi, detailing the people and places he saw as he passed along the Wisconsin shore.Citation
Beltrami, Giacomo Costantino. "Letter XIV." Pilgrimage in Europe and America, leading to the discovery of the sources of the Mississippi and Bloody river: with a description of the whole course of the former and of the Ohio... (London: Hunt, 1828), vol. 2: 126-197.