Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/477

 JET. 43.] TO R B. SANBORN. 451

length turned up a great river coming in from the west, which he called &quot;La Riviere Longue;&quot; and he relates various improbable things about the country and its inhabitants, so that this let ter has been regarded as pure fiction, or, more properly speaking, a lie. But I am somewhat inclined now to reconsider the matter.

The Governor of Minnesota (Ramsay), the superintendent of Indian affairs in this quarter, and the newly-appointed Indian agent were on board ; also a German band from St. Paul, a small cannon for salutes, and the money for the Indians (ay, and the gamblers, it was said, who were to bring it back in another boat). There were about one hundred passengers, chiefly from St. Paul, and more or less recently from the northeastern States; also half a dozen young educated Englishmen. Chancing to speak with one who sat next to me, when the voyage was nearly half over, I found that he was the son of the Rev. Samuel May, 1 and a classmate of yours, and had been looking for us at St. An thony.

The last of the little settlements on the river was New Ulm, about one hundred miles this side of Redwood. It consists wholly of Germans. We left them one hundred barrels of salt, which will be worth something more, when the water is lowest, than at present.

1 Rev. Joseph May, a cousin of Louisa Alcott.