Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/424

 356 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY concluded to leave the Indian to paddle his own canoe. "We left the wood chopping early in March, 1854, and moved out to our claims. Having built our house of logs,- we moved in and con- sidered ourselves established as regular farmers. After a few weeks' labor our provisions which we had brought with us gave out and Mr. Mattson went to Red Wing to procure more. No steamboat having yet come up the river that spring, he found that scarcity prevailed in town. There were no provisions for sale, and Mattson remained in town waiting for the arrival of a boat. During his absence on this occasion I and my little family experienced the hardest privations of our lives. For nine days we had only white beans, excepting one clay I shot a few black- birds. Before our stock of beans was exhausted Mattson returned with provisions. During that year several more families arrived in Vasa. Carl Carlson, Gustaf Carlson, Peter Nelson, Nels Peter- son. Erick Eriekson and Samuel Johnson. "In the summer of 1856 we ran a breaking team. I managed the plow, with Frank Carlson for driver. We were breaking for a man in Spring Creek Valley, who, on acount of his anxiety to have us plow deep, used to follow £he plow and weigh down the beam. One day we turned up a large snake, over six-feet long, which was evidently as much disturbed as we were and in trying to escape chose as a retreal the pants of our employer, who, fearfully frightened, yelled, kicked and almost fainted. I jerked the snake out and killed it. If my team could not appreciate the snake's appearance. I could and did." Colonel Hans .Mattson writes in his early recollections: 'In the spring of 1853. I left Moline, Illinois, for Boston, to meet my mother and sister. They were to leave Sweden about the same time on a sailing ship carrying some 200 emigrants. The ship was three months on the ocean and there was a great scarcity of provisions before landing. The ship at last arrived in the month of July, and a couple of days later the whole party took the cars for the west, I volunteering as their guide and inter- preter. All went well until about 100 miles east of Chicago, when the baggage car attached to our train in front, caught fire. It was thought best to try to reach a station, and the burning rain sped on at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The scene was a frightful one, the cars filled with frightened emigrants, the flames hissing like serpents from car to car. windows cracking, people screaming and women fainting ; all at the same time looking to me for protection and deliverance. As soon as possible, I placed men as guards at the door to prevent the people from rushing out and crowding each other off the platform. The train did not reach a station, but had to be stopped on the open prairie, where all were helped out of the cars, without accident except that every