Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/103

1857] efforts to protect ourselves and the horses, no one of us got any rest. We started again at daybreak, and it took us nearly the whole forenoon to reach dry prairie. The mosquito plague, however, diminished but little, so that we decided to make for St. Paul again as quickly as possible. We arrived there late in the evening of the third day. I was a sight to behold. My face was really disfigured, and I was so exhausted that I stayed in bed for a whole day.

In spite of this experience, I set out on another wagon-trip to the town of Faribault, on the Minnesota River, forty miles southwest of St. Paul. My motive was to see James F. Shields, formerly United States Senator from Illinois, and a resident of Belleville, where I had become acquainted with him. He had distinguished himself in the Mexican War, but belonged to the class of political adventurers, so numerous in the West in those days, who tried their fortunes in one new State after another. Not being reëlected to the United States Senate in Illinois, he migrated to Minnesota, whence he managed to be sent as Senator for a short term. Subsequently, on her admission into the Union, he served on the Northern side in the war against the Southern Rebellion, and succeeded in being elected United States Senator from Missouri. The newspapers had announced that Speaker Orr of South Carolina and several other leading Democratic politicians were visiting him, and this fact prompted my journey.

I had another sore trial from the mosquitoes in crossing the so-called Big Woods, a strip of timber, many miles wide, extending from south to north across the State. But otherwise the drive through the rolling prairie country, dotted with lakes fringed by oak groves, to the picturesque valley of the Minnesota was quite interesting. Faribault I found to be an embryo village of a few dozen brick, frame, and log houses, for which a large growth was expected. It never became more than a small country town, however. Under the pre-emption law, General Shields had acquired a quarter-section of land immediately adjoining the town. I