Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/228

Rh September 24th.—I must now tell you of some agreeable Swedes who reside here. They are Captain Schneida n u and his wife, and Mr. Un e onius, now the minister of the Swedish congregation of this district, and his wife. They were among the earliest Swedish emigrants who established themselves on the banks of the beautiful lake, Pine Lake, in Wisconsin, and where they hoped to lead an Arcadian, pastoral life. The country was beautiful, but the land, for the most part, was sterile.

These Swedish gentry, who thought of becoming here the cultivators and colonisers of the Wilderness, had miscalculated their fitness and their powers of labour. Beside this, they had taken with them the Swedish inclination for hospitality and a merry life, without sufficiently considering how long it could last. Each family built for itself a necessary abode, and then invited their neighbours to a feast. They had Christmas festivities and Midsummer dances. But the first year's harvest fell short. The poorly tilled soil could not produce rich harvests. Then succeeded a severe winter, with snow and tempests, and the ill-built houses afforded but inadequate shelter; on this followed sickness, misfortunes, want of labour, want of money, want of all kinds. It is almost incredible what an amount of suffering some of these colonists must have gone through. Nearly all were unsuccessful as farmers; some of them, however, supported themselves and their families by taking to handicraft trades, and as shoemakers or tailors earned those wages which they would have been unable to earn by agriculture. To their honour it must be told that they, amid severe want, laboured earnestly and endured a great deal with patient courage without complaining, and that they successfully raised themselves again by their labour. Neither were they left without aid from the people of the country when their condition became known.