Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/296

Rh an abrupt turn to the left, St. Paul's was before us standing upon a high bluff on the eastern bank of the Mississippi; behind it the blue arch of heaven, and far below it the great river, and before it, extending right and left, beautiful valleys with their verdant hill-sides scattered with wood—a really grand and commanding situation—affording the most beautiful views.

We lay-to at the lower part of the town, whence the upper is reached by successive flights of steps, exactly as with us on the South Hill by Mose-backe in Stockholm. Indians were sitting or walking along the street which runs by the shore. Wrapped in their long blankets they marched on with a proud step, and were some of them stately figures. Just opposite the steamer, and at the foot of the steps, sate some young Indians, splendidly adorned with feathers and ribbons, and smoking from a long pipe which they handed from one to the other, so that they merely smoked a few whiffs each.

Scarcely had we touched the shore when the governor of Minnesota, Mr. Alexander Ramsay, and his pretty young wife, came on board and invited me to take up my quarters at their house. And there I am now; happy with these kind people, and with them I make excursions into the neighbourhood. The town is one of the youngest infants of the great West, scarcely eighteen months old, and yet it has, in this short time, increased to a population of two thousand persons, and in a very few years it will certainly be possessed of twenty-two thousand, for its situation is as remarkable for beauty and healthiness as it is advantageous for trade. Here the Indians come with their furs from that immense country lying between the Mississippi and the Missouri, the western boundary of Minnesota, and the forests still undespoiled of their primeval wealth, and the rivers and lakes abounding in fish, offer their inexhaustible resources, whilst the great