Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/83

 as a writer; it is only with his pencil that he is good. In 1823 the first steamer came up as far as Fort Snelling. In 1849 Minnesota was separately organized as a Territory. In a small historical sketch of St. Anthony and Minneapolis, published at St. Anthony in 1855, I find that Frank Steele, for whom our steamer to Redwood was named, was in 1837 the first white man who &quot;fleshed his axe in the unbroken wilderness,&quot; and commenced improvements in Minnesota. Then he built a house at St. Anthony. In 1848 there were but three houses and a blockhouse there; Minneapolis was settled a few years later.

On the 5th of June I went to Mrs. Hamilton's; the house (in Richfield) built seven years ago, in 1854. Around it was abundance of wild artichoke. She says the wild apple grew then about her premises; her husband first saw it on a ridge by the shore of Lake Harriet. They had dug up several trees and set them out, but all died. (The settlers also set out the wild plum and thimbleberry, etc.) So I went and searched in that very unlikely place, but could find