settle on the banks of the River St. Croix and Stillwater, who do not belong to what are called the better class, although they rank with such-a couple of ladies who smoke meerschaum-pipes now and then-and, in particular, there are two half-grown girls, who are considerably in my way sometimes- especially one of them, a tall, awkward girl in a fiery-red, brick-colored dress, with fieryred hair as rough as a besom, and eyes that squint, and who, when she comes out, sets herself to stare at me with her arms crossed, her mouth and eyes wide open, as if I were some strange Scandinavian animal, and every now and then she rushes up to me with some unnecessary, witless question. I regard these girls as belonging to—the mythological monsters of the Great West, as daughters of its giants, and did not scruple to cut them rather short! Ah! people may come to this hemisphere as democratic as they will, but when they have traveled about a little they will become aristocratic to a certain extent. To a certain extent-but beyond that I shall never go, even though the daughters of the giants become so numerous as to shut out my view. And this brick-colored, foolhardy girl would—of this I am certain—with a few kind and intelligent words, assume a different mode of behav. ior, and, if I were to be any length of time with her, she and I should become good friends. And there is in one of these emigrant families an old grandmother, and yet not so very old after all, who is so full of anxiety, so quietly active, and so thoughtful for every one who belongs to her, and who is evidently so kind and motherly in disposition, that one must willingly take in good part all her questions and her ignorance of geography, if one has any thing good in one's self. And that one has not when one gets out of temper with the manners of the giants' daughter, and wills to be at peace.

The captain of the steamer, Mr. Smith, is an extremely agreeable and polite man, who is my cavalier on board, and in whose vessel the utmost order prevails.

We see no longer any traces of European cultivation on shore, nothing but Indian huts and encampments. The shores have become flatter since we left Lake Pepin, and the scenery tamer.

LETTER XXVII.

St. Paul's, Minnesota, October 25th. Ar about three miles from St. Paul's we saw a large Indian village, consisting of about twenty hide-covered wigwams, with their ascending columns of smoke. In the midst of these stood a neat log-house. This was the home which a Christian missionary had built for himself among the savages, and here he had established a school for the children. Upon a hill beyond the village, a number of stages were placed in a half circle, upon which rested coffins of bark. Small white flags distinguished those among the departed who had been most recently brought there. The village, which is called Kaposia, and is one of the established Indian villages, looked animated from its women, children, and dogs. We sped rapidly past it, for the Mississippi was here as clear and deep as our own River Götha, and the next moment, taking 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-back 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 statèly figures. Just opposite the steamer, and at the foot of the steps, sat some young Indians, splendidly adorned with feathers and ribbons, and smoking from a long pipe

а 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 neighborhood. 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, while the great Mississippi offords the means of their conveyance to the commercial markets of the world, flowing, as it does, through the whole of Central America down to New Orleans. Hence it is that several traders here have already acquired considerable wealth, while others are coming hither more and more, and they are building houses as fast as they can.

As yet, however, the town is but in its infancy, and people manage with such dwellings as they can get. The drawing-room at Governor Ramsay's house is also his office, and Indians and work-people, and ladies and gentlemen, are all alike admitted. In the mean time, Mr. Ramsay is building himself a handsome, spacious house,

a upon a hill, a little out of the city, with beautiful trees

VOL. II.-B

around it, and commanding a grand view over the river. If I were to live on the Mississippi, I would live here. It is a hilly region, and on all hands extend beautiful and varying landscapes; and all abounds with such youthful and fresh life.

The city is thronged with Indians. The men, for the most part, go about grandly ornamented, and with naked hatchets, the shafts of which serve them as pipes. They paint themselves so utterly without any taste that it is incredible. Sometimes one half of the countenance will be painted of a cinnamon-red, striped and in blotches, and the other half with yellow ditto, as well as all other sorts of fancies, in green, and blue, and black, without the slightest regard to beauty that I can discover. Here comes an Indian who has painted a great red spot in the middle of his nose ; here another who has painted the whole of his forehead in small lines of yellow and black; there a third with coal-black rings round his eyes. All have eagles' or cocks' feathers in their hair, for the most part colored, or with scarlet tassels of worsted at the ends. The hair is cut short on the forehead, and for the rest hangs in elf-locks or in plaits on the shoulders, both of men and women. The women are less painted, and with better taste than the men, generally with merely one deep red little spot in the middle of the cheeks, and the parting of the hair on the forehead is died purple. I like their appearance better than that of the men. They have a kind smile, and often a very kind expression ; as well as a something in the glance which is much more human; but they are evidently merely their husbands' beasts of burden. There goes an Indian with his proud step, bearing aloft his plumed head. He carries only his pipe, and when he is on a journey, perhaps a long staff in his hand. After him, with bowed head and stooping shoulders, follows his wife, bending under the burden which she bears on her back, and which a band, passing over the forehead,

enables her to support. Above the burden peeps forth a little round-faced child, with beautiful dark eyes : it is her“ papoose,” as these children are called. Its little body is fastened by swaddling-clothes upon its back on a board, which is to keep its body straight; and it lives, and is fed, and sleeps, and grows, always fastened to the board. When the child can walk it is still carried for a long time on the mother's back in the folds of her blanket. Nearly all the Indians which I have seen are of the Sioux tribe.

Governor Ramsay drove me yesterday to the Falls of St. Anthony. They are some miles from St. Paul's. These falls close the Mississippi to steam-boats and other vessels. From these falls to New Orleans the distance is two thousand two hundred miles. A little above the falls the river is again navigable for two hundred miles, but merely for small vessels, and that not without danger.

The Falls of St. Anthony have no considerable height, and strike me merely as the cascade of a great mill-dam. They fall abruptly over a stratum of a tufa rock, which they sometimes break and wash down in great masses. The country around is neither grand, nor particularly picturesque; yet the river here is very broad, and probably from that cause the fall and the hills appear more inconsiderable. The shore is bordered by a rich luxuriance of trees and shrubs, springing up wildly from among pieces of rock, and the craggy tufa walls with their ruinlike forms, which, however, have nothing grand about them. River, falls, country, views, every thing here has more breadth than grandeur.

It was Father Hennepin, the French Jesuit, who first came to these falls, brought hither captive by the Indians. The Indians called the falls “Irrara," or the Laughing Water; he christened them St. Anthony's. I prefer the first name, as being characteristic of the fall, which has rather a cheerful than a dangerous appearance, and the