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Show MINNESOTA. 389 of our new North- west will consist largely of Scandinavians and kin-dred races. They are wheat- eaters, Bible- readers, and Calvinists; they establish schools and churches, are anchored to the soil, and constitute a conservative and most de-sirable class of citizens. An old traveler relates that he was toiling over the black sandy prairie, one of the hottest days of their hot but short sum-mer, when to his joy he came upon a dirt- roofed " log- house with the word ICE in prominent letters on the right side of the door. Drawing near with thirsty haste he saw on the left side, in smaller, dim-mer letters the word POSTOFF. A Russian or Swedish name, he thought, and called for ice- water. The woman, ignorant of English, handed him a bundle of letters with instructions, in pantomime, to pick out what belonged t< him ! He made out after a lengthy discussion wi^ h the woman that the two signs were to be read together, and meant POST- OFFICE. I have sufficiently described the climate of our new North- west; it is severe but healthful. There has been a deal of miscella-neous lying on this subject. Storms of fifty hours' duration 3, re not uncommon even in Nebraska ; and at Cheyenne I have ex-perienced weather cold enough to freeze the most hardy animals if un-sheltered. Five hundred miles south of the Northern Pacific I have seen cattle frozen stiff in their tracks, horses left in the spring with only the stump of a tail, birds fallen dead from the air in cold wind storms, Indians without nose enough left to blow after a winter's jour-ney, and buffalo by tens of thousands literally frozen to death on the - plains. But settlers can provide against storms and cold; experience shows that man comes to perfection in such climates, and the old resi-dent can truthfully say, " Man is the noblest growth our realms supply; And souls are ripened in our Northern sky." DALLES OF ST. LOUIS RIVER. |