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already, by good investments and the profits of his

business, doubled his money.

Everything that one price, or as high as it does in any part of the West. The number of visitors and emigrants is so large that the productions of the territory are utterly inadequate to supply the market. Therefore large quantities of provisions have to be brought up the river from the lower towns. At Swan River, 100 miles this side of St. Paul, pork is worth $35. Knowing that pork constitutes a great part of the "victuals" up this way, though far from being partial to the article, I tried it when I dined at Swan River to see if it was good, and found it to be very excellent. Board for laboring men must be about four dollars a week. For transient guests at Crow Wing it is one dollar a day.

can eat or wear brings a high

I have heard it said that money is scarce. It is possible. It certainly commands a high premium; but the reason is that there are such splendid opportunities to make fortunes by building and buying and selling city lots. A man intends that the rent of a house or store shall pay for its construction in three years. The profits of adventure justify a man in paying high interest. If a man has money enough to buy a pair of horses and a wagon, he can defy the world. These are illustrations to show why one is induced to pay interest. I do not think, however, money is "tight." I never saw

people so free with their money, or appear to have

it in so great abundance.

There is one drawback which this territory has in common with the greater part of the West, and in fact of the civilized world. It is not only a drawback, but a nuisance anywhere; I mean drinking or whiskey shops. The greater proportion of the settlers are temperate men, I am sure; but in almost every village there are places where the meanest kind of intoxicating liquor is sold. There are some who sell liquor to the Indians. But such business is universally considered as the most degraded that a mean man can be guilty of. It is filthy to see men staggering about under the influence of bad whiskey, or of any kind of whiskey. He who sends a young husband to his new cabin home intoxicated, to mortify and torment his family; or who sells liquor to the uneducated Indians, that they may fight and murder, must have his conscience -if he has any at all-cased over with sole leather. Mr. Gough is needed in the West.

Minnesota is not behind in education. Ever since Governor Slade, of Vermont, brought some bright young school mistresses up to St. Paul (in 1849), common school education has been diffusing its precious influences. The government wisely sets apart two sections of land-the 16th and 36th-in every township for school purposes. A township is six miles square; and the two sections thus reserved in

Other territo

cach township comprise 1280 acres. ries have the same provision. This affords a very good fund for educational uses, or rather it is a great aid to the exertions of the people. There are some flourishing institutions of learning in the territory. But the greatest institution after all in the country-the surest protection of our liberties and our laws-is the FREE SCHOOL.

LETTER XIII.

CROW WING TO ST. CLOUD.

Pleasant drive in the stage-Scenery-The past-Fort Ripley Ferry— Delay at the Post Office-Belle Prairie-A Catholic priest--Dinner at Swan River-Potatoes-Arrival at Watab-St. Cloud.

ST. CLOUD, October, 1856.

YESTERDAY morning at seven I took my departure, on the stage, from Crow Wing. It was a most delightful morning, the air not damp, but bracing; and the welcome rays of the sun shed a mellow lustre upon a scene of "sylvan beauty." The first hour's ride was over a road I had passed in the dark on my upward journey, and this was the first view I had of the country immediately below Crow Wing. No settlements were to be seen, because the regulations of military reservations preclude their being made except for some purpose connected with the public interests. A heavy shower the night before had effectually laid the dust, and we bounded along on the easy coach in high spirits. The view of the prairie stretching "in airy undulations far away," and of the eddying current of the Mississippi, there as everywhere deep and majestic, with its banks skirted with autumn-colored foliage, was enough to commend the old fashioned system of stages to more general use. Call it poetry or what

you please, yet the man who can contemplate with indifference the wonderful profusion of nature, undeveloped by art-inviting, yet never touched by the plough-must lack some one of the senses. Indeed, this picture, so characteristic of the new lands of the West, seems to call into existence a new sense. The view takes in a broad expanse which has never produced a stock of grain; and which has been traversed for ages past by a race whose greatest and most frequent calamity was hunger. If we turn to its past there is no object to call back our thoughts. All is oblivion. There are no ruins to awaken curious images of former life-no vestige of humanity-nothing but the present generation of nature. And yet there are traces of the past generations of nature to be seen. The depressions of the soil here and there to be observed, covered with a thick meadow grass, are unmistakeable indications of lakes which have now "vanished into thin air." That these gentle hollows were once filled with water is the more certain from the appearance of the shores of the present lakes, where the low water mark seems to have grown lower and lower every year. But if the past is blank, these scenes are suggestive of happy reflections as to the future. The long perspective is radiant with busy life and cheerful husbandry. New forms spring into being. Villages and towns spring up as if by magic, along whose streets throngs of men are passing. And thus, as "coming events cast their

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