He was something of a Peer Gynt but without Peer Gynt's selfishness or his eye for the main chance; the roving spirit dominated Peerson wholly; not until old age had laid its hand on him did he yield to the monotony of a settled life; but even then in the wilderness of Texas in the fifties. I have personal information of his life there; he took no part in the upbuilding of the community, no active interest in its progress. In a settled community he alone was unsettled; he was never able to gather himself together into concentrated action and prolonged effort in a definite cause or undertaking. A vagabond citizen, he died in poverty. The only activity we associate with his name is the adventurous wanderings of his youth. After having spent a year in Missouri Peerson returned to Norway, evidently for the purpose of recruiting his colony, but I have no evidence that he succeeded in this. Independent of Peerson's efforts, the little colony did receive an accession of three in 1838, namely, Knud and Ole Lydvo and Lars Gjerstad, and of one person in the fall of 1839, namely, Nils Lydvo, who had just come from Voss, Norway, with a group of immigrants from that region, most of whom remained in Chicago. The Shelby County settlement did not thrive. It was too far removed from other settlers, too far from a market; the settlers suffered want and became discouraged. The colony was practically broken up in 1840, when most of the settlers removed north into Iowa Territory into what is now Lee County. Here they established the first Norwegian settlement in Iowa. Of this we shall have occasion to speak under the year 1840. Let us now return to Ansten Nattestad and his party of emigrants, whom we left above, page 119, as about to depart for America. Ansten Nattestad's party of one hundred then sailed from Drammen by the _Emelia_, Captain Ankerson, late in the spring of 1839. It was the first time, says he, that the people of Drammen had seen an emigrant ship. Every person paid thirty-three dollars and a half (specie); they were nine weeks on the ocean, going direct to New York. They took the usual route inland and arrived in Milwaukee just at the time when the Luraas party had returned to Milwaukee to purchase land already selected in Waukesha County, as we have seen above. They urged the new arrivals to stop in Milwaukee and go with them to Muskego, but Nattestad objected, and so they continued their journey to Chicago.