Mr. and Mrs. Stevens were from Central New York, and were engaged as early as 1827 in missionary labors on the Island of Mackinaw. In 1829, Mr. Stevens and Rev. Mr. Coe made a tour of exploration through the wilds of Northern Wisconsin, coming as far as Fort Snelling. For several years thereafter, Mr. Stevens was connected with the Stockbridge mission on Fox Lake; and in the summer of 1835 he had commenced this station at Lake Harriet. At the time of our arrival he had made things look quite civilized. He had built two houses of tamarack logs, the larger of which his own family occupied; the lower part of the other was used for the school and religious meetings. Half a dozen boarding scholars, chiefly half-breed girls, formed the nucleus of the school, which was taught by his niece, Miss Lucy C. Stevens, who was afterward married to Rev. Daniel Gavan, of the Swiss mission to the Dakotas. As the mission family was already quite large enough for comfort, Mary and I, not wishing to add to any one's burdens, undertook to make ourselves comfortable in a part of the school-building. Our stay there was to be only temporary, and hence it was only needful that we take care of ourselves, and give such occasional help in the way of English preaching and otherwise as we could. The Dakotas did not yet care to hear the gospel. The Messrs. Pond had succeeded in teaching one young man to read and write, and occasionally a few could be induced to come and listen to the good news. It was seed-sowing time. Many seeds fell by the wayside or on the hard path of sin. Most fell among thorns. But some found good ground, and, lying dormant a full quarter of a century, then sprang up and fruited in the prison at Mankato. Also of the girls in that first Dakota boarding-school quite a good proportion became Christian women and the mothers of Christian families. But the mission at Lake Harriet was not to continue long. In less than two years from the time we were there, two Ojibwa young men avenged the killing of their father by waylaying and killing a prominent man of the Lake Calhoun Village. A thousand Ojibwas had just left Fort Snelling to return to their homes by way of Lake St. Croix and the Rum River. Both parties were followed by the Sioux, and terrible slaughter ensued. But the result of their splendid victory was that the Lake Calhoun people were afraid to live there any longer, and so they abandoned their village and plantings and settled on the banks of the Minnesota. During our three months' stay at Lake Harriet, every thing we saw and heard was fresh and interesting, and Mary could not help telling of them to her friends in Hawley. The grandfather was ninety years old, to whom she thus wrote:-- "LAKE HARRIET, June 22, 1837.