The Northwestern Fur Company's trail started from New Cave, now St. Paul, and followed the Mississippi River through St. Anthony to Anoka. It forded the Rum River at Anoka, near the Mississippi, following as nearly as possible that river to St. Cloud, where it crossed at a ford. It then followed the Sauk River about eleven miles; then turned to the right and crossed Big Bend forty-five miles, striking the river again four miles north from Sauk Center. Then it passed through the timber to Alexandria. It crossed Red River near Fort Abercrombie; then went directly north to Pembina, passing from point to point of the Red River of the North. The Red River carts had wheel rims eight inches wide. I have seen them with solid wheels cut from a single round of a tree. I have heard that the carts around Pembina were formerly all like this, but in my day they generally had spokes. I suppose they were lighter. It was the width of wheel and sagacity of the animal that made it possible to go with security over the most impossible roads. They usually carried eight hundred pounds. When they reached St. Paul they camped where Larpenteur's home now is. I never knew an Indian who had been converted to go back on the whites. Some people would sell them a pair of pants, for a Christian Indian could vote and then say as they saw them so dressed, "There is a Christian Indian." It took more than a pair of pants to Christianize an Indian, but when they were once converted, they stayed so, as the many people who were saved by them in the massacre could testify. Mr. D. E. Dow--1850. In 1850 when I first came to Minnesota, I took a claim at Lake Harriet near where the pavilion now stands. The ruins of the old Steven's Mission were on my claim. It had been built in 1834. I did not keep this claim long, though I built a log cabin there and kept bachelor's hall, but soon took a claim where my present house stands in Hopkins. I built a cabin here but boarded with a widow and her children. All the food we had was game, pork and buckwheat cakes. The buckwheat they had brought from their home and it was all ground in the coffee mill then sifted through a horsehair sieve before it could be used. There were seven in the family to grind for, so it kept one person grinding all the time.