All around, so far as the eye can see, are green fields, grazing herds of cattle, planted and natural groves, comfortable buildings, and great white-painted school-houses. Not a hill, not a valley or a grove but they call forth touching recollections, some mingled with sorrow and pain, but by far the most bright and cheerful; for here I spent the first hopeful years of my manhood; here we lived, the first Swedes in Minnesota, in a circle of innocent and faithful friends; here I won the wife who tenderly and faithfully has shared the vicissitudes of life with me, in sorrow and in joy ever the same; here those of my countrymen who followed me when I was yet but a youth, have acquired independence, happiness, and such esteem that the settlement of Vasa has a reputation among the communities of the state which reflects honor upon the memory of the great king whose name it bears. But this picture of development, culture and progress is not confined to this settlement, for countless other Scandinavian settlements in the west and northwest have made as great progress within a comparatively short time. On my arrival in 1852 the Mississippi river was the north-western boundary line of civilization with the exception of the state of Iowa, which then had only a small population. Since that time twelve new states further west have been peopled and admitted into the Union. There was no railroad west of Chicago; now the immense distance between the Mississippi and the Pacific ocean is spanned by four giant railroads, while more than a hundred trunk and branch lines intersect the country in all directions, and lakes and rivers are navigated by hundreds of steamers, which compete with the railroads in carrying the products of the West to the Atlantic, whence they are distributed over the whole civilized world. Hundreds of cities that did not exist, even by name, have since sprung up as if by magic, and some of them have already become renowned throughout the world for their industry, commerce and culture. Among them are Minneapolis and St. Paul, already intertwining their arms around each other in an embrace that will soon unite them into one. The former did not exist when I first gazed on St. Anthony falls, which now furnishes motive power for its magnificent mills and factories, and the latter was a town of about two thousand inhabitants. Their combined population is now one-third of a million. St. Paul contains a large number of Scandinavians, but Minneapolis seems to be their favorite city, the Swedes alone numbering over forty thousand. They have many churches, private schools, academies and other institutions of learning. [Illustration: FLOUR MILLS IN MINNEAPOLIS.]