As soon as possible I placed reliable men as guards at the doors to prevent the people from rushing out and crowding each other off the platform. The train did not reach the station but had to be stopped on the open prairie, where we all were helped out of the cars with no accident of any kind except every particle of baggage, saving only what the passengers had in their seats with them, was burnt. In due time another train brought us to Chicago, where the railroad company immediately offered to pay all losses as soon as lists of the property destroyed could be made out and properly verified. I undertook to do all that work without the aid of consul, lawyer or clerk, collecting nearly twenty thousand dollars, for old trunks, spinning-wheels, copper kettles, etc. Having lost nothing myself, I of course received nothing, and as the Company did not consider it their duty to pay me for my trouble, one of the emigrants suggested that they should chip in to compensate me for the valuable services I had rendered. Accordingly the hat was passed, the collection realizing the magnificent sum of two dollars and sixty cents, which was paid me for being their interpreter during the long journey and for collecting that large sum of money without litigation or delay. No lawyer, consul or agent would have been satisfied with less than five hundred dollars, but I can truthfully say that I never raised a word of complaint, but freely forgave the people on account of their ignorance. Many of them I also served afterwards on the way to Moline and Minnesota. In due time our party arrived in Moline, where my parents bought a small piece of property with the money brought from Sweden. Minnesota was then a territory but little known; yet we had heard of its beautiful lakes, forests, prairies and salubrious climate. Quite a number of our company had decided to hunt up a place for a Swedish settlement where land could be had cheap. It was finally agreed that a few of us should go to Minnesota and select a suitable place. Being the only one of the party who could speak English, I was naturally appointed its leader. My father also went with us, and so did Mr. Willard and his wife, the whole party taking deck passage on a Mississippi steamer, and arriving at St. Paul in the month of August. At that time St. Paul was an insignificant town of a few hundred inhabitants. There we found Henry Russell, John Tidlund, and a few other Swedish pioneers. Mr. Willard and I had very little money, and for the few dollars which we did own we bought a little household furniture, and some cooking utensils. We therefore at once sought employment for him, while the rest of our party started off in search of a suitable location for the proposed settlement.