There was cholera at St. Louis that summer, and I remember how a steamer landed a large party of Norwegian immigrants, nearly all down with cholera. Mr. Willard and myself happened to be in Red Wing at the time, and the American families, considering these Norwegian cholera patients our countrymen, hastily turned them over to our care. We nursed them as best we could, but many died in spite of all our efforts, and as we closed their eyes, and laid them in the silent grave under the bluffs, it never occurred to us that they were anything but our countrymen and brothers. From these small beginnings of the Swedish and Norwegian settlers in Goodhue county, in the years of 1853 and 1854, have sprung results which are not only grand but glorious to contemplate. Looking back to those days I see the little cabin, often with a sod roof, single room used for domestic purposes, sometimes crowded almost to suffocation by hospitable entertainments to new-comers; or the poor immigrant on the levee at Red Wing, just landed from a steamer, in his short jacket and other outlandish costume, perhaps seated on a wooden box, with his wife and a large group of children around him, and wondering how he shall be able to raise enough means to get himself ten or twenty miles into the country, or to redeem the bedding and other household goods which he has perchance left in Milwaukee as a pledge for his railroad and steam-boat ticket. And I see him trudging along over the trackless prairie, searching for a piece of land containing if possible prairie, water and a little timber, on which to build a home. Poor, bewildered, ignorant, and odd looking, he had been an object of pity and derision all the way from Gothenburg or Christiania to the little cabin of some country-man of his, where he found rest and shelter until he could build one of his own. [Illustration: OUR FIRST HOME.] Those who have not experienced frontier life, will naturally wonder how it was possible for people so poor as a majority of the old settlers were, to procure the necessaries of life, but they should remember that our necessities were few, and our luxuries a great deal less. The bountiful earth soon yielded bread and vegetables; the woods and streams supplied game and fish; and as to shoes and clothing, I and many others have used shoes made of untanned skins, and even of gunny-sacks and old rags. Furthermore, the small merchants at the river or other points, were always willing to supply the Scandinavian emigrants with necessary goods on credit, until better times should come. Our people in this country did certainly earn a name for integrity and honesty among their American neighbors, which has been a greater help to them than money. Some of the men would go off in search of work, and in due time return with means enough to help the balance of the family.