These people, about sixty in number, this day were leaving that spot on God's earth most dear to them; leaving the birthplace and the resting-place of a hundred generations of their ancestors, they were looking for the last time on their former homes and on the dear familiar spots so well known from their childhood. They had just looked for the last time upon the faces of their friends and near relatives and spoken the last words, and soon they were to see the receding outlines of the mountain peaks of their beloved fatherland, nevermore to see them again. For they were on the way to America, and America was very far off in those days, and to most people going there the way back was forever closed. So to these people these last glimpses and handshakes and words were the final, as far as this world went, and they were all too well aware of it. But let us pause in the journey at this point, while still under the influence of the nearby majestic mountains, robed in evergreen and crowned with the snows of generations, so as to get acquainted with the individuals of this company and also to learn the causes which could lead these people to an undertaking so fraught with momentous destiny for all of them and for their descendants to the end of time. As we have already surmised, these people were not light-minded adventurers or people who had nothing to risk or lose. On the contrary, they were deeply rooted where they were and they did not pluck up their life by the roots to be transplanted in a far-off, unknown soil without careful consideration and a great motive. First we meet Berhaug Rise (later written Reese) who seems to be a leader in this particular group we have before us. He is a man of about forty-five, of spare build and medium height. He has a family consisting of wife and five children--four boys and one girl; also his mother who is nearly seventy years of age. The children's names were Ole, eleven years; Halvor, nine; John, coming seven; Sivert, five; and Mary, three years, and named after the grandmother. Next we get acquainted with Halvor Hevle, a man also of about forty-five, but because of a terrible affliction of rheumatism, was bent over so that his face is toward the ground. He is accompanied by his wife, Marit, but they have no children. Then there is Thore Fossem with his wife, his mother and one little girl, Marie, named after the grandmother. It should be explained here that while this last named family was not present in the above group just at this point of the story but came a little later, yet because Mr. Fossem belongs by every other circumstance to this group, and in spiritual kinship and motive particularly with the above two, we include him here. With Thore Fossem came Ingebricht Satrum with one of his boys, I believe, but most of his family came over a year or two later.