"Father, you are great and powerful. You live in a beautiful home where the bleak winds never penetrate. Your hunger is always appeased with the choicest foods. Your heart is kept warm by all these blessings, and would bleed at the sight of distress among your red children. Father, we are poor and weak. We live far away in the cheerless north, in bark lodges. We are often cold and hungry. Father, what we ask is to you as nothing, while to us it is comfort and happiness. Give it to us, and when you stand upon your grand portico some bright winter night, and see the northern lights dancing in the heavens, it will be the thanks of your red children ascending to the Great Spirit for your goodness to them." Carver seems to have been a sagacious observer and a man of great foresight. In speaking of the advantages of the country, he says that the future population will be "able to convey their produce to the seaports with great facility, the current of the river from its source to its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico being extremely favorable for doing this in small craft. This might also in time be facilitated by canals, or short cuts, and a communication opened with New York by way of the Lakes." He was also impressed with the idea that a route could be discovered by way of the Minnesota river, which "would open a passage for conveying intelligence to China and the English settlements in the East Indies." The nearest to a realization of this theory that I have known was the sending of the stern-wheeled steamer "Freighter" on a voyage up the Minnesota to Winnipeg some time in the early fifties. She took freight and passengers for that destination, but never reached the Red River of the North. After the death of Carver his heirs claimed that, while at the great cave on the 1st of May, 1767, the Indians made him a large grant of land, which would cover St. Paul and a large part of Wisconsin, and several attempts were made to have it ratified by both the British and American governments, but without success. Carver does not mention this grant in his book, nor has the original deed ever been found. A copy, however, was produced, and as it was the first real estate transaction ever had in Minnesota, I will set it out in full. "To Jonathan Carver, a Chief under the Most Mighty and Potent George the Third, King of the English and other nations, the fame of whose warriors has reached our ears, and has been fully told us by our _good brother Jonathan_ aforesaid, whom we all rejoice to have come among us and bring us good news from his country: