The writer indulges in the hope that he will be pardoned for the following digression, which, though forming no part of the "History of Peru," is so connected with it as to induce the belief that it will be not altogether uninteresting to its citizens, or to the general reader into whose hands this little book may fall. The present residents, as they turn their eyes over the beautiful State they inhabit, and behold it dotted with towns, cities, and cultivated farms, where the presence of its original inhabitants is as rare as in Europe, where churches, schools and libraries are strewn broadcast over the land, where the arts, embellishments and accessories of high civilization are everywhere present and pervading, and where rail road and telegraph lines intersect in every direction, may find it pleasant, for a few moments, to drop the present and turn their thoughts to the remote past, and briefly follow up the chain of events, in chronological order, to the period which immediately preceded the settlement of the town. A brief notice of events which occurred in the neighborhood, of the surrounding localities, and of the individuals who inhabited them, whose characters were marked with strong and original peculiarities, may also not be uninteresting. Looking backwards three years before the commencement of this History--twenty-five years ago--we behold the site of Peru occupied as an Indian village. The very spot where is now the residence of the writer is said to have been an Indian burying ground. Northward, the nearest residence of the white man was at Dixon's Ferry, and westward, at Princeton, excepting, perhaps, the Hoskins family near the Bureau. South of the river were some settlements. Along the timber towards Hennepin lived George Ish and Henry Delong; at Cedar Point, Nathaniel Richie; on the bluff, near the old Fort, John Myers; at Bailey's Point, Lewis Bailey, William Seeley, William Groom, Joel Alvord, Asa Holdridge, William Haws, and perhaps a few others; at or near Hennepin, the Willises, Stewarts, Thompsons, Durleys, Donlevys, Shepperds, Zenors and Dents; at Utica, Simon Crosiar; at Ottawa, the Walkers, Browns, Covills, &c.; at Dayton, John Green and William L. Dunnavan; at Indian Creek, the Halls, Davises and Petegrus; and further eastward, the Hollenbecks and Holdermans. At Bloomington, seventy miles distant, was the nearest mill, and thither all the people went to get their corn and wheat ground, until Green built one at Dayton, in 1833 or 1834. As late as 1837, as related by Mrs. Lockwood who then lived with her father, Isaac Manville, at Manville Hollow, in Cedar Creek bottom, two miles south of Peru, when a new mill was erected and it was announced that bolted flour could be obtained on a certain day, the people flocked around it in crowds; and so eager were they to enjoy that luxury, that they employed Mr. Manville's family to bake cakes for them, keeping them thus engaged