The schoolhouse springs into existence, where a year ago were stumps and trees. The faithful teacher, fresh from one of the normal schools or colleges of the state, comes into the settlement to train the minds and to help mould the characters of the future farmers, mechanics, statesmen, or financiers; of the doctors, lawyers, judges; or honored wives and mothers. From this ever increasing supply of the newly-born Northwest, are coming and will continue to come, some of the most valued accretions of good citizens to the commonwealth of Minnesota. Farms are yielding their first crops to the sturdy husbandman. Pleasant, comfortable homes meet the eye of the tourist from the city in summer as he motors over the fairly good roads of the northern frontier. He enters little towns carved out of the woods, and finds, now living happily, friends whom he had known in the city, who are ready to welcome him. He camps by the roadside on the shore of a lake, or on the bank of the Mississippi whose waters flowed on unobstructed in the earlier days herein recorded, but now are harnessed for the better service of man. Here he brings his family and friends to fish and to lunch, or, better still, to prepare their fish just caught for the meal, by the open camp fire. He continues his journey through this unbroken wilderness of less than a generation ago, over improving roads, to the very source of the Mississippi River that is within five minutes' walk of Lake Itasca. Here is a refreshing bit of natural pine forest, owned and preserved by the state of Minnesota, where he and his friends may find shelter for the night, and for a longer period if desired. In concluding this subject, I am actuated by a desire to manifest my appreciation of the fine manhood possessed by many men whom I have known, the best part of whose lives has been spent similarly to my own, in the extensive forests that once beautified and adorned the great Northwest. The occupation is one which demands many of the highest attributes of man. He must be skillful enough as a surveyor to always know which description of land he is on, and where he is on that description. He must be a good judge of timber, able to discern the difference between a sound tree and a defective one, as well as to estimate closely the quantity and quality of lumber, reckoned in feet, board measure, each tree will likely produce when sawed at the mill. He must examine the contour of the country where the timber is, and make calculations how the timber is to be gotten out, either by water or by rail, and estimate how much money per thousand feet it will cost, to bring the logs to market. The value of the standing pine or other timber in the woods is dependent on all of these conditions, which must be reckoned in arriving at an estimate of the desirability of each tract of timber as an investment for himself, or for whomsoever he may represent.