"There is no goose so gray but soon or late Will find some honest gander for her mate." Not so in the East, for the young men there are pushing west, and women are in the majority. It is a certainty that some of them will know more of single blessedness than of married life. If they would only come out here, the certainty would be the other way. Not stopping at Winona, but hastening on board the train, we fly over the prairie, up the ravine, and out through one of the most fertile sections of the great grain-field of the Northwest. The superintendent of the road, Mr. Stewart, accompanies our party, and we receive pleasure and profit by having a gentleman with us who is so thoroughly informed as he to point out the objects of interest along the way. By a winding road, now running under a high bluff where the limestone ledges overhang the track, now gliding over a high trestle-bridge from the northern to the southern side of the deep ravine, we gain at length the general table-land, and behold, reaching as far as the eye can see, fields of wheat. Fences are visible here and there, showing the division of farms; but there is scarcely a break in the sea of grain, in flower now, rippling and waving in the passing breeze. Farm-houses dot the landscape, and white cottages are embowered in surrounding groves, and here and there we detect a small patch of corn or an acre of potatoes,--small islands these in the great ocean of wheat reaching westward, northward, and southward. We are astonished when the train nears St. Charles, a town of two thousand inhabitants, looking marvellously like a New England village, to see a school-house just completed at a cost of $15,000! and still wider open we our eyes at Rochester, with a population of six thousand, where we behold a school-building that has cost $60,000! Upon inquiry we ascertain that the bulk of the population of these towns is from New England. A ride of about ninety miles brings us to Owatona, a town of about three thousand inhabitants. We are in Steele County. The little rivulets here meandering through the prairie and flowing southward reach the Mississippi only after crossing the State of Iowa, while those running northward join the Mississippi through the Minnesota River. Here, as at Rochester, we behold charming landscapes, immense fields of grain, groves of trees, snug cottages and farm-houses, and a thrifty town. Owatona has a school-house that cost the citizens $20,000; yet nine years ago the population of the entire county was only 2,862! The census of 1870 will probably make it 15,000. So civilization advances, not only here, but all through the Northwest, especially where there are railroad facilities.