From Owatona we turn north and pass through Rice County, containing eighteen townships. It is one of the best-timbered counties west of the Mississippi; there are large tracts of oak, maple, butternut, walnut, poplar, elm, and boxwood. We glide through belts of timber where choppers are felling the trees for railroad ties, past fields where the industrious husbandman has turned the natural grasses of the prairie into blooming clover. At Faribault a company of Norwegians, recently arrived from their homes beyond the sea, and not having reached their journey's end, are cooking their supper near the station. To-morrow they will be pushing on westward to the grounds already purchased by the agent who has brought them out. In 1850 this entire county had only one hundred inhabitants; the census of next year will probably show a population of twenty-five thousand,--one half Americans, one sixth Germans, one ninth Irish, besides Norwegians, Swedes, and Canadians. Faribault has about four thousand inhabitants, who have laid excellent foundations for future growth. They have an Episcopal College, a High School for ladies, a Theological Seminary, a Deaf and Dumb Asylum, two Congregational churches, also one Baptist, one Methodist, and one Episcopal. They have excellent water-power on the Cannon River. Five flouring-mills have already been erected. Fourteen miles beyond this place we find Northfield with three thousand inhabitants, three fourths of them New-Englanders. Five churches and a college, two flouring-mills capable of turning out one hundred thousand barrels per annum, excellent schools, a go-ahead population, are the characteristics of this thoroughly wide-awake town. A mile or two beyond Northfield we enter Dakota County,--one of the most fertile in the State. It was one of the first settled, and in 1860 contained 9,058 inhabitants. Its present population is estimated at 20,000,--one third of them Irish, one third Americans, one quarter Germans, and the remainder of all nationalities. The largest town is Hastings, on the Mississippi, containing about four thousand inhabitants. The Hastings and Dakota Railroad, extending west, crosses the Milwaukie and St. Paul at Farmington, a pleasant little town located on a green and fertile prairie. Thirty miles of this Hastings and Dakota road are in operation, and it is pushing on westward, like all the others, to reach the territory of Dakota and the Missouri River.