Two weeks after a terrible accident happened at this town. The steamer Galena took fire. The pilot manfully kept his place at the wheel; amid the scorching flames he brought the boat to the shore, and kept her there till the passengers had escaped. A mother and three children were lost, but the rest stood in their night-clothes on the shore; some of them stripped of the means which were to provide them with a home in the new country to which they were going, but thankful for lives saved from flood and flame. The presiding elder of the district came on board at Red Wing. He was introduced to Mrs. Lester by a Baptist minister, who was returning to St. Paul with his bride. He had been in the country for twelve years, and his varied knowledge made him a most agreeable companion. He had been brought in familiar contact with the Indians and with the settlers; he could tell of the wigwam, and the log cabin, and the thriving towns now replacing them; he knew the character of the strata of the river bank and the names of the trees in the forest. He had visited an Indian mission four hundred miles above the Falls of St. Anthony; had ascended part of it in a canoe carried over the portage past the rapids, by half-breeds. A most quiet, domestic river it is above St. Anthony, flowing through beautiful prairies covered with grapes and wild flowers, diversified with gentle hills and groves of oak. These prairies were formerly the resort of herds of buffaloes and deer; wolves, too, roamed over them, and just before dawn might be heard the hideous cry of the great white owl. Abundance of water-fowl used to be seen here; ducks, geese, pelicans, swans, and snipe; while the hawk, buzzard, and eagle sailed on lofty wing in the regions of upper air. The waters of the St. Croix River looked blue and beautiful as they flowed from the lovely lake at its mouth into the more turbid waters of the Mississippi, with which they refuse for some time to mingle, the currents of different hues running side by side. Magnificent forests, huge trees (primeval) of stately trunk and deep rich foliage, adorn the shores of the river, or the large islands in its broad bosom. Norman saw three wigwams on one of these islands, and two Indian boys seated on the shore. Not very far from this was formerly a Sioux village of _Le Petit Corbeau_, or the Little Raven. An anecdote is told of this Indian chief, which very finely illustrates the Saviour’s precept: “If any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.”