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Story of an Emigrant.
2g3
won the wife who tenderly and faithfully has shared the
vicissitudes of life with me, in sorrow and in joy ever the same;
here those of my countrymen who followed me when I was
yet but a youth, have acquired independence, happiness, and
such esteem that the settlement of Vasa has a reputation
among the communities of the state which reflects honor
upon the memory of the great king whose name it bears.
But this picture of development, culture and progress is
not confined to this settlement, lor countless other
Scandinavian settlements in the west and northwest have made as
great progress within a comparatively short time.
On my arrival in 1852 the Mississippi river was the
northwestern boundary line of civilization with the exception of
the state of Iowa, which then had only a small population.
Since that time twelve new states further west have been
peopled and admitted into the Union. There was no
railroad west of Chicago; now the immense distance between
the Mississippi and the Pacific ocean is spanned by four
giant railroads, while more than a hundred trunk and branch
lines intersect the country in all directions, and lakes and
rivers are navigated by hundreds of steamers, which
compete with the railroads in carrying the products of the West
to the Atlantic, whence they are distributed over the whole
civilized world.
Hundreds of cities that did not exist, even by name, have
since sprung up as if by magic, and some of them have
already become renowned throughout the world for their
industry, commerce and culture. Among them are
Minneapolis and St. Paul, already intertwining their
arms around each other in an embrace that will
soon unite them into one. The former did not exist
when I first gazed on St. Anthony falls, which now furnishes
motive power for its magnificent mills and factories, and the
latter was a town of about two thousand inhabitants.
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