tead.[7] With spirited horses I drove
in company with a son and a grandson over the same road which was first
marked out by our simple ox wagon thirty-eight years before.

[Footnote 7: Since dead.]

What a change! The former wilderness changed into smiling fields dressed
in the purest green of early summer, and along the whole road are fine
homes, nearly all of which belong to Swedish-Americans, who commenced
their career as poor immigrants like myself, or to their children, most
of whom are to the manor-born.

We stop twelve miles from Red Wing close to our old farm, at a little
cottage surrounded by tall trees. There, by the window, sits
greatgrandma, watching eagerly for someone whom she knows always spends
that day with her.

Close to the quiet home stands the large Lutheran church, one of the
finest country churches in America, and to the peaceful cemetery
surrounding it we all soon make a pilgrimage to scatter flowers on the
graves where my good father and sister, my wife's parents, sister, and
many other near relatives have found a resting place. The little
cemetery is clothed in a flowery carpet of nature's own garb, and
studded with several hundred marble monuments with inscriptions that
testify to the Swedish ancestry of those who rest under them.

[Illustration: SWEDISH CHURCH IN VASA.]

From this place, which is the most elevated point in Vasa, the
surrounding country affords a picture of such rural peace and beauty,
that even a stranger must involuntarily pause to wonder and admire; how
much more, then, I, who was the first white man that trod this ground!
Below, toward the south, we see the wooded valley, watered by a little
creek from Willard's spring, where we came near perishing that cold
January night in 1854; at the head of the valley, the hill where we
built the first log cabin; immediately beyond this hill the hospitable
home of my wife's parents, from which I brought my young bride to our
own happy little home, which stood on another hill near the same spring,
and of which a part still remains; here, just below the church, is the
field I first plowed; over there in the grove where we cut logs and
fencing material, stands now the orphan home, established by Rev. E.
Norelius; and on the other side the road is his handsome residence and
garden, but he himself sits inside, frail and suffering on account of
the hardships of the first few years.

Close by are the post-office, two stores, a blacks