d colloquial
manner that may not rise to the dignity of history, but which, I think,
while giving facts, will not detract from the interest or pleasure of
the reader. If I should in the course of my narrative so far forget
myself as to indulge in a joke, or relate an illustrative anecdote, the
reader must put up with it.

Nature has been lavishly generous with Minnesota,--more so, perhaps,
than with any state in the Union. Its surface is beautifully diversified
between rolling prairies and immense forests of valuable timber. Rivers
and lakes abound, and the soil is marvelous in its productive fertility.
Its climate, taken the year round, surpasses in all attractive features
that of any part of the North American continent. There are more
enjoyable days in the three hundred and sixty-five that compose the year
than in any other country I have ever visited or resided in, and that
embraces a good part of the world's surface. The salubrity of Minnesota
is phenomenal. There are absolutely no diseases indigenous to the state.
The universally accepted truth of this fact is found in a saying, which
used to be general among the old settlers, "that there is no excuse for
anyone dying in Minnesota, and that only two men ever did die there, one
of whom was hanged for killing the other."

The resources of Minnesota principally consist of the products of the
farm, the mine, the dairy, the quarry and the forest, and its industries
of a vast variety of manufactures of all kinds and characters, both
great and small, the leading ones being flour and lumber; to which, of
course, must be added the enormous carrying trade which grows out of,
and is necessary to the successful conduct of such resources and
industries,--all of which subjects will be treated of in their
appropriate places.

With these prefatory suggestions I will proceed to the history,
beginning with the

LEGENDARY AND ABORIGINAL ERA.

Until a very few years ago it has been generally accepted as a fact that
Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan priest of the Recollect Order, was the
first white man who entered the present boundaries of Minnesota; but a
recent discovery has developed the fact that there has reposed in the
archives of the Bodleian Library and British Museum for more than two
hundred years manuscript accounts of voyages made as far back as 1652 by
two Frenchmen, named respectively Radison and Groselliers, proving that
they traveled among the North American