became known that there was a British officer in the place--a knowledge
which did not tend in any manner to make the days pleasant in themselves
nor hopeful in the anticipation of a successful prosecution of my journey
in the time to come. About the first week in July I left St. Paul for
St. Cloud, seventy miles higher up on the Mississippi, having decided to
wait no longer'` for instructions, but to trust to chance for further
progress towards the North-west. "You will meet with no obstacle at this
side of the line," said an American gentleman who was acquainted with the
object of my journey, "but I won't answer for the other side;" and so,
not knowing exactly how I was to get through to join the Expedition, but'
determined to try it some way or other, I set out for Sauk Rapids and St.
Cloud. Sauk Rapids, on the Mississippi River, is a city which has neither
burst up nor gone on. It has thought fit to remain, without monument of
any kind, where it originally located itself-on the left bank of the
Mississippi, opposite the confluence of the Sauk River with the "Father
of Waters." It takes its name partly from the Sauk River and partly from
the rapids of the Mississippi which lie abreast of the town. Like many
other cities, it had nourished feelings of the most deadly enmity.
against its neighbours, and was to "kill creation" on every side; but
these ideas of animosity have decreased considerably in lapse of time: Of
course it possessed a newspaper--I believe it also possessed a church,
but I did not see that edifice; the paper, however, I did see, and was
much struck by the fact that the greater portion of the first page--the
paper had only two-was taken up with a pictorial delineation of what
Sauk Rapids would attain to in the future, when it had sufficiently
developed its immense water-power; In the mean time previous to the
development of said water-power-Sauk Rapids was not a bad sort of place:
a bath at an hotel in St. Paul was a more expensive luxury than a dinner;
but the Mississippi flowing by the door of the hotel at Sauk Rapids
permitted free bathing in its waters. Any traveller in the United States