and baskets, to exchange for clothing and for food.  Thus the place was located and settled on long before there was a prospect of its becoming a populous town.  Mr. Rice, the delegate in congress, if I mistake not, once had a branch store here with several men in his employ.  The principal traders at present are Mr. Abbee and Mr. Beaulieu, who have large and well selected stocks of goods.  The present population of white persons probably numbers a hundred souls.  The place now has a more populous appearance on account of the presence of a caravan of Red Lake Indians, who have come down about four hundred miles to trade.  They are encamped round about in tents or birch bark lodges, as it may happen to be.  In passing some of them, I saw the squaws busily at work on the grass outside of the lodge in manufacturing flag carpets.  The former Indian residents are now removed to their reservation in the fork of the Mississippi and Crow Wing rivers, where their agency is now established.

The houses here are very respectable in size, and furnished in metropolitan style and elegance.  The farms are highly productive, and the grazing for stock unequalled.  There is a good ferry at the upper end of the town, at a point where the river is quite narrow and deep.  You can be taken over with a horse for twenty-five cents; with a carriage, I suppose, the tariff is higher.

Perhaps one cause of my favorable impression of Crow Wing is the excellent and home-like hotel accommodations which I have found.  The proprietor hardly assumes to keep a public-house, and yet provides his guests with very good entertainment; and I cannot refrain from saying that there is no public-house this side of St. Paul where the traveller will be better treated.  Mr. Morrison—­ for that is the proprietor’s name—­ came here fifteen years ago, having first come into this region in the service of John Jacob Astor.  He married one of the handsomest of the Chippewa maidens, who is now his faithful wife and housekeeper, and the mother of several interesting and amiable children.  Mr. M. is the postmaster.  He has been a member of the territorial legislature, and his name has been given to a large and beautiful county.  I judge that society has been congenial in the town.  The little church, standing on an eminence, indicates some union of sentiment at least, and a regard for the higher objects of life.  Spring and summer and autumn must be delightful seasons here, and bring with them the sweetest tranquillity.  Nor are the people shut out from the world in winter; for then there is travel and intercourse and traffic.  So are there pleasures and recreation peculiar to the season.