would dig all around my feet while I was hunting
another chance. The tinge of green of this plant was different from any
other so could be easily distinguished. When we sold it, we were always
paid in gold. After ginseng is steamed and dried, it is the color of
amber.

Mrs. Leroy Sampson--1854.

Six families of us came together from Rhode Island and settled on
Minnewashta Lake in '54. There was only a carpenter shop in Excelsior.
We spent the first few months of our stay all living together in one log
shack which was already there. The first night the man who had driven us
from St. Paul sat up all night with his horses and we none of us slept a
wink inside that little windowless cabin on account of a noise we heard.
In the morning we found it was the mournful noise of the loons on the
lake that had kept us awake, instead of the wolves we had feared.

Mrs. Anna Simmons Apgar--1854.

When our six families got to the springs near Excelsior it was near dark
and we struck the worst road we had found in the swampy land by it. The
mosquitoes were dreadful, too. How dreadful, no one today can ever
believe. One of the tiredout men said, "This is Hell!" "No," said
another, "Not Hell, but Purgatory." The spring took its name from that.

When my father had put up his cabin he made our furniture with his own
hands out of basswood. He made one of those beds with holes in the side
piece for the ropes to go from side to side instead of our springs of
today. They used to be very comfortable. When father got ready for the
rope he had none, so he made it by twisting basswood bark. Then mother
sewed two of our home spun sheets together for a tick and my uncle cut
hay from the marsh and dried it, to fill it and we had a bed fit for a
king. Our floor was of maple split with wedges and hewed out with a
broadax. Father was a wonder at using this. A broadax was, you know,
twelve or fourteen inches wide and the handle was curved a little. A man
had to be a man to use one of these. It took strength and a good trained
eye to hew timber flat with one of these axes.

When I was playing I tore my clothes off continually in the woods.
Finally my mother said, "This has gone far enough!" and made me a blue
denim with a low neck and short sleeves. Has anyone ever told you how
terrible the mosquitoes were in the early days? Think of the worst
experience you ever had with them and then add a million for each one
and you will have some idea. My l