steamboats at the lower levee when we arrived there,
all busy in unloading. They were packed with passengers and freight
coming up the river, but going down they carried very little, for there
was nothing to ship. The first shipments of any consequence were
potatoes in the spring of 1855. For two or three years after that nearly
all the flour and grain used in the territory was brought from Galena.

Father took a pair of oxen and his wagon from the boat and we made our
way up a very steep hill from Jackson Street to Third. From there we
went up Third to the corner of Wabasha, where father bought some flour
and feed and we drove back to the boat. About five o'clock in the
afternoon the Nominee steamed up the river as far as Fort Snelling,
taking at least one-fifth of its passengers and freight. We tied up at
the ferry boat landing, at the foot of the hill under the old fort, and
began to take off our cattle and freight. The hill was very steep
leading up to the fort and father, aided by the boys, began to take our
goods in small wagon loads to the top of the hill, so that we could
properly load them. Uncle William, my mother, Aunt Isabel and the small
children had been transferred at St. Paul to a small steamboat called
the "Iola," which was to take them up the Minnesota river to Hennepin
Landing, a mile or two from our claim at Eden Prairie.

One of the wagons was left at the top of the hill while father went back
for more of the goods. I was told to take care of the cattle. Among the
cattle was a white heifer, a very wild animal. Father put a rope around
her horns and gave me the rope to hold, while he went down the hill. I
put the rope around one hind wheel of the wagon thinking I could hold
the animal that way. While I was standing there in the twilight, six or
seven soldiers came out of the fort for guard duty and when they passed
me the heifer became frightened, gave a jerk upon the rope and
necessarily upon the wheel. The wagon had not been properly coupled, and
when the animal at one end of the rope and myself at the other brought
pressure upon the wheel, the hind wheels separated from the front, and
the wheels, the heifer and the boy, went very hastily to the foot of the
hill. Part of the time the wheels were off the ground, some of the time
it was the heifer, but it seemed to me it was the boy who filled air
space the greater portion of the period consumed in the descent. This
mishap created great consternation