ch speech-making, and
a lot of wild drunkenness. The boatmen from the river boats started in
to lick every railroad man they met, and as far as I could see, did so
in ninety per cent. of the cases; but in the midst of a fight in which
all my canal experiences were in a fair way to be outdone, a woman came
into the crowd leading four little crying children. She asked our
attention while she explained that their father had had his hand blown
off when the salute was fired in the morning, and asked us if we felt
like giving something to him to enable him to keep a roof over these
little ones. The fight stopped, and we all threw money on the ground
in the ring.

There were bridges connecting the main island with the business part of
the city, and lines of hacks and carts running from the main part of the
town to deep water. There were from four to six boats a day on the
river. Lead was the main item of freight, although the first tricklings
of the great flood of Iowa and Illinois wheat were beginning to run the
metal a close second. To show what an event it was, I need only say that
there were delegates at the celebration from as far east as Cleveland;
and folks said that a ferry was to be built to bring the railway trains
into Dubuque. And the best of all these dreams was, that they came true;
and we were before many years freed of the great burden of coming so far
to market.

During the next winter the word came to us that the railroad--another
one--had crept as far out into the state as Iowa City, and when the
freighting season of 1856 opened up, we swung off to the railhead there.
Soon, however, the road was at Manchester, then at Waterloo, then at
Cedar Falls, and before many years the Iowa Central came up from the
south clear to Mason City, and the days of long-distance freighting were
over for most of the state; which is now better provided with railways,
I suppose, than any other agricultural region in the world.

I couldn't then foresee any such thing, however. They talk of the
far-sighted pioneers; but as far as I was concerned I didn't know B from
a bull's foot in this business of the progress of the country. I
whoa-hawed and gee-upped my way back to Monterey Centre, thinking how
great a disadvantage it would be always to have to wagon it back and
forth to the river--with the building of the railway into Dunlieth that
year right before my face and eyes.

3

I found Magnus Thorkelson surrounded by a group of