It Is A State Of Affairs Which Corresponds With
Every New Settlement In The West; Or, Indeed, Which Faintly Compares
With the demand for everything merchantable, peculiar in such places.
Then again, besides the actual residents in a new place,
Who have
money enough in their pockets, but nothing in their cellars, there is
generally a large population in the back country of farmers and no
stores. Such people come to a place like this to trade, for fifteen or
twenty miles back, perhaps; and it being a county seat they have other
objects to bring them. At the same time there is an almost constant
flow of settlers through the place into the unoccupied country to find
preemption claims, who, of course, wish to take supplies with them.
The settler takes a day, perhaps, for his visit in town to trade. Time
is precious with him, and he cannot come often. So he buys, perhaps,
fifty or a hundred dollars worth of goods. These are circumstances
which account for activity of business in these river towns, and
which, though they are strikingly apparent here, are not peculiar to
this town. At first, I confess, it was a mystery to me what could
produce such startling and profitable trade in these new towns.
It was in the immediate vicinity of St. Cloud that Gov. Stevens left
the Mississippi on his exploration, in 1853, of a railroad route to
the Pacific. Several crossings of the river had been previously
examined, and it was found that one of the favorable points for a
railroad bridge over it was here.
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