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FLOATING down the Great River, "the Father of Rivers," between Indian camps, fires, boats, Indians standing or leaping, and shouting, or rather yelling, upon the shores; funeral erections on the heights; between vine-clad islands, and Indian canoes paddling among them! I would yet retain these strange foreign scenes; but I proceed onward, passing them by. We leave this poetical wilderness, the region of the youthful Mississippi, and advance toward that of civilization. The weather is mild, the sun and the shade sport among the mountains--a poetical, romantic life!

Oct. 25th. Sunbright, but cold. The Indians have vanished. We have passed the "Prairie du Chien;" the idol-stone of the red Indian; the Indian graves under the autumnally yellow trees. The hills shine out, of a splendid yellow-brown. The ruins and the pyramids of primeval ages stand forth gloomy and magnificent amid the brilliant forests. With every bend of the river new and astonishing prospects present themselves. I contemplate them, read Emerson's Essays, and live as at a festival. We approach the commencement of two towns on the shore of Iowa, Gottenborg, a descendant, as I imagine, of our Götheborg, and Dubuque.

Oct. 27th. Again at Galena, among the lead mines, for a couple of days. It is Sunday, and I am returned from church, where I have heard a young Presbyterian minister, of the Presbyterian Church, Mr. Magoon. A true disciple of the Great West! No narrow evangelical views. No, an evangelical consciousness as wide as the Western prairies, as vast as the arch of heaven which spans them, and with breathing-room for the fresh winds of infinity.

The young minister's theme was the relationship which exists between a cultivated and a religious life.

The importance of a true philosophy in the doctrines of religion, in order the better to understand and to develop them.

The importance of the development of physical life in promoting the advance of spiritual life.

God's guiding hand in the awakening of all this, both in society and the Church, was shown by him in an animated and earnest manner.

Job said, "He says to the lightning, go! And it goeth!"

The electric telegraph is the lightning of God's finger, made subservient to man.

Philosophy is God's light in reason, illumining the darkness both of reason and of the Scriptures.

"It is thus that a metaphysical distinction may save a soul."

I could but think, on hearing this, of H. Martensen's dialectical gifts of God!

Lastly; the union of the highest life of the head and the heart, operating in and explanatory of all spheres of life, as they exist in the Church of the Millennium. These were the principal topics in the sermon of this young minister.

An earnest prayer, full of purport, on the prayer "Thy Kingdom Come," completed the whole service; one of the most liberal and comprehensive, one of the freshest and most refreshing which I have heard from the pulpit of any country.

A tirade against Catholicism was the only feature in it to be regretted, because it does not become the Great West to exclude any form of the divine life. And what, indeed, are all the various Christian communities other than various pews in the same church, dividing the whole into groups of families or relations?

The old Pilgrim Church seems to me now to be the one which exhibits most indwelling life, which grows and expands itself to embrace the whole of human life, and to baptize it to the kingdom of God.

Oct. 29th. I have established myself excellently at the American Hotel, and I do not intend, during the few days that I shall remain here, to accept the kind invitation which I have received to a beautiful private home. I have here my nice little Irish maid, Margaret, and have every thing exactly as I wish-- among the rest, potatoes, morning, noon, and night, quite as good as our Aersta potatoes. I enjoy my freedom and my solitary rambles over the hills round the town during these fine days.

Yesterday, the agreeable, liberal-minded young minister, Mr. Magoon, drove me and a lady, a friend of his, to a height--Pilot Knob, I think it is called--by the Mississippi, from which we were to see the sun set. Arrived there, we clambered up among bushes, and long grass, and stones--difficult enough; and obtained, when we had gained the summit, one of those ocean-like land views which the Great West only presents. And through that infinite billowy plain rolled the Mississippi, like a vein of silver, far, far away into the immeasurable distance; and over land and river reposed the misty veil of the Indian summer, and its inexpressible, gentle peace. The sun had just set; but a roseate glow lay like a joyful benediction over that vast fertile region. It was indescribably grand and pleasant.

I thought how a year ago, at this season, my spirit had been depressed at New York; how, later, it darkened still   [p. 66]   more for me at Boston, and how I then thought, "Shall I be able to endure it?" And now I stood serene and vigorous by the Mississippi, with the Great West open before me, with a rich future, and the whole world bright!

I thanked God!

On our return to Galena, the carriage broke down. The young clergyman sprang out, pulled forth some rope and a knife, and began to work in good earnest, as he said, merrily, "You must know, Miss Bremer, that coach-building belongs, here in the West, to our theology."

The emigrants to the West must, to a certain degree, experience the trouble and the renunciation of the early Pilgrim Fathers. And in order to succeed, they require their courage and perseverance.

But people pass through these necessary stages much more quickly now than they did then. The beautiful, excellent American homes, with verandas, and trees, and gardens, which begin to adorn the hills round Five River, prove this. The good home, and the church, and the labors of Christian love, encroach daily more and more upon the fields and the life of heathenism. I do not now mean of the Indian, but of the white man.

I shall to-day go on board the good steam-boat Minnesota, to descend the Mississippi as far as St. Louis. Perhaps I may make a pause by the way, at the town of Rock Island, to visit the Swedish settlement of Eric Jansen, at Bishop's Hill, a few miles from the town.

Among the agreeable memories of my stay at Galena, I shall long retain that of a banker, Mr. H., who showed me so much kindness, such brotherly or fatherly consideration and care for me, that I shall ever think of him and of his city with gratitude.

The newspapers of the West are making themselves merry over the rapturous reception which the people of New York have given Jenny Lind. In one newspaper article I read:

"Our correspondent has been fortunate enough to hear Jenny Lind--sneeze. The first sneezing was a mezzotinto soprano, &c., &c. ;" here follow many absurd musical and art terms; "the second was, &c., &c. ;" here follow the same; "the third he did not hear, as he fainted."

I can promise the good Western people that they will become as insane with rapture as their brethren of the East, if Jenny Lind should come hither. They now talk like the Fox about the Grapes, but with better temper.

One of the inhabitants of St. Paul's, who had been at New York, returned there before I left. He had some business with Governor Ramsay, but his first words to this gentlemen were, "Governor! I have heard Jenny Lind!"

Jenny Lind, the new Slave Bill, and the protests against it in the North, Eastern, and Western States, are, as well as the Spiritual Rappings or Knockings, the standing topics of the newspapers.

While people in the Northern States hold meetings and agitate against this bill, which allows the recapture of fugitive slaves in the free states, various of the Southern States, especially the Palmetto State and Mississippi, raise an indignant cry against the infringement of the rights of the South, and threaten to dissolve the Union. And the states compliment each other in their newspapers in any thing but a polite manner. A Kentucky journal writes thus of South Carolina:

"Why has she not marched out of the Union before now? The Union would be glad to be rid of such a baggage!"