Everyone in the group was hungry, tired, and wet through and through; night was upon them, and they did not know where to find shelter. One after the other they felt despair overtake them. The company from Ljuder had never before during their whole journey felt so helpless, lost, and forsaken.
Robert went over and over his recent attempt to find his way with the new language — his hopelessly miscarried attempt! It was easy enough to remember and repeat the sentences to himself. But when he wanted to say them to strangers he grew nervous and confused, then he began to stutter, he hemmed and hawed. He couldn’t understand it: not one of the three sentences he had learned had been of any use today. And he began to practice a fourth, which he would repeat until he was successfuclass="underline" Will no one help me?
— 2—
Henry O. Jackson, Baptist minister in Stillwater, was busy sawing firewood outside his cabin near the river. Only a few steps separated the sawhorse from the water, and he kept his foothold precariously on the sloping ground. Pastor Jackson was a short, rather fat man of about forty, dressed in well-worn brown cotton trousers and a not-too-clean flannel shirt. He worked bareheaded, and tufts of thin hair fluttered in rhythm with the movement of the saw as it dug its way through the dry pine bough on the sawhorse. The handle of his saw, cut from a crooked limb, chafed his hands after a while; the pine log was tough and resistant, the saw teeth, dull from lack of sharpening, rasped slowly through the wood. The work was hard, and after cutting each piece, the minister rested a moment, drying the sweat from his forehead with a great linen handkerchief that hung on a peg of the sawhorse and flapped in the wind like a flag.
The St. Croix River, separating the new state of Wisconsin from the Minnesota Territory, made a large bend as it flowed by Stillwater. Right here near the town the current was slow, almost imperceptible, and the river expanded into a small lake, on which all the timber floated down from above had been gathered; here on the west bank it would be hauled up and milled. A little farther to the west the ground rose in high hills, and the town of Stillwater had been built between these hills and the river. The community had an advantageous position, protected from winds by the forested hills at its back, and with the river flowing at its feet. Within a short space its population had grown to more than five hundred inhabitants; next to St. Paul, it was at this time the largest settlement in the territory. A year before, Stillwater had been made the county seat of the newly formed Washington County.
On the east shore of the St. Croix, directly across from Pastor Jackson’s cabin, steep cliffs of red-brown sandstone obstructed the view of the countryside: there lay Wisconsin, which two years ago had become a state of the Union.
Jackson had been pastor in Stillwater ever since the Lord had founded his parish in the town. Up till now he had lived in a log cabin belonging to a fur trapper who spent most of his time in the forests, but a more comfortable abode was being built by his parishioners near his church and would be ready this fall. Most of the members of his congregation were generous, helpful people. Practically all gained their living from the lumber activities in the region or from farming. Many of the timbermen in the logging camps and the laborers at the mills in Stillwater were worldly and unregenerate, but the farmers moving into the district were nearly all good Christians. Some fifty homesteaders had moved into Washington County in recent years and these new settlers often had errands in Stillwater: Sundays they came to hear Pastor Jackson preach; weekdays they came to sell their grain, potatoes, pork, or mutton.
The minister’s cabin stood only a few hundred yards from the pier where the Red Wing of St. Louis — well known in Stillwater — was unloading her cargo of beef, pork, and flour barrels. Soon the sound of her steam whistle drowned the saw’s screeching and announced to Pastor Jackson that the side-wheeler had returned down the river toward the Mississippi. But before he had time to lay a new log on his sawhorse, a dark cloud suddenly came up from the Wisconsin side. During the heavy downpour he sought shelter in his cabin. The street outside quickly became empty of people, everyone running inside. But through his window he now noticed on the steamship pier a small group of people who had not sought shelter from the violent shower. They must be newcomers, passengers from the Red Wing. The minister guessed they were immigrants. And no one had been there to help them — all were afraid of the cholera which new arrivals might bring with them.
Last spring German immigrants had brought the cholera to Minnesota, and during the whole summer the pestilence had raged in the setttlements farther south. Along the St. Croix, enormous graves had been dug and filled with the bodies of immigrants. In Stillwater a score of deaths had taken place, and the inhabitants were stricken by fear of this pestilence. Careful watch was kept over newcomers, and the city council had removed a great number of them and placed them on an island in a forest lake some ten miles to the west. Here they had been left to live, separated from other people, until free from contagion.
But Pastor Jackson never avoided strangers, he felt no fear of the dreadful disease: Whither in this world may man flee, that death shall not o’ertake him?
As soon as he saw the group on the pier, he made his way toward them. The violent rain was barely over. Huddled among the bundles and chests sat grownups and children. Shawls and coats had been tucked around the children to protect them from the rain; babies cried in the women’s arms.
He saw at once he had come to people who needed him. He recognized that they had come from far away, they were immigrants from Europe. Both men and women were light complexioned, tall and sturdy, and he guessed they were from Germany, like so many other recent immigrants. He spoke German passably and made an attempt to address the strangers in that language: He was a Baptist minister. Wouldn’t they come with him to his cabin?
He repeated his question but received no answer; all stared at him without comprehension. Then German was not their mother tongue.
As Pastor Jackson looked at the group more carefully he saw that nearly all were pale and starved-looking. Immigrant Germans, both men and women, usually arrived well fed, their cheeks blooming. He concluded these immigrants might be Irish — though why did they not know English?
A tall, gangly youth with a light down on his upper lip spoke a few sentences in a language Pastor Jackson recognized: immigrant English. Pastor Jackson was familiar with newcomers’ first attempts to use the language of their new land, and he smiled encouragingly at the speaker, listened carefully, and did not interrupt him. And at last he understood. The youth wanted to tell him that he was a stranger in America and wondered if anyone here would help him.
The American asked where the immigrants came from, and in the answer he seemed to recognize the name Sweden.
Pastor Jackson had gathered much information about the various countries of the immigrants, and he knew that Sweden was a county of Norway. A Norwegian family in Marine belonged to his congregation. The newcomers on the pier must be countrymen of the Norwegian people in Marine, who were good, religious people. A Norwegian also lived here in Stillwater — Mr. Thomassen, a shoemaker who had resoled his shoes and made a good job of it. Thomassen lived some distance away, on the other side of the church. He would send a message to him to come and meet a group of his newly arrived countrymen.