borough. Then New York adopted a series of measures which culminated, September 17th, in a prohibition of all intercourse with Philadelphia; and a week later vigilance committees were established to enforce the resolution. They followed up these friendly measures with a series of prolix addresses and resolutions extending over the whole period of the pestilence. Trenton and Lamberton, N. J., formed a league to carry out similar measures of hospitality. The Governor of Maryland subjected all Philadelphians, or vessels from this port to quarantine. The people of Baltimore then adopted the same measures as at New York, while couching them in milder terms, and stopped the Western Shore line of stages. As the alarm spread, Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia adopted rigid quarantine measures, and their principal cities and towns-Boston, Charleston, &c.-followed the example set by New York. Nor did the cities of our own State behave much better. Reading, Nazareth, Bethlehem, &c., established a rigid quarantine, and enforced it by popular committees. The most horrible stories as to the state of Philadelphia found ready credence; it was currently believed that all but a few of our citizens had perished, and that the survivors had given over the work of burying the dead in weariness and despair. A reign of terror seemed to spread through the whole Union, and to extinguish all humane feelings. Travelers from Philadelphia, or even persons only suspected of being such, perished through fatigue, hunger and exposure on every road that led from our smitten city. If any residents of neighboring cities refused to coöperate in these inhospitable precautions, they were subjected to social persecution, and refused-as far as possible—the necessaries of life. Even fugitives, who had secured places of retreat before quarantine measures were adopted, had difficulty in avoiding the business of mounting guard against their less fortunate fellow-citizens. Of course quick-witted refugees evaded all these precautions of their unwilling hosts. And yet there was more or less of the malignant fever in other parts of the Union. In one street of New York several deaths had occurred in 1791, but its progress was inexplicably stopped. In 1793, Lynn in Massachusetts, and Georgetown and several other towns in Virginia, were visited, as well as Philadelphia, and in other places epidemic diseases raged fearfully. We are glad to say that the want of hospitality evinced by most cities was not universal. In Woodbury, N. J., only four persons voted in town meeting to suspend intercourse, and our refugees were allowed free entrance. The people of Springfield, in the same State, offered their town as an asylum to the people of Philadelphia, and the same course was adopted by the people of Elizabethtown. Chestertown, Md., which took the lead in refusing intercourse, fitted up a hospital for sick strangers, and appointed a physician to attend them. Elkton did as much, and also offered their town as an asylum. Wilmington, in the first impulse of fright, proposed exclusion, but soon came to a wiser and more humane conclusion; they received Philadelphians freely, and while they fitted up a hospital for the sick, they actually nursed most of them at their own houses. Several citizens fearlessly kept open-house for all Philadelphians. These acts of Christian charity and humane kindness were indeed exceptional, but they should never be forgotten. Especially should we remember that our neighbors of New Jersey adopted no measures of general quarantine, and that three of their towns distinguished themselves by a courageous humanity. When the fever had once reached its height, it abated more rapidly than it had spread, and few caught it after the end of October. The business of the committee changed rapidly in its character. An orphan asylum was established to take charge of the host of children whose parents had perished of the disease. Measures were taken to thoroughly cleanse the houses where persons had died, and the eagerness of the absentees to return had to be repeatedly checked, and the necessity of sanitary precautions impressed upon them. On the 14th of November Gov. Mifflin published a proclamation appointing a day of special thanksgiving for the merciful deliverance vouchsafed to the city. The last deliverance of the committee was issued November 26th, and had reference to the cleansing of the city. On the 22d of March, 1794, the people of Philadelphia, Southwark and Northern Liberties met to receive their report, and extended to them" their most cordial, grateful and fraternal thanks for their benevolent and patriotic exertions," and expressed the hope that their great services will be held in everlasting remembrance." So mote it be. W1 MINNESOTA. 'HEN the Cherokees were driven from North Georgia many years ago, their occupancy comprising the mountainous region of that State and East Tennessee, they, as is well known, left with a degree of reluctance bordering on desperation; for they said it "was a land where one was neither sick nor sorry.' And, now, if there is a land anywhere else on the broad earth where the visitor or resident is made to feel the force of the Cherokee averment, that region must surely be comprised in the great North-west, and especially in this State of Minnesota. Moreover, a land of such fertility that the world itself is challenged to excel it, and one great and distinguishing feature of which is that excellence set forth in Holy Writ, when a goodly land is portrayed, "a land full of springs and running waters;' every few miles shows a crystal lake, the mirror of sky and shore, shining far or near; every chain of lakes almost shows its "laughing water," as the bright steamlet hurries onward to the sea. And if away up here North-ward, so far that the geography of our earlier years left us almost in the dark as to its true features,* we are supposed by the outside world to be suffering from winters too severe, even the natural laws, as operating elsewhere, seem reversed, or modified somehow, for with the approach of winter, even, we do not suffer that "chillness" which, too often in New England or along the Atlantic coast, appears-to use a homely expression to "penetrate the marrow of one's bones," for the air here is dry, and bracing, and kindly, and men talk cheerfully and more briskly, as under some life-giving influence, which nothing outward can overcome. Science and experience undertake to explain all this. They tell us that the air is dry; the direct reverse of that "chill November" weather which in moist England is fruitful of depression and suicides more, it is said, than all the rest of the year together; and moreover, we are told that from this favored plateau, half the quantity of electricity-so much does it abound-will send back to the old States messages over the wires, that it takes to bring the same number of words hither. * And yet St. Paul is in the latitude of Venice.-EDS. All this being so, what marvel is it that men work here in driving forward railroads and other gigantic projects, with a will and a power which will not accept the word nay; and talk as confidently of shortly reaching the Missouri river, and Pembina, and ultimately Pugett's Sound, with their railroads, as if none, or only the most trifling, obstacles intervened. I have come out here on the line of the great Northern Pacific road, "prospecting," to use a California phrase; only my "placer" may be a potato field, a cranberry patch, or a wheat farm; and so if the readers of the PENN MONTHLY can be interested in what I may bring to their notice, why all the better for themselves, perhaps, if only it helps some of them to better homes, and better health and spirits in a land like this, one not only the "land of promise" but of performance also. The way hither from the Atlantic coast by Chicago to St. Paul is so familiar to most persons that perhaps of that portion of the route little or nothing need be said: but passing the latter point and Minneapolis, the true wildness of the North-west commences, continues onward to the junction of the Lake Superior and Mississippi road with the Northern Pacific, near the Dalles of the St. Louis, and thence to the more remote point to which the Northern Pacific is completed at the "Third Buffalo Crossing," approaching closely the Red river of the North. To return my course for a brief space. Perhaps the first startling evidence the traveler has that he is in a new and peculiar region, one unlike almost any other portion of the United States, is the sight of White Bear Lake, about equidistant from St. Paul and Minneapolis. A magnificent sheet of clear water, with gravelly or sandy shores, and stretching miles away in a most charming perspective, one of the prettiest islands imaginable being a salient feature in the landscape, whilst already two or three hotels dot the shores not far from the the railway track. In succession appear Forest Lake, Bald Eagle, and other beautiful bodies of water, until one is not surprised to find springing up along the line of the road, thriving settlements, such as Rush city, Hinckley, and others, with the isolated cabins of the many hardy and hopeful settlers, marking the way from station to station. The junction, some one hundred and thirty miles from St. Paul, is finally reached through a region alternately forest and prairie, although the former largely predominates, whence the traveler may take a "new departure" for the wilder regions beyond. Here, as in most of these settlements, one sees substantial looking frame dwellings, alternating with tents and shanties, whilst here and there along the route, one falls in with the sturdy axe-men, whose prowess is giving to the rest of the Union a new world. The Dalles of the St. Louis, although often described, are so singular and remarkable in their wildness and beauty that a few words in regard to them may not be unwelcome. Ere long to be utilized, the waters to be siezed upon, as it were, and to be taken through raceways, flumes, and under or over revolving wheelsthey may even be put into leading strings, like the Falls of St. Anthony, may have "aprons" forced upon them-until the future traveler will see little in them but a portion of that machinery which saws, and grinds and spins to keep the world of humanity supplied with the ornamental and the useful. For ten miles or more, the river rushes and plunges over a singularly rugged and tortuous channel, its clear waters churned into foam, or, for short distances, forming little basins or pools, each verging on another and another tiny fall, bordered with the wildest and most rugged growth of pines, birches and other trees of this latitude, and with little rocky islands scattered along the whole bed of the river; the high bluffs on either side make the deep glen at the bottom all the more rude and picturesque, the whole forming a scene that is worth a journey here to behold. Thompson, the name of the new town at the Dalles, is making active preparations to turn the fine water power to good account. There is a degree of activity, of earnest push and bustle, about the place, which seems to have been caught from the hurrying waters; and whoever may be incredulous as to a possible splendid future as a manufacturing center, it is plain they are not; and it is quite likely, too, that this determined spirit will force success, where otherwise the case might seem unpromising. With water power in any quantity desirable, and with material to employ it upon, there would seem no doubt but that the future will see a most thriving and populous community at this point. But what of the so-called "severities" of the climate, that condition which makes the less hardy of the race shrink from a |