a mere trail, more or less broad and distinct. Fort Snelling is thirty years old, and there was an account of it in the [old] New England Magazine. It retains but three or four acres of the great unbroken prairie that formerly belonged to the Fort; near which is a red oak, the largest oak I have seen here. Pike Island lies between the two mouths of the St. Peter's or Minnesota River [where it flows into the Mississippi]. The Mississippi is at the highest stage, but is running off. Notice how the ferry is worked across the Mississippi, by the stream itself.
Here a slight pencil sketch illustrates this device. He witnessed a regimental drill at the parade ground of the Fort, where volunteers for the Union army in the Civil War were daily received and sent forward to the front. He notes: "Some six hundred men are there, volunteers; about three hundred had left that morning," going down the Mississippi. Writing to me four weeks later from Red Wing, Thoreau said:
The people of Minnesota have seemed to
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