May 26. Sunday. Breakfast at the "American House" in St. Paul, and come on by stage in the rain nine miles to St. Anthony, over the prairie,—the road muddy and sandy. At St. Paul they dig their building stone out of the cellar; but it is apparently poor stuff. There were several houses, yesterday and day before, surrounded by water, where they sell wood for some three or four dollars per cord; that was the price advertised. We towed a flatboat-load of stoneware pots from Dubuque to Winona,—the latter a pretty place.
Arrived at his stopping-place, for some time, Thoreau at St. Anthony and St. Paul began to examine more carefully the flora and fauna of this region so new to him, and to read up its topography and history. Leaving the exact order of days, therefore, his notes will be transcribed to show what interested him, and what he found recorded concerning the upper waters of the Mississippi and its native inhabitants. He found himself in the midst of birds, as Vergil says Aeneas did when landing on the banks of
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