[ CHAPTER XXVIII.]
Home from India—A Friendly Reception—Journey to New Mexico—The Maxwell Land Grant Company—Renewed Visits to England and Holland—Re-elected Secretary of State—Visit of the Swedish Officers in Minneapolis and St. Paul—Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the First Swedes in Delaware.
On the 8th of July I was again home with family and friends in Minneapolis, and found everything pretty much as I had left it nearly two years previously; except that my good old father had gone to his final rest. A couple of days later I visited my farm, in the Red River valley, and my old and faithful friend Capt. H. Eustrom, who lived close by and was then holding an important office, and who had faithfully attended to my interests at that place during my absence.
My Scandinavian friends had meanwhile arranged a reception for me, and on the 11th some eighty of them joined in a banquet at Lyndale Hotel, then situated in the suburbs of Minneapolis at Lake Calhoun. The afternoon was devoted to a steamboat tour around the beautiful lake, and in the evening the party all sat down to a sumptuous banquet, where many addresses of welcome and tokens of friendship were spoken, read and sung. I had been absent nearly two years, seen and experienced much of the world and enjoyed many pleasures, but I found the old saying true; “There is no place like home.” These two years had been of particular importance in the history of the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The population had nearly trebled during that time, and such improvements had been made that I could hardly recognize them.
A week after my return my friends from Holland arrived, and we proceeded to New Mexico, where we found the great Maxwell estate, valued at ten million dollars, and containing one and a half million acres of land, consisting of coal fields, gold mines, timber and grazing lands, in a deplorable condition caused by extravagance and mismanagement. We found that there was nearly a million dollars of current debts, while the income was not sufficient to buy postage stamps to carry on the necessary business correspondence.
An agreement was finally effected whereby the former president and American manager relinquished his interest and resigned his position; the Holland directors determined to raise the necessary funds in Europe, and I agreed to undertake the liquidation of the affairs of the company.
Shortly after I repaired to Washington to report my inspection tour in India, and tender my resignation, which was accepted, an unusual courtesy being shown me by extending my leave of absence to January the next year. The following two years were devoted principally to business journeys to New Mexico, England and Holland. I visited the latter countries four times during that period. With the powerful aid of Baron Rebeque, who had spent several months with me in this country in the summer and fall of 1883, a syndicate, backed by several million dollars, was at last formed in Holland, and the whole estate was turned over to it. Having accomplished this, I voluntarily withdrew from the concern, and returned to my own farm and home in Minnesota.
The Maxwell estate is situated within the Rocky mountain region, on an elevation of from six thousand to twelve thousand feet above the sea. The climate is delightful and the scenery beautiful, but the country is not fit for cultivation, except such parts as can be irrigated. Hence most of it is devoted to stock raising, and herds of countless cattle were roaming over the prairies, the Maxwell Company alone owning at the time I left its service nearly twenty thousand head.
In the fall of 1886 I was for the second time elected secretary of state by the citizens of Minnesota, re-elected in 1888, and thus made for the third time the head of the state department.