One of these men who was master of a trade and who also belongs, in the sense of an absolutely kindred spirit, to the above three, was Iver Sneve. He left wife and five children, taking with him his two older boys, Ingebricht and Ole.
In much the same economic relation was Anders Ellingson Loe, a shoemaker by trade. Also Arne Loe, who was a mason and left wife and three children behind until he could send for them.
To this class should also be added Ingebricht Brenden, having left his wife and five children—Ingebricht, Knut, Elli, Sigrid and Kjerstine.
Among the younger married men were John Lien with wife and one boy, Esten, as also his mother, who was another member of the considerable group of grandmas in the party.
Here should be mentioned also Lars Hansen Almen with wife and two boys—Hans and Olaus as also Mrs. Almen's mother, who makes the fourth member of the remarkable grandmother class in this group of pilgrims to a faraway country.
Then there were the following young and middle aged unmarried men and women: Ildri Loe, now Mrs. Sneve of Inwood, Iowa; Kari Rathe; Marit Myren; Haakon Mellemsether or Haagenson; Sivert Aalbu; John Riskaasen; and Jens Rise.
In all there were fifty-two passages bought on the same boat for the same place in America; viz., Yankton, South Dakota. One or two of the group, I believe, went to Brookings, South Dakota, including Mr. Haagenson.
We left these people, while making this digression, on the king's highway severing forever the strong ties that bound them to the land and the people of their birth. As we now resume our journey with them, especially if we have not made the trip before, we are irresistibly attracted by the wild and rugged manifestations of nature along our route. Both the way and its surroundings were prophetic of the much further stretching way to be traversed, often with weary feet, by these people, could they have foreseen it.
The road, tho well built, winds endlessly and often in sharp turns thru the narrow valley between the mountains which in places almost form a gorge. In many places the road is cut out of the solid rock of the mountain side so that on one side is the high and nearly perpendicular cliff; on the other, and only a few feet away, the almost perpendicular descent to the raging, roaring river hundreds of feet below. The sun is only now (April) beginning to reduce the eight months' snow on the mountains. This turns the river in the main valleys, as well as the hundreds of smaller streams coming down the mountain sides, into whitefoamed, tumultuous torrents rolling great stones before them and resounding thru the adjacent valleys and mountain sides with a deep and deafening roar—beware! beware!
Looking up the mountain sides we see pine and evergreen creeping up well toward the top. But while the sides are thus robed in beautiful green, the tops are crowned with the pure white of the "eternal" snows. So here was both music and raiment fit for kings and the sons of Vikings, and these sounds and sights those people never forgot nor could forget.