Excerpt from Compendium of History and Biography of Polk County, Minnesota The various stages by which that region has ad vanced from a wilderness to a highly developed sec tion of country, rich in all the elements of modern civilization - basking in pastoral abundance, re sounding with the din of fruitful industry, busy with the mighty volume of a multiform and far-reaching commerce and bright with the luster of high moral, mental, and spiritual life - the home of an enterpris ing, progressive, and all-daring people, as they founded and have built it, are depicted in detail or clearly indicated in the following chapters. Such a theme is always and everywhere an inspiring one. But happily for the world, though unhappily for the historian, among us it is one fast fading from current experience and comment into the realm of the anti quarian. For in this land of ours civilized man has established his dominion over almost every region, and there is little of our once vast wilderness left to be conquered. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.