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no doubt, in wooden shoes. The men were broad shouldered and the women were rosy cheeked. The men were in velvet jackets and the women in outlandish caps and bonnets.
After a journey of several days, during which the houses became farther and farther apart and finally almost disappeared, for between Oskaloosa and Des Moines were only a few scattered settlers, they came, on August 26th, to a place where stood a hickory pole with a shingle nailed to the top. and on the shingle the word:
"But, Dominie, where is Pella?" asked Mrs. Scholte before alighting. "We are in the center of it, my dear," was the reply. But like the little girl in the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen, the dominie's four-year-old daughter, Johanna, now Mrs. John Nollen of Pella, could not see anything at all, and came to the conclusion that Pella was all a make believe.
Iowa, as they saw it in 1847-no pen can describe it! It was billowy like the sea which they had crossed. There was wave after wave of grass, every where breaking into spray of wild flowers--wind-flowers and violets in spring; lilies and roses in summer; golden rod and asters in autumn, and great white stretches of snow in winter. Far away were the forests along the rivers, green as emerald when they first saw them in August, and crimson and gold in October. And the sun and the stars in a beautiful Italian blue sky over them always-an infinite blue sky over an infinite green prairie, the sky studded with stars like flowers and the prairie with flowers like stars. So beautiful was their new home that they soon forgot the cultivated fields by the dikes and ditches over the sea and the windmills that stood over them; and now, after forty-seven years, the remembrance of it in the hearts of those who have survived is vivid enough and sweet enough to comfort them in old age.
But in 1847 Pella was beautiful simply as a country. As president of the colony Mr. Scholte occupied a log cabin which stood on the center of what is now a beautiful park. This cabin was built as a claim pen, in 1843, by Thomas Tuttle and his wife. Farther north was another cabin which this pioneer couple used as a residence. The blood of heroes flowed in the veins of this man and woman. It is related that when Mr. Tuttle found it necessary to go east after supplies, his wife kept guard in the cabin for nine days and nights, her only companion being a cat. Wolves that howled at night along Thunder creek and Indians who passed stealthily, distance and loneliness-none of these daunted the courage of this brave woman.
This history would be incomplete without a mention of a band of pioneers who stood upon the site of Pella even before the Tuttles built their cabin there. They reached Pella on the 26th of April, 1843, five days before the New Purchase was thrown open for settlers, having made their way through the government lines. Of this band only three are now living, Robert Hamilton and Green T. Clark of Pella, and Robert B. Warren of Des Moines. Mrs. Sarah Nossaman, who came only a few weeks later, is also still living at Pella, and Mrs. Mary Butts and Mrs. Mary Todd who were then children. They were religious men and women and organized a Methodist church and afterwards, under Mr. Post, a Baptist church. Mr. Hamilton, writing of the Hollanders, says: "After living among