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Nobody in Sweden can imagine all the advantages America offers sober, honest, and industrious persons; for them it is a veritable land of honey. But for those who neither can nor will work, who have left Sweden with other plans for making a living, they will without exception find a Siberia, and the sooner they leave, the better, if they want to escape the greatest want and misery. Thus you see that this country can be at the same time both a Canaan and a Siberia. Trulyit is a peculiar country!
Letter from Peter Cassel to Apothecary Sundius, Cincinatti, 2 September 1845 (Translation by K. Proescholdt and Earl D. Check)