In 1848, M. Cabet, with some three thousand of his followers, sailed from France for New Orleans, intending to take up land in Texas or Arkansas on which to establish a community, having the promise that he would soon be followed by ten thousand more of his disciples.  After spending several months in reconnoitring, during which half of his followers got discontented and left him, he settled with about fifteen hundred at Nauvoo, Illinois, where they bought out the property of the Mormons, who had recently been driven from that place.  There they commenced operations, establishing a saw- and grist-mill, and carrying on farming and several branches of domestic manufacturing.  In a little while they sent out a branch colony to Icaria, in Adams county, Iowa, where they purchased, or entered under the Homestead Act, four thousand acres of land.  In this place likewise they built a mill and went to farming and carrying on the more simple trades.  In a little while, however, a quarrel arose in the principal community at Nauvoo in regard to the use and abuse of power, when, after a rage of passion not unlike that which they had exhibited in the Revolution of 1848 in France, M. Cabet, with a large minority, seceded and went to St. Louis, where they expected to form another and more perfect community.  They never formed this community, however, and were soon dispersed.  The community at Nauvoo, being now harassed with debts and with lawsuits growing out of the withdrawal of M. Cabet and his party, repaired to their branch colony at Icaria, where they have been ever since.  Here they had likewise frequent disputes and withdrawals, often giving rise to lawsuits and a loss of property, until in 1866, when the writer first visited them, they were reduced to thirty-five members.  Since that time they have picked up a few members, mostly old companions who had left them for individual life, until now they have about sixty in all.  They own at present about two thousand acres of land, of which three hundred and fifty are under cultivation.  They have good stock, consisting of about one hundred and twenty head of cattle, five hundred sheep, two hundred and fifty hogs and thirty horses.  They still have their saw- and grist-mill, now run by steam, but give most of their time to farming.  They preserve the family relation, and observe the strictest rules of chastity.  Each family lives in a separate house, but they all eat at a common table.  By an economic division of labor one man cooks for all these persons, another bakes, another attends to the dairy, another makes the shoes, another the clothes; and in general one man manages some special work for the whole.  No one has any money or need of any.  All purchases are made from the common purse, and each gets what he needs.  The government is a pure democracy.  The officers are chosen once a year by universal (male) suffrage, and consist of a president, secretary (and treasurer), director of agriculture and director of industry.  They have no religion, but, like most of the European communists, are free-thinkers.  They are highly moral, however, and much esteemed by their neighbors.  Some of them are quite learned, and all of them may be pronounced decidedly heroic for the terrible privations they have undergone in order to realize their political principles, to which they are as strongly and sincerely devoted as any Christian to his religion.