Historic Waterways—Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

THE ROCK RIVER.

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CHAPTER I.

THE WINDING YAHARA.

It was a quarter to twelve, Monday morning, the 23d of May, 1887, when we took seats in our canoe at our own landing-stage on Third Lake, at Madison, spread an awning over two hoops, as on a Chinese house-boat, pushed off, waved farewell to a little group of curious friends, and started on our way to explore the Rock River of Illinois. W—— wielded the paddle astern, while I took the oars amidships. Despite the one hundred pounds of baggage and the warmth emitted by the glowing sun,—for the season was unusually advanced,—we made excellent speed, as we well had need in order to reach the mouth, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles as the sinuous river runs, in the seven days we had allotted to the task.

It was a delightful run across the southern arm of the lake. There was a light breeze aft, which gave a graceful upward curvature to our low-set awning. The great elms and lindens at charming Lakeside—the home of the Wisconsin Chautauqua—droop over the bowlder-studded banks, their masses of greenery almost sweeping the water. Down in the deep, cool shadows groups of bass and pickerel and perch lazily swish; swarms of "crazy bugs" ceaselessly swirl around and around, with no apparent object in life but this rhythmic motion, by which they wrinkle the mirror-like surface into concentric circles. Through occasional openings in the dense fringe of pendent boughs, glimpses can be had of park-like glades, studded with columnar oaks, and stretching upward to hazel-grown knolls, which rise in irregular succession beyond the bank. From the thickets comes the fussy chatter of thrushes and cat-birds, calling to their young or gossiping with the orioles, the robins, jays, and red-breasted grosbeaks, who warble and twitter and scream and trill from more lofty heights.

A quarter of an hour sent us spinning across the mouth of Turvill's Bay. At Ott's Farm, just beyond, the bank rises with sheer ascent, in layers of crumbly sandstone, a dozen feet above the water's level. Close-cropped woodlawn pastures gently slope upward to storm-wracked orchards, and long, dark windbreaks of funereal spruce. Flocks of sheep, fresh from the shearing, trot along the banks, winding in and out between the trees, keeping us company on our way,—their bleating lambs following at a lope,—now and then stopping, in their eager, fearful curiosity, to view our craft, and assuming picturesque attitudes, worthy subjects for a painter's art.

A long, hard pull through close-grown patches of reeds and lily-pads, encumbered by thick masses of green scum, brought us to the outlet of the lake and the head of that section of the Catfish River which is the medium through which Third Lake pours its overflow into Second. The four lakes of Madison are connected by the Catfish, the chief Wisconsin tributary of the Rock. Upon the map this relationship reminds one of beads strung upon a thread.

As the result of a protracted drought, the water in the little stream was low, and great clumps of aquatic weeds came very close to the surface, threatening, later in the season, an almost complete stoppage to navigation. But the effect of the current was at once perceptible. It was as if an additional rower had been taken on. The river, the open stream of which is some three rods wide at this point, winds like a serpent between broad marshes, which must at no far distant period in the past have been wholly submerged, thus prolonging the three upper lakes into a continuous sheet of water. From a half-mile to a mile back, on either side, there are low ridges, doubtless the ancient shores of a narrow lake that was probably thirty or forty miles in length. In high water, even now, the marshes are converted into widespreads, where the dense tangle of wild rice, reeds, and rushes does not wholly prevent canoe navigation; while little mud-bottomed lakes, a quarter of a mile or so in diameter, are frequently met with at all stages. In places, the river, during a drought, has a depth of not over eighteen inches. In such stretches, the current moves swiftly over hard bottoms strewn with gravel and the whitened sepulchres of snails and clams. In the widespreads, the progress is sluggish, the vegetable growth so crowding in upon the stream as to leave but a narrow and devious channel, requiring skill to pilot through; for in these labyrinthian turnings one is quite liable, if not closely watching the lazy flood, to push into some vexatious cul-de-sac, many rods in length, and be obliged to retrace, with the danger of mistaking a branch for the main channel.

In the depths of the tall reeds motherly mud-hens are clucking, while their mates squat in the open water, in meditative groups, rising with a prolonged splash and a whirr as the canoe approaches within gunshot. Secluded among the rushes and cat-tails, nestled down in little clumps of stubble, are hundreds of the cup-shaped nests of the red-winged blackbird, or American starling; the females, in modest brown, take a rather pensive view of life, administering to the wants of their young; while the bright-hued, talkative males, perched on swaying stalks, fairly make the air hum with their cheery trills.

Water-lilies abound everywhere. The blossoms of the yellow variety (nuphar advena) are here and there bursting in select groups, but as a rule the buds are still below the surface. In the mud lakes, the bottom is seen through the crystal water to be thickly studded with great rosettes, two and three feet in diameter, of corrugated ovate leaves, of golden russet shade, out of which are shot upward brilliant green stalks, some bearing arrow-shaped leaves, and others crowned with the tight-wrapped buds that will soon open upon the water level into saffron-hued flowers. The plate-like leaves of the white variety (nymphæa tuberosa) already dot the surface, but the buds are not yet visible. Anchored by delicate stems to the creeping root-stalks, buried in the mud below, the leaves, when first emerging, are of a rich golden brown, but they are soon frayed by the waves, and soiled and eaten by myriads of water-bugs, slugs, and spiders, who make their homes on these floating islands. Pluck a leaf, and the many-legged spiders, the roving buccaneers of these miniature seas, stalk off at high speed, while the slugs and leeches, in a spirit of stubborn patriotism, prefer meeting death upon their native heath to politic emigration.

By one o'clock we had reached the railway bridge at the head of Second Lake. Upon the trestlework were perched three boys and a man, fishing. They had that listless air and unkempt appearance which are so characteristic of the little groups of humanity often to be found on a fair day angling from piers, bridges, and railway embankments. Men who imagine the world is allied against them will loll away a dozen hours a day, throughout an entire summer season, sitting on the sun-heated girders of an iron bridge; yet they would strike against any system in the work-a-day world which compelled them to labor more than eight hours for ten hours' pay. In going down a long stretch of water highway, one comes to believe that about one-quarter of the inhabitants, especially of the villages, spend their time chiefly in fishing. On a canoe voyage, the bridge fishermen and the birds are the classes of animated nature most frequently met with, the former presenting perhaps the most unique and varied specimens. There are fishermen and fishermen. I never could fancy Izaak Walton dangling his legs from a railroad bridge, soaking a worm at the end of a length of store twine, vainly hoping, as the hours went listlessly by, that a stray sucker or a diminutive catfish would pull the bob under and score a victory for patience. Now the use of a boat lifts this sort of thing to the dignity of a sport.

Second Lake is about three miles long by a mile in breadth. The shores are here and there marshy; but as a rule they are of good, firm land with occasional rocky bluffs from a dozen to twenty feet high, rising sheer from a narrow beach of gravel. As we crossed over to gain the lower Catfish, a calm prevailed for the most part, and the awning was a decided comfort. Now and then, however, a delightful puff came ruffling the water astern, swelling our canvas roof and noticeably helping us along. Light cloudage, blown swiftly before upper aerial currents, occasionally obscured the sun,—black, gray, and white cumuli fantastically shaped and commingled, while through jagged and rapidly shifting gaps was to be seen with vivid effect, the deep blue ether beyond.

The bluffs and glades are well wooded. The former have escarpments of yellow clay and grayish sand and gravel; here and there have been landslides, where great trees have fallen with the débris and maintain but a slender hold amid their new surroundings, leaning far out over the water, easy victims for the next tornado. One monarch of the woods had been thus precipitated into the flood; on one side, its trunk and giant branches were water-soaked and slimy, while those above were dead and whitened by storm. As we approached, scores of turtles, sunning themselves on the unsubmerged portion, suddenly ducked their heads and slid off their perches amid a general splash, to hidden grottos below; while a solitary king-fisher from his vantage height on an upper bough hurriedly rose, and screamed indignance at our rude entry upon his preserve.

A farmer's lad sitting squat upon his haunches on the beach, and another, leaning over a pasture-fence, holding his head between his hands, exhibited lamb-like curiosity at the awning-decked canoe, as it glided past their bank. Through openings in the forest, we caught glimpses of rolling upland pastures, with sod close-cropped and smooth as a well-kept lawn; of gray-blue fields, recently seeded; of farmhouses, spacious barns, tobacco-curing sheds,—for this is the heart of the Wisconsin tobacco region,—and those inevitable signs of rural prosperity, windmills, spinning around by spurts, obedient to the breath of the intermittent May-day zephyr; while little bays opened up, on the most distant shore, enchanting vistas of blue-misted ridges.

At last, after a dreamy pull of two miles from the lake-head, we rounded a bold headland of some thirty feet in height, and entered Catfish Bay. Ice-pushed bowlders strew the shore, which is here a gentle meadow slope, based by a gravel beach. A herd of cattle are contentedly browsing, their movements attuned to a symphony of cow-bells dangling from the necks of the leaders. The scene is pre-eminently peaceful.

The Catfish connecting Second Lake with First, has two entrances, a small flat willow island dividing them. Through the eastern channel, which is the deepest, the current goes down with a rush, the obstruction offered by numerous bowlders churning it into noisy rapids; but the water tames down within a few rods, and the canoe comes gayly gliding into the united stream, which now has a placid current of two miles per hour,—quite fast enough for canoeing purposes. This section of the Catfish is much more picturesque than the preceding; the shores are firmer; the parallel ridges sometimes closely shut it in, and the stream, here four or five rods wide, takes upon itself the characteristics of the conventional river. The weed and vine grown banks are oftentimes twenty feet in height, with as sharp an ascent as can be comfortably climbed; and the swift-rushing water is sometimes fringed with sumachs, elders, and hazel brush, with here and there willows, maples, lindens, and oaks. Occasionally the river apparently ends at the base of a steep, earthy bluff; but when that is reached there is a sudden swerve to the right or left, with another vista of banks,—sometimes wood-grown to the water's edge, again with openings revealing purplish-brown fields, neatly harrowed, stretching up to some commanding, forest-crowned hill-top. The blossoms of the wild grape burden the air with sweet scent; on the deep-shaded banks, amid stones and cool mosses, the red and yellow columbine gracefully nods; the mandrake, with its glossy green leaves, grows with tropical luxuriance; more in the open, appears in great profusion, the old maid's nightcap, in purplish roseate hue; the sheep-berry shrub is decked in masses of white blossoms; the hawthorn flower is detected by its sickly-sweet scent, and here and there are luxuriously-flowered locusts, specimens that have escaped from cultivation to take up their homes in this botanical wilderness.

There are charming rustic pictures at every turn,—sleek herds of cattle, droves of fat hogs, flocks of sheep that have but recently doffed their winter suits, well-tended fields, trim-looking wire fences, neat farm-houses where rows of milkpans glisten upon sunny drying-benches, farmers and farmers' boys riding aristocratic-looking sulky drags and cultivators,—everywhere an air of agricultural luxuriance, rather emphasized by occasional log-houses, which repose as honored relics by the side of their pretentious successors, sharply contrasting the wide differences between pioneer life and that of to-day.

The marshes are few; and they in this dry season are luxuriant with coarse, glossy wild grass,—the only hay-crop the farmer will have this year,—and dotted with clumps of dead willow-trees, which present a ghostly appearance, waving their white, scarred limbs in the freshening breeze. The most beautiful spot on this section of the Catfish is a point some eight miles above Stoughton. The verdure-clad banks are high and steep. A lanky Norwegian farmer came down an angling path with a pail-yoke over his shoulders to get washing-water for his "woman," and told us that when this country was sparsely settled, a third of a century ago, there was a mill-dam here. That was the day when the possession of water-power meant more than it does in this age of steam and rapid transit,—the day when every mill-site was supposed to be a nucleus around which a prosperous village must necessarily grow in due time. Nothing now remains as a relic of this particular fond hope but great hollows in either bank, where the clay for dam-making purposes has been scooped out, and a few rotten piles, having a slender hold upon the bottom, against which drift-wood has lodged, forming a home for turtles and clumps of semi-aquatic grasses. W—— avers, in a spirit of enthusiasm, that the Catfish between Second and First Lakes is quite similar in parts to the immortal Avon, upon which Shakespeare canoed in the long-ago. If she is right, then indeed are the charms of Avon worthy the praise of the Muses. If the Catfish of to-day is ever to go down to posterity on the wings of poesy, however, I would wish that it might be with the more euphonious title of "Yahara,"—the original Winnebago name. The map-maker who first dropped the liquid "Yahara" for the rasping "Catfish" had no soul for music.

Darting under a quaint rustic foot-bridge made of rough poles, which on its high trestles stalks over a wide expanse of reedy bog like a giant "stick-bug," we emerged into First Lake. The eastern shore, which we skirted, is a wide, sandy beach, backed by meadows. The opposite banks, two or three miles away, present more picturesque outlines. A stately wild swan kept us company for over a mile, just out of musket-shot, and finally took advantage of a patch of rushes to stop and hide. A small sandstone quarry on the southeast shore, with a lone worker, attracted our attention. There was not a human habitation in sight, and it seemed odd to see a solitary man engaged in such labor apparently so far removed from the highways of commerce. The quarryman stuck his crowbar in a crack horizontally, to serve as a seat, and filled his pipe as we approached. We hailed him with inquiries, from the stone pier jutting into the lake at the foot of the bluff into which he was burrowing. He replied from his lofty perch, in rich Norsk brogue, that he shipped stone by barge to Stoughton, and good-humoredly added, as he struck a match and lit his bowl of weed, that he thought himself altogether too good company to ever get lonesome. We left the philosopher to enjoy his pipe in peace, and passed on around the headland.

An iron railway bridge, shut in with high sides, and painted a dullish red, spans the Lower Catfish at the outlet of First Lake. A country boy, with face as dirty as it was solemn, stood in artistic rags at the base of an arch, fishing with a bit of hop-twine tied to the end of a lath; from a mass of sedge just behind him a hoarse cry arose at short intervals.

"Hi, Johnny, what's that making the noise?

"Bird!" sententiously responded the stoic youth. He looked as though he had been bored with a silly question, and kept his eyes on his task.

"What kind of a bird, Johnny?"

"D'no!" rather raspishly. He evidently thought he was being guyed.

We ran the nose of the canoe into the reeds. There was a splash, a wild cry of alarm, and up flew a great bittern. Circling about until we had passed on, it then drifted down to its former location near the uninquiring lad,—where doubtless it had a nest of young, and had been disturbed in the midst of a lecture on domestic discipline.

Wide marshes again appear on either side of the stream. There are great and small bitterns at every view; plovers daintily picking their way over the open bogs, greedily feeding on countless snails; wild ducks in plenty, patiently waiting in the secluded bayous for the development of their young; yellow-headed troopials flitting freely about, uttering a choking, gulping cry; while the pert little wren, with his smart cock-tail, views the varied scene from his perch on a lofty rush, jealously keeping watch and ward over his ball-like castle, with its secret gate, hung among the reeds below.

But interspersing the marshes there are often stretches of firm bank and delightfully varied glimpses of hillside and wood. Three miles above Stoughton, we stopped for supper at the edge of a glade, near a quaint old bridge. While seated on the smooth sward, beside our little spread, there came a vigorous rustling among the branches of the trees that overhang the country road which winds down the opposite slope to the water's edge to take advantage of the crossing. A gypsy wagon, with a high, rounded, oil-cloth top soon emerged from the forest, and was seen to have been the cause of the disturbance. Halting at one side of the highway, three men and a boy jumped out, unhitched the horses at the pole and the jockeying stock at the tail-board, and led them down to water. Two women meanwhile set about getting supper, and preparations were made for a night camp. We confessed to a touch of sympathy with our new neighbors on the other shore, for we felt as though gypsying ourselves. The hoop awning on the canoe certainly had the general characteristics of a gypsy-wagon top; we knew not and cared not where night might overtake us; we were dependent on the country for our provender; were at the mercy of wind, weather, and the peculiarities of our chosen highway; and had deliberately turned our backs on home for a season of untrammeled communion with nature.

It was during a golden sunset that, pushing on through a great widespread, through which the channel doubles and twists like a scotched snake, we came in sight of the little city of Stoughton. First, the water-works tower rises above the mass of trees which embower the settlement. Then, on nearer approach, through rifts in the woodland we catch glimpses of some of the best outlying residences, most of them pretty, with well-kept grounds. Then come the church-spires, the ice-houses, the barge-dock, and with a spurt we sweep alongside the foundry of Mandt's wagon-works. Depositing our oars, paddle, blankets, and supplies in the office, the canoe was pulled up on the grass and padlocked to a stake. The street lamps were lighting as we registered at the inn.

Stoughton has about two thousand inhabitants. A walk about town in the evening, revealed a number of bright, busy shops, chiefly kept by Norwegians, who predominate in this region. Nearly every street appears to end in one of Mandt's numerous factory yards, and the wagon-making magnate seems to control pretty much the entire river front here.

CHAPTER II.

BARBED-WIRE FENCES.

We were off in the morning, after an early breakfast at the Stoughton inn. Our host kindly sent down his porter to help us over the mill-dam,—our first and easiest portage, and one of the few in which we received assistance of any kind. Below this, as below all of the dams on the river, there are broad shallows. The water in the stream, being at a low stage, is mainly absorbed in the mill-race, and the apron spreads the slight overflow evenly over the width of the bed, so that there is left a wide expanse of gravel and rocks below the chute, which is not covered sufficiently deep for navigating even our little craft, drawing but five inches when fully loaded. We soon grounded on the shallows and I was obliged to get out and tow the lightened boat to the tail of the race, where deeper water was henceforth assured. This experience became quite familiar before the end of the trip. I had fortunately brought a pair of rubbers in my satchel, and found them invaluable as wading-shoes, where the river bottom is strewn with sharp gravel and slimy round-heads.

Below Stoughton the river winds along in most graceful curves, for the most part between banks from six to twenty feet high, with occasional pocket-marshes, in which the skunk-cabbage luxuriates. The stream is often thickly studded with lily-pads, which the wind, blowing fresh astern, frequently ruffles so as to give the appearance of rapids ahead, inducing caution where none is necessary. But every half-mile or so there are genuine little rapids, some of them requiring care to successfully shoot; in low water the canoe goes bumping along over the small moss-grown rocks, and now and then plumps solidly on a big one; when the stream is turbid,—as often happens below a pasture, where the cattle stir up the bank mud,—the danger of being overturned by scarcely submerged bowlders is imminent.

There are some decidedly romantic spots, where little densely-wooded and grape-tangled glens run off at right angles, leading up to the bases of commanding hillocks, which they drain; or where the noisy little river, five or six rods wide, goes swishing around the foot of a precipitous, bush-grown bluff. It is noticeable that in such beauty-spots as these are generally to be found poverty-stricken cabins, the homes of small fishermen and hunters; while the more generous farm-houses seek the fertile but prosaic openings.

All of a sudden, around a lovely bend, a barbed-wire fence of four strands savagely disputed the passage. A vigorous back-water stroke alone saved us from going full tilt into the bayonets of the enemy. We landed, and there was a council of war. As every stream in Wisconsin capable of floating a saw-log is "navigable" in the eye of the law, it is plain that this obstruction is an illegal one. Being an illegal fence, it follows that any canoeist is entitled to clip the wires, if he does not care to stop and prosecute the fencers for barring his way. The object of the structure is to prevent cattle from walking around through the shallow river into neighboring pastures. Along the upper Catfish, where boating is more frequently indulged in, farmers accomplish the same object by fencing in a few feet of the stream parallel with the shore. But below Stoughton, where canoeing is seldom practiced, the cattle-owners run their fences directly across the river as a measure of economy. Taking into consideration the fact that the lower Catfish is seldom used as a highway, we concluded that we would be charitable and leave the fences intact, getting under or over them as best we might. I am afraid that had we known that twenty-one of these formidable barriers were before us, the council would not have agreed on so conciliatory a campaign.

Having taken in our awning and disposed of our baggage amidships, so that nothing remained above the gunwale, W——, kneeling, took the oars astern, while I knelt in the bow with the paddle borne like a battering-ram. Pushing off into the channel we bore down on the centre of the works, which were strong and thickly-posted, with wires drawn as tight as a drum-string. Catching the lower strand midway between two posts, on the blade end of the paddle, the speed of the canoe was checked. Then, seizing that strand with my right hand, so that the thick-strewn barbs came between my fingers, I forced it up to the second strand, and held the two rigidly together, thus making a slight arch. The canoe being crowded down into the water by sheer exercise of muscle, I crouched low in the bow, at the same time forcing the canoe under and forward through the arch. When half-way through, W—— was able similarly to clutch the wires, and perform the same office for the stern. This operation, ungraceful but effective, was frequently repeated during the day. When the current is swift and the wind fresh a special exertion is necessary on the part of the stern oar to keep the craft at right angles with the fence,—the tendency being, as soon as the bow is snubbed, to drift alongside and become entangled in the wires, with the danger of being either badly scratched or upset. It is with a feeling of no slight relief that a canoeist emerges from a tussle with a barbed-wire fence; and if hands, clothing, and boat have escaped without a scratch, he may consider himself fortunate, indeed. Before the day was through, when our twenty-one fences had been conquered without any serious accident, it was unanimously voted that the exercise was not to be recommended to those weak in muscle or patience.

Eight miles below Stoughton is Dunkirk. There is a neat frame grist-mill there; and up a gentle slope to the right are four or five weather-beaten farm-houses, in the corners of the cross-roads. It was an easy portage at the dam. After pushing through the shallows below with some difficulty, we ran in under the shadow of a substantial wagon-bridge, and beached. Going up to the corners, we filled the canteen with ice-cold water from a moss-grown well, and interviewed the patriarchal miller, who assured us that "nigh onter a dozen year ago, Dunkirk had a bigger show for growin' than Stoughton, but the railroad went 'round us."

A few miles down stream and we come to Stebbinsville. The water is backset by a mill-dam for two miles, forming a small lake. The course now changing, the wind came dead ahead, and we rowed down to the dam in a rolling sea, with much exertion. The river is six rods wide here, flowing between smooth, well-rounded, grass-grown banks, from fifteen to thirty feet in height, the fields on either side sloping up to wood-crowned ridges. There are a mill and two houses at Stebbinsville, and the country round about has a prosperous appearance. A tall, pleasant-spoken young miller came across the road-bridge and talked to us about the crops and the river, while we made a comfortable portage of five rods, up the grassy bank and through a close-cropped pasture, down to a sequestered little bay at the tail of an abandoned race, where the spray of the falls spattered us as we reloaded. We pushed off, with the joint opinion that Stebbinsville was a charming little place, with ideal riverside homes, that would be utterly spoiled by building the city on its site which the young man said his father had always hoped would be established there. A quarter of a mile below, around the bend, is a disused mill, thirty feet up, on the right bank. There is a suspended platform over a ravine, to one side of the building, and upon its handrail leaned two dusty millers, who had doubtless hastened across from the upper mill, to watch the progress down the little rapids here of what was indeed a novel craft to these waters. They waved their caps and gave us a cheery shout as we quickly disappeared around another curve; but while it still rung in our ears we were suddenly confronted by one of the tightest fences on the course, and had neither time nor disposition to return the salute.

And so we slid along, down rapids, through long stretches of quiet water and scraping over shallows, plying both oars and paddle, while now and then "making" a fence and comparing its savagery with that of the preceding one. Here and there the high vine-clad banks, from overshadowing us would irregularly recede, leaving little meadows, full of painted-cups, the wild rose-colored phlox and saxifrage; or bits of woodland in the dryer bottoms, radiant, amid the underbrush, with the daisy, cinque-foil, and puccoon. Kingfishers and blue herons abound. Great turtles, disturbed by the unwonted splash of oars, slide down high, sunny banks of sand, where they have been to lay their eggs, and amid a cloud of dust shuffle off into the water, their castle of safety. These eggs, so trustfully left to be hatched by the warmth of the sun, form toothsome food for coons and skunks, which in turn fall victims to farmers' lads,—as witness the rows of peltries stretched inside out on shingles, and tacked up on the sunny sides of the barns and woodsheds along the river highway.

As we begin to approach the valley of the Rock, the hills grow higher, groups of red cedar appear, the banks of red clay often attain the height of fifty or sixty feet, broken by deep, staring gullies and wooded ravines, through which little brooklets run, the output of back-country springs; while the pocket-meadows are less frequent, although more charmingly diversified as to color and background.

We had our mid-day lunch on a pleasant bank, that had been covered earlier in the season with hepatica, blood-root, and dicentra, and was now resplendent with Solomon's seal, the dark-purple water-leaf, and graceful maidenhair ferns, with here and there a dogwood in full bloom. Behind us were thick woods and an overlooking ridge; opposite, a meadow-glade on which herds of cattle and black hogs grazed. A bell cow waded into the water, followed by several other members of the herd, and the train pensively proceeded in single file diagonally across the shallow stream to another feeding-ground below. The leader's bell had a peculiarly mournful note, and the scene strongly reminded one of an ecclesiastical procession.

In the middle of the afternoon the little village of Fulton was reached. It is a dead-alive, moss-grown settlement, situated on a prairie, through which the river has cut a deep channel. There are a cheese-factory, a grist-mill, a church, a school-house, three or four stores, and some twenty-five houses, with but a solitary boat in sight, and that of the punt variety. It was recess at the school as we rowed past, and boys and girls were chiefly engaged in climbing the trees which cluster in the little schoolhouse yard. A chorus of shouts and whistles greeted us from the leafy perches, in which we could distinguish "Shoot the roof!"—an exclamation called forth by the awning, which doubtless seemed the chief feature of our outfit, viewed from the top of the bank.

At the mill-dam, a dozen lazy, shiftless fellows were fishing at the foot of the chute, and stared at our movements with expressionless eyes. The portage was somewhat difficult, being over a high bank, across a rocky road, and down through a stretch of bog. When we had completed the carry, W—— waited in the canoe while I went up to the fishermen for information as to the lay of the country.

"How far is it to the mouth of the Catfish, my friend?" I asked the most intelligent member of the party.

"D'no! Never was thar." He jerked in his bait, to pull off a weed that had become entangled in it, and from the leer he gave his comrades it was plain that I had struck the would-be wag of the village.

"How far do you think it is?" I insisted, curious to see how far he would carry his obstinacy.

"Don' think nuthin' 'bout 't; don' care t' know."

"Didn't you ever hear any one say how far it is?" and I sat beside him on the stone pier, as if I had come to stay.

"Nah!"

"Suppose you were placed in a boat here and had to float down to the Rock, how long do you imagine you'd be?"

"Aint no man goin' t' place me in no boat! No siree!" pugnaciously.

"Don't you ever row?"

"Nah!" contemptuously; "what I want of a boat? Bridge 's good 'nough fer us fellers, a-fishin'."

"Whose boat is that, over there, on the shore?"

"Schoolmaster's. He's a dood, he is. Bridge isn't rich 'nough fer his blood. Boats is fer doods." And with this withering remark he relapsed into so intent an observation of his line that I thought it best to disturb him no longer.

Below Fulton, the stream is quite swift and the scenery more rugged, the evidences of disastrous spring overflows and back-water from the Rock being visible on every hand. At five o'clock, we came to a point where the river divides into three channels, there being a clump of four small islands. A barbed-wire fence, the last we were fated to meet, was stretched across each channel. Selecting the central mouth,—for this is the delta of the Catfish,—we shot down with a rush, but were soon lodged on a sandbank. It required wading and much pushing and twisting and towing before we were again off, but in the length of a few rods more we swung free into the Rock, which was to be our highway for over two hundred miles more of canoe travel.

The Rock River is nearly a quarter of a mile wide at this point, and comes down with a majestic sweep from the north, having its chief source in the gloomily picturesque Lake Koshkonong. The banks of the river at and below the mouth of the Catfish, are quite imposing, rising into a succession of graceful, round-topped mounds, from fifty to one hundred feet high, and finely wooded except where cleared for pasture or as the site of farm-buildings. While the immediate edges of the stream are generally firm and grass-grown, with occasional gravelly beaches, there are frequent narrow strips of marsh at the bases of the mounds, especially on the left bank where innumerable springs send forth trickling rills to feed the river. A stiff wind up-stream had broken the surface into white caps, and more than counteracted the force of the lazy current, so that progress now depended upon vigorous exercise at the oars and paddle.

Three miles above Janesville is Pope's Springs, a pleasant summer resort, with white tents and gayly painted cottages commingled. It is situated in a park-like wood, on the right bank, while directly opposite are some bold, rocky cliffs, or palisades, their feet laved in the stream. We spread our supper cloth on the edge of a wheat-field, in view of the pretty scene. The sun was setting behind a bank of roseate clouds, and shooting up broad, sharply defined bands of radiance nearly to the zenith. The wind was blowing cold, wraps were essential, and we were glad to be on our way once more, paddling along in the dying light, past palisades and fields and meadows, reaching prosperous Janesville, on her rolling prairie, just as dusk was thickening into dark.

CHAPTER III.

AN ILLINOIS PRAIRIE HOME.

We had an early start from the hotel next morning. A prospect of the situation at the upper Janesville dam, from a neighboring bridge, revealed the fact that the mill-race along the left bank afforded the easiest portage. Reloading our craft at the boat-renter's staging where it had passed the night, we darted across the river, under two low-hung bridges, keeping well out of the overflow current and entered the race, making our carry over a steep and rocky embankment.

Below, after passing through the centre of the city, the river widens considerably, as it cuts a deep channel through the fertile prairie, and taking a sudden bend to the southwest, becomes a lake, formed by back-water from the lower dam. The wind was now dead ahead again, and fierce. White caps came savagely rolling up stream. The pull down brought out the rowing muscles to their fullest tension. The canoe at times would appear to scarcely creep along, although oars and paddle would bend to their work.

The race of the carding-mill, which we were now approaching, is by the left bank, the rest of the broad river—fully a third of a mile wide here—being stemmed by a ponderous, angling dam, the shorter leg of which comes dangerously close to the entrance of the race, which it nearly parallels. Overhead, fifty feet skyward, a great railway bridge spans the chasm. The disposition of its piers leaves a rowing channel but two rods wide, next the shore. Through this a deep, swift current flows, impelling itself for the most part over the short leg of the chute, with a deafening roar. Its backset, however, is caught in the yawning mouth of the race. It so happens then that from either side of an ugly whirling strip of doubting water, parallel with the shorter chute, the flood bursts forth,—to the left plunging impetuously over the apron to be dashed to vapor at its foot; to the right madly rushing into the narrow race, to turn the wheels of the carding-mill half a mile below. This narrow channel, under the bridge and next the shore, of which I have spoken, is the only practicable entrance to the race.

We had landed above and taken a panoramic view of the situation from the deck of the bridge; afterward had descended to the flood-gates at the entrance of the race, for detailed inspection and measurements. One of the set of three gates was partly raised, the bottom being but three feet above the boiling surface, while the great vertical iron beams along which the cog-wheels work were not over four feet apart. It would require steady hands to guide the canoe to the right of the whirl, where the flood hesitated between two destinations, and finally to shoot under the uplifted gate, which barely gave room in either height or breadth for the passage of the boat. But we arrived at the conclusion that the shoot was far more dangerous in appearance than in reality, and that it was preferable to a long and exceedingly irksome portage.

So we determined to make the attempt, and walked back to the canoe. Disposing our baggage in the centre, as in the barbed-wire experience of the day before, W—— again took the oars astern and I the paddle at the bow. A knot of men on the bridge had been watching our movements with interest, and waved their hats at us as we came cautiously creeping along the shore. We went under the bridge with a swoop, waited till we were within three rods of the brink of the thundering fall, and then strained every muscle in sending the canoe shooting off at an angle into the waters bound for the race. We went down to the gate as if shot out of a cannon, but the little craft was easily controlled, quickly obeying every stroke of the paddle. Catching a projecting timber, it was easy to guide ourselves to the opening. We lay down in the bottom of the boat and with uplifted hands clutched the slimy gate; slowly, hand over hand, we passed through under the many internal beams and rods of the structure, with the boiling flood under us, making an echoing roar, amid which we were obliged to fairly shout our directions to each other. In the last section the release was given; we were fairly hurled into daylight on the surface of the mad torrent, and were many a rod down the race before we could recover our seats. The men on the bridge, joined by others, now fairly yelled themselves hoarse over the successful close of what was apparently a hazardous venture, and we waved acknowledgments with the paddle, as we glided away under the willows which overhang the long and narrow canal. At the isolated mill, where there is one of the easiest portages on the route, the hands came flocking by dozens to the windows to see the craft which had invaded their quiet domain.

The country toward Beloit becomes more hilly, especially upon the left bank, along which runs the Chicago and Northwestern railway, all the way down from Janesville. At the Beloit paper-mill, which was reached at three o'clock in the afternoon, it was found that owing to the low stage of water one end of the apron projected above the flood. With some difficulty as to walking on the slimy incline, we portaged over the face of the dam and went down stream through the heart of the pretty little college town, getting more or less picturesque back-door views of the domestic life of the community.

Beloit being on the State line, we had now entered Illinois. For several miles the river is placid and shallow, with but a feeble current. Islands begin to appear, dividing the channel and somewhat perplexing canoeists, it being often quite difficult to decide which route is the best; as a rule, one is apt to wish that he had taken some other than the one selected.

The dam at Rockton was reached in a two hours' pull. It was being repaired, stone for the purpose being quarried on a neighboring bank and transported to the scene of action on a flat-boat. We had been told that we could save several miles by going down the race, which cuts the base of a long detour. But the boss of the dam-menders assured us that the race was not safe, and that we would "get in a trap" if we attempted it. Deeming discretion the better part of valor, with much difficulty we lifted the canoe over the high, jagged, stone embankment and through a bit of tangled swamp to the right, and took the longest way around. It was four or five miles by the bend to the village of Rockton, whose spires we could see at the dam, rising above a belt of intervening trees. It being our first detour of note, we were somewhat discouraged at having had so long a pull for so short a vantage; but we became well used to such experiences long before our journey was over. It was not altogether consoling to be informed at Rockton—which is a smart little manufacturing town of a thousand souls—that the race was perfectly practicable for canoes, and the tail portage easy.

Beaching near the base of a fine wagon-bridge which here spans the Rock, we went up to a cluster of small houses on the bank opposite the town, to have some tea steeped, our prepared stock being by this time exhausted. The people were all employed in the paper-mills in the village, but one good woman chanced to be at home for the afternoon, and cheerfully responded to our request for service. A young, neat, and buxom little woman she was, though rather sad-eyed and evidently overworked in the family struggle for existence. She assured us that she nowadays never went upon the water in an open boat, for she had "three times been near drowndid" in her life, which she thought was "warnin' enough for one body." Inquiry developed that her first "warnin'" consisted of having been, when she was "a gal down in Kansis," taken for a row in a leaky boat; the water came in half-way up to the thwarts, and would have eventually swamped the craft and drowned its occupants, in perhaps half an hour's time, if her companion had not luckily bethought himself to run in to shore and land. Another time, she and her husband were out rowing, when a stern-wheel river steamer came along, and the swell in her wake washed the row-boat atop of a log raft, and "she stuck there, ma'am, would ye believe, and we'd 'a' drowndid sure, with a storm a-comin' up, hadn't my brother-in-law, that was then a-courtin' of sister Jane, come off in a dug-out and took us in." Her last and most harrowing experience was in a boat on the Republican River in Kansas. She and another woman were out when a storm came up, and white-capped waves tossed the little craft about at will; but fortunately the blow subsided, and the women regained pluck enough to take the oars and row home again. The eyes of the paper-maker's wife were suffused with tears, as, seated in her rocking-chair by the kitchen stove and giving the teapot an occasional shake, doubtless to hasten the brew, she related these thrilling tales of adventure by flood, and called us to witness that thrice had Providence directly interposed in her behalf. We were obliged to acknowledge ourselves much impressed with the gravity of the dangers she had so successfully passed through. Her sympathy with the perils which we were braving, in what she was pleased to call our singular journey, was so great that the good woman declined to accept pay for having steeped our tea in a most excellent manner, and bade us an affecting God-speed.

We had our supper, graced with the hot tea, on a pretty sward at the river end of the quiet lane just around the corner; while a dozen little children in pinafores and short clothes, perched on a neighboring fence, watched and discussed us as eagerly as though we were a circus caravan halting by the wayside for refreshment. The paper-maker's wife also came out, just as we were packing up for the start, and inspected the canoe in some detail. Her judgment was that in her giddiest days as an oarswoman, she would certainly never have dared to set foot in such a shell. She watched us off, just as the sun was disappearing, and the last Rockton object we saw was our tenderhearted friend standing on the beach at the end of her lane, both hands shading her eyes, as she watched us fade away in the gloaming. I have no doubt she has long ago given us up for lost, for her last words were, "I've heerd 'em tell it was a riskier river than any in Kansis, 'tween here an' Missip'; tek care ye don't git drowndid!"

In the soft evening shadows it was cool enough for heavy wraps. In fact, for the greater part of the day W—— had worn a light shoulder cape. We had a beautiful sunset, back of a group of densely timbered islands. We would have been sorely tempted to camp out on one of these, but the night was setting in too cold for sleeping in the open air, and we had no tent with us.

The twilight was nearly spent, and the banks and now frequent islands were so heavily wooded that on the river it was rapidly becoming too dark to navigate among the shallows and devious channels. W—— volunteered to get out and look for a farmhouse, for none could be seen from our hollow way. So she landed and got up into some prairie wheatfields back away from the bank. After a half-mile's walk parallel with the river she sighted a prosperous-looking establishment, with a smart windmill, large barns, and a thrifty orchard, silhouetted against the fast-fading sunset sky. The signal was given, and the prow of the canoe was soon resting on a steep, gravely beach at the mouth of a ravine. Armed with the paddle, for a possible encounter with dogs, we went up through the orchard and a timothy-field sopping with dew, scaled the barnyard fence, passed a big black dog that growled savagely, but was by good chance chained to an old mowing-machine, walked up to the kitchen door and boldly knocked.

No answer. The stars were coming out, the shadows darkening, night was fairly upon us, and shelter must be had, if we were obliged to sleep in the barn. The dog reared on his hind legs, and fairly howled with rage. A row of well-polished milk-cans on a bench by the windmill well, and the general air of thrifty neatness impelled us to persevere. An old German, with kindly face and bushy white hair, finally came, cautiously peering out beneath a candle which he held above his head. English he had none, and our German was too fresh from the books to be reliable in conversation. However, we mustered a few stereotyped phrases from the "familiar conversations" in the back of the grammar, which served to make the old man smile, and disappearing toward the cattle-sheds he soon returned with his daughter and son-in-law, a cheerful young couple who spoke good English, and assured us of welcome and a bed. They had been out milking by lantern-light when interrupted, and soon rejoined us with brimming pails.

It did not take long to feel quite at home with these simple, good-hearted folk. They had but recently purchased the farm and were strangers in the community. The old man lived with his other children at Freeport, and was there only upon a visit. The young people, natives of Illinois, were lately married, their wedding-trip having been made to this house, where they had at once settled down to a thrifty career, surrounded with quite enough comforts for all reasonable demands, and a few simple luxuries. W—— declared the kitchen to be a model of neatness and convenience; and the sitting-room, where we passed the evening with our modest entertainers,—who appeared quite well posted on current news of general importance,—showed evidences of being in daily use. They were devout Catholics, and I was pleased to find the patriarch drifting down the river of time with a heartfelt appreciation of the benefits of democracy, fully cognizant of what American institutions had done for him and his. Immigrating in the noon-tide of life and settling in a German neighborhood, he had found no need and had no inclination to learn our language. But he had prospered from the start, had secured for his children a good education at the common schools, had imbued them with the spirit of patriotism, had seen them marry happily and with a bright future, and at night he never retired without uttering a bedside prayer of gratitude that God had turned his footsteps to blessed America. As the old man told me his tale, with his daughter's hands resting lovingly in his while she served as our interpreter, and contrasted the hard lot of a German peasant with the independence of thought and speech and action vouchsafed the German-American farmer, who can win competence in a state of freedom, I felt a thrill of patriotism that would have been the making of a Fourth-of-July orator. I wished that thousands such as he originally was, still dragging out an existence in the fatherland, could have listened to my aged friend and followed in his footsteps.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HALF-WAY HOUSE.

The spin down to Roscoe next morning was delightful in every respect. The air was just sharp enough for vigorous exercise. These were the pleasantest hours we had yet spent. The blisters that had troubled us for the first three days were hardening into callosities, and arm and back muscles, which at first were sore from the unusually heavy strain upon them, at last were strengthened to their work. Thereafter we felt no physical inconvenience from our self-imposed task. At night, after a pull of eleven or twelve hours, relieved only by the time spent in lunching, in which we hourly alternated at the oars and paddle, slumber came as a most welcome visitation, while the morning ever found us as fresh as at the start. Let those afflicted with insomnia try this sort of life. My word for it, they will not be troubled so long as the canoeing continues. Every muscle of the body moves responsive to each pull of the oars or sweep of the paddle; while the mental faculties are kept continually on the alert, watching for shallows, snags, and rapids, in which operation a few days' experience will render one quite expert, though none the less cautious.

As we get farther down into the Illinois country, the herds of live-stock increase in size and number. Cattle may be seen by hundreds at one view, dotted all over the neighboring hills and meadows, or dreamily standing in the cooling stream at sultry noonday. Sheep, in immense flocks, bleat in deafening unison, the ewes and their young being particularly demonstrative at our appearance, and sometimes excitedly following us along the banks. Droves of black hogs and shoats are ploughing the sward in their search for sweet roots, or lying half-buried in the wet sand. Horses, in familiar groups, quickly lift their heads in startled wonder as the canopied canoe glides silently by,—then suddenly wheel, kick up their heels, sound a snort of alarm, and dash off at a thundering gallop, clods of turf filling the air behind them. There are charming groves and parks and treeless downs, and the river cuts through the alluvial soil to a depth of eight and ten feet, throwing up broad beaches on either side.

At Roscoe, three or four miles below our morning's starting-point, there is a collection of three or four neat farm-houses, each with its spinning windmill.

Latham Station, nine miles below Rockton, was reached at ten o'clock. The post-office is called Owen. There is a smart little depot on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul railway line, two general stores, and a half-dozen cottages, with a substantial-looking creamery, where we obtained buttermilk drawn fresh from one of the mammoth churns. The concern manufactures from three hundred to nine hundred pounds per day, according to the season, shipping chiefly to New York city. Leaning over the hand-rail which fences off the "making" room, and gossiping with the young man in charge, I conjured up visions of the days when, as a boy on the farm, I used to spend many weary, almost tearful hours, pounding an old crock churn, in which the butter would always act like a balky horse and refuse to "come" until after a long series of experimental coaxing. Nowadays, rustic youths luxuriously ride behind the plough, the harrow, the cultivator, the horse-rake, the hay-loader, and the self-binding harvester, while the butter-making is farmed out to a factory where the thing is done by steam. The farmer's boy of the future will live in a world darkened only by the frown of the district schoolmaster and the intermittent round of stable chores.

FARE.

Foot Passengere		10 cts.
Man & Horse		15 ct.
single Carriage		10 c.
double "		15 c
each Passinger		5 c
Night Raites	Double Fare.
	All persons
	Are cautioned
	Againts useing
	this Boat with Out
	Permistion from
	the Owners

At Latham Station we encountered the first ferry-boat on our trip,—a flat-bottomed scow with side-rails, attached by ropes and pulleys to a suspended wire cable, and working diagonally, with the force of the current. A sign conspicuously displayed on the craft bore the above legend.

From the time we had entered Illinois, the large, graceful, white blossoms of the Pennsylvanian anemone and the pink and white fringe of the erigeron Canadense had appeared in great abundance upon the river banks, while the wild prairie rose lent a delicate beauty and fragrance to the scene. On sandy knolls, where in early spring the anemone patens and crowfoot violets had thrived in profusion, were now to be seen the geum triflorum and the showy yellow puccoon; the long-flowered puccoon, with its delicate pale yellow, crape-like blossom, was just putting in an appearance; and little white, star-shaped flowers, which were strangers to us of Wisconsin, fairly dotted the green hillsides, mingled in striking contrast with dwarf blue mint. Bevies of great black crows, sitting in the tops of dead willow-trees or circling around them, rent the air with sepulchral squawks. Men and boys were cultivating in the cornfields, the prevalent drought painfully evidenced by the clouds of gray dust which enveloped them and their teams as they stirred up the brittle earth.

There was now a fine breeze astern, and the awning, abandoned during the head winds of the day before, was again welcomed as the sun mounted to the zenith. At 2.30 P. M., we were in busy Rockford, where the banks are twenty or twenty-five feet high, with rolling prairies stretching backward to the horizon, except where here and there a wooded ridge intervenes. Rockford is the metropolis of the valley of the Rock. It has twenty-two thousand inhabitants, with many elegant mansions visible from the river, and evidences upon every hand of that prosperity which usually follows in the train of varied manufacturing enterprises.

There are numerous mills and factories along both sides of the river, and a protracted inspection of the portage facilities was necessary before we could decide on which bank to make our carry. The right was chosen. The portage was somewhat over two ordinary city blocks in length, up a steep incline and through a road-way tunnel under a great flouring mill. We had made nearly half the distance, and were resting for a moment, when a mill-driver kindly offered the use of his wagon, which was gratefully accepted. We were soon spinning down the tail of the race, a half-dozen millers waving a "Chautauqua salute" with as many dusty flour-bags, and in ten minutes more had left Rockford out of sight.

Several miles below, there are a half-dozen forested islands in a bunch, some of them four or five acres in extent, and we puzzled over which channel to take,—the best of them abounding in shallows. The one down which the current seemed to set the strongest was selected, but we had not proceeded over half a mile before the trees on the banks began to meet in arches overhead, and it was evident that we were ascending a tributary. It proved to be the Cherry River, emptying into the main stream from the east. The wind, now almost due-west, had driven the waves into the mouth of the Cherry, so that we mistook this surface movement for the current. Coming to a railway bridge, which we knew from our map did not cross the Rock, our course was retraced, and after some difficulty with snags and gravel-spits, we were once more upon our proper highway, trending to the southwest.

Supper was eaten upon the edge of a large island, several miles farther down stream, in the shade of two wide-spreading locusts. Opposite are some fine, eroded sandstone palisades, which formation had been frequently met with during the day,—sometimes on both sides of the river, but generally on the left bank, which is, as a rule, the most picturesque along the entire course.

It was still so cold when evening shadows thickened that camping out, with our meagre preparations for it, seemed impracticable; so we pushed on and kept a sharp lookout for some friendly farm-house at which to quarter for the night. The houses in the thickly-wooded bottoms, however, were generally quite forbidding in appearance, and the sun had gone down before we sighted a well-built stone dwelling amid a clump of graceful evergreens. It seemed, from the river, to be the very embodiment of comfortable neatness; but upon ascending the gentle slope and fighting off two or three mangy curs which came snarling at our heels, we found the structure merely a relic of gentility. There was scarcely a whole pane of glass in the house, there were eight or ten wretchedly dirty and ragged children, the parents were repulsive in appearance and manner, and a glimpse of the interior presented a picture of squalor which would have shocked a city missionary. The stately stone house was a den of the most abject and shiftless poverty, the like of which one could seldom see in the slums of a metropolis. These people were in the midst of a splendid farming country, had an abundance of pure air and water at command, and there seemed to be no excuse for their condition. Drink and laziness were doubtless the besetting sins in this uncanny home. Making a pretense of inquiring the distance to Byron, the next village below, we hurried from the accursed spot.

A half-hour later we reached the high bridge of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railway, above Byron, and ran our bow on a little beach at the base of the left bank, which is here thirty feet high. A section-man had a little cabin hard by, and his gaunt, talkative wife, with a chubby little boy by her side, had been keenly watching our approach from her garden-fence. She greeted us with a shrill but cheery voice as we clambered up a zigzag path and joined her upon the edge of the prairie.

"Good ev'nin', folks! Whar'n earth d' ye come from?"

We enlightened her in a few words.

"Don't mean t' say ye come all the way from Weesconsin a' down here in that thing?" pointing down at the canoe, which certainly looked quite small, at that depth, in the dim twilight.

"Certainly; why not?"

"Ye'll git drowndid, an' I'm not mistakin, afore ye git to Byron."

"River dangerous, ma'am?"

"Dang'rous ain't no name for 't. There was a young feller drowndid at this here bridge las' spring. The young feller he worked at the bridge-mendin', bein' a carpenter,—he called himself a carpenter, but he warn't no great fist at carpenterin', an' I know it,—and he boarded up at Byron. A 'nsurance agint kim 'long and got Rollins,—the young feller his name was Abe Rollins, an' he was a bach,—to promise to 'sure his life for a thousand dollars, which was to go t' his sister, what takes in washin', an' her man ran away from her las' year an' nobody knows where he is,—which I says is good riddance, but she takes on as though she had los' somebody worth cryin' over: there's no accountin' for tastes. The agint says to Rollins to go over to the doctor's of'c' to git 'xamined and Rollins says, 'No, I ain't agoin' to git 'xamined till I clean off; I'll go down an' take a swim at the bridge and then come back and strip for the doctor.' An' Rollins he took his swim and got sucked down inter a hole just yonder down there, by the openin' of Stillman's Creek, and he was a corpse when they hauled him out, down off Byron; an' he never hollered once but jist sunk like a stone with a cramp; an' his folks never got no 'nsurance money at all, for lackin' the doctor's c'tificate. An' it's heaps o' folks git drowndid in this river, an' nobody ever hears of 'em agin; an' I wouldn't no more step foot in that boat nor the biggest ship on the sea, an' I don't see how you can do it, ma'am!"

No doubt the good woman would have rattled on after this fashion for half the night, but we felt obliged, owing to the rapidly increasing darkness, to interrupt her with geographical inquiries. She assured us that Byron was distant some five or six miles by river, with, so far as she had heard, many shallows, whirlpools, and snags en route; while by land the village was but a mile and a quarter across the prairie, from the bridge. We accordingly made fast for the night where we had landed, placed our heaviest baggage in the tidy kitchen-sitting-room-parlor of our voluble friend, and trudged off over the fields to Byron,—a solitary light in a window and the occasional practice-note of a brass band, borne to us on the light western breeze, being our only guides.

After a deal of stumbling over a rough and ill-defined path, which we could distinguish by the sense of feeling alone, we finally reached the exceedingly quiet little village, and by dint of inquiry from house to house,—in most of which the denizens seemed preparing to retire for the night,—found the inn which had been recommended by the section-man's wife as the best in town. It was the only one. There were several commercial travelers in the place, and the hostelry was filled. But the landlord kindly surrendered to us his own well-appointed chamber, above an empty store where the village band was tuning up for Decoration Day. It seemed appropriate enough that there should be music to greet us, for we were now one hundred and thirty-four miles from Madison, and practically half through our voyage to the Mississippi.

CHAPTER V.

GRAND DETOUR FOLKS.

We tramped back to the bridge in high spirits next morning, over the flower-strewn prairie. The section-man's wife was on hand, with her entire step-laddered brood of six, to see us off. As we carried down our traps to the beach and repacked, she kept up a continuous strain of talk, giving us a most edifying review of her life, and especially the particulars of how she and her "man" had first romantically met, while he was a gravel-train hand on a far western railroad, and she the cook in a portable construction-barracks.

Stillman's Creek opens into the Rock from the east, through a pleasant glade, a few rods below the bridge. We took a pull up this historic tributary for a half-mile or more. It is a muddy stream, some two and a half rods wide, cutting down for a half-dozen feet through the black soil. The shores are generally well fringed with heavy timber, especially upon the northern bank, while the land to the south and southwest stretches upward, in gentle slopes, to a picturesque rolling prairie, abounding in wooded knolls. It was in the large grove on the north bank, near its junction with the Rock, that Black Hawk, in the month of May, 1832, parleyed with the Pottawattomies. It was here that on the 14th of that month he learned of the treachery of Stillman's militiamen, and at once made that famous sally with his little band of forty braves which resulted in the rout of the cowardly whites, who fled pell-mell over the prairie toward Dixon, asserting that Black Hawk and two thousand blood-thirsty warriors were sweeping northern Illinois with the besom of destruction. The country round about appears to have undergone no appreciable change in the half-century intervening between that event and to-day. The topographical descriptions given in contemporaneous accounts of Stillman's flight will hold good now, and we were readily able to pick out the points of interest on the old battlefield.

Returning to the Rock, we made excellent progress. The atmosphere was bracing; and there being a favoring northwest breeze, our awning was stretched over a hoop for a sail. The banks were now steep inclines of white sand and gravel. It was like going through a railroad cut. But in ascending the sides, as we did occasionally, to secure supplies from farm-houses or refill our canteen with fresh water, there were found broad expanses of rolling prairie. The farm establishments increase in number and prosperity. Windmills may be counted by the scores, the cultivation of enormous cornfields is everywhere in progress, and cattle are more numerous than ever.

Three or four miles above Oregon the banks rise to the dignity of hills, which come sweeping down "with verdure clad" to the very water's edge, and present an inspiring picture, quite resembling some of the most charming stretches of the Hudson. At the entrance to this lovely vista we encountered a logy little pleasure-steamer anchored in the midst of the stream, which is here nearly half of a mile wide, for the river now perceptibly broadens. The captain, a ponderous old sea-dog, wearing a cowboy's hat and having the face of an operatic pirate, with a huge pipe between his black teeth, sat lounging on the bulwark, watching the force of the current, into which he would listlessly expectorate. He was at first inclined to be surly, as we hauled alongside and checked our course; but gradually softened down as we drew him out in conversation, and confided to us that he had in earlier days "sailed the salt water," a circumstance of which he seemed very proud. He also gave us some "pointers on the lay o' the land," as he called them, for our future guidance down the river,—one of which was that there were "dandy sceneries" below Oregon, in comparison with which we had thus far seen nothing worthy of note. As for himself, he said that his place on the neighboring shore was connected by telephone with Oregon, and his steamer frequently transported pleasure parties to points of interest above the dam.

Ganymede Spring is on the southeast bank, at the base of a lofty sandstone bluff, a mile or so above Oregon. From the top of the bluff, which is ascended by a succession of steep flights of scaffolding stairs, a magnificent bird's-eye view is attainable of one of the finest river and forest landscapes in the Mississippi basin. The grounds along the riverside at the base are laid out in graceful carriage drives; and over the head of a neatly hewn basin, into which gushes the copious spring, is a marble slab thus inscribed:—

GANYMEDE'S SPRINGS,

named by

Margeret Fuller (Countess D. Ossoli,)

who named this bluff

EAGLE'S NEST,

& beneath the cedars on its crest wrote

"Ganymede to his Eagle,"

July 4, 1843.

Oregon was reached just before noon. A walk through the business quarter revealed a thrifty, but oldish-looking town of about two thousand inhabitants. The portage on the east side, around a flouring-mill dam, involved a hard pull up the gravelly bank thirty feet high, and a haul of two blocks' length along a dusty street.

There was a fine stretch of eroded palisades in front of the island on which we lunched. The color effect was admirable,—patches of gray, brown, white, and old gold, much corroded with iron. Vines of many varieties dangle from earth-filled crevices, and swallows by the hundreds occupy the dimples neatly hollowed by the action of the water in some ancient period when the stream was far broader and deeper than now.

But at times, even in our day, the Rock is a raging torrent. The condition of the trees along the river banks and on the thickly-strewn island pastures, shows that not many months before it must have been on a wild rampage, for the great trunks are barked by the ice to the height of fifteen feet above the present water-level. Everywhere, on banks and islands, are the evidences of disastrous floods, and the ponderous ice-breakers above the bridges give one an awesome notion of the condition of affairs at such a time. Farmers assured us that in the spring of 1887 the water was at the highest stage ever recorded in the history of the valley. Many of the railway bridges barely escaped destruction, while the numerous river ferries and the low country bridges in the bayous were destroyed by scores. The banks were overflowed for miles together, and back in the country for long distances, causing the hasty removal of families and live-stock from the bottoms; while ice jams, forming at the heads of the islands, would break, and the shattered floes go sweeping down with terrific force, crushing the largest trees like reeds, tearing away fences and buildings, covering islands and meadows with deep deposits of sand and mud, blazing their way through the forested banks, and creating sad havoc on every hand. We were amply convinced, by the thousands of broken trees which littered our route, the snags, the mud-baked islands, the frequent stretches of sadly demoralized bank that had not yet had time to reweave its charitable mantle of verdure, that the Rock, on such a spring "tear," must indeed be a picture of chaos broken loose. This explained why these hundreds of beautiful and spacious islands—many of them with charming combinations of forest and hillock and meadow, and occasionally enclosing pretty ponds blushing with water-lilies—are none of them inhabited, but devoted to the pasture of cattle, who swim or ford the intervening channels, according to the stage of the flood; also why the picturesque bottoms on the main shore are chiefly occupied by the poorest class of farmers, who eke out their meagre incomes with the spoils of the gun and line.

It was a quarter of five when we beached at the upper ferry-landing at Grand Detour. It is a little, tumble-down village of one or two small country stores, a church, and a dozen modest cottages; there is also, on the river front, a short row of deserted shops, their paintless battlement-fronts in a sadly collapsed condition, while hard by are the ruins of two or three dismantled mills. The settlement is on a bit of prairie at the base of the preliminary flourish of the "big bend" of the Rock,—hence the name, Grand Detour, a reminiscence of the early French explorers. The foot of the peninsula is but half a mile across, while the distance around by river to the lower ferry, on the other side of the village is four miles. Having learned that the bottoms below here were, for a long distance, peculiarly gloomy and but sparsely inhabited, we thought it best to pass the night at Grand Detour. Bespeaking accommodations at the tavern and post-office combined, we rowed around the bend to the lower landing, through some lovely stretches of river scenery, in which bold palisades and delightful little meadows predominated.

The walk back to the village was through a fine park of elms. The stage was just in from Dixon, with the mail. There was an eager little knot of villagers in the cheerful sitting-room of our homelike inn, watching the stout landlady as she distributed it in a checker-board rank of glass-faced boxes fenced off in front of a sunny window. It did not appear that many of those who overlooked the distribution of the mail had been favored by their correspondents. They were chiefly concerned in seeing who did get letters and papers, and in "passin' the time o' day," as gossiping is called in rural communities. Seated in a darkened corner, waiting patiently for supper, the announcement of which was an hour or more in coming, we were much amused at the mirror of local events which was unconsciously held up for us by these loungers of both sexes and all ages, who fairly filled the room, and oftentimes waxed hot in controversy.

The central theme of conversation was the preparations under way for Decoration Day, which was soon to arrive. Grand Detour was to be favored with a speaker from Dixon,—"a reg'lar major from the war, gents, an' none o' yer m'lish fellers!" an enthusiastic old man with a crutch persisted in announcing. There were to be services at the church, and some exercises at the cemetery, where lie buried the half-dozen honored dead, Grand Detour's sacrifice upon the altar of the Union. The burning question seemed to be whether the village preacher would consent to offer prayer upon the occasion, if the church choir insisted on being accompanied on the brand-new cabinet organ which the congregation had voted to purchase, but to which the pastor and one of the leading deacons were said to be bitterly opposed, as smacking of worldliness and antichrist. Only the evening before, this deacon, armed with a sledgehammer and rope, had been seen to go to the sanctuary in company with his "hired man," and enter through one of the windows, which they pried up for the purpose. A good gossip, who lived hard by, closely watched such extraordinary proceedings. There was a great noise within, then some planks were pitched out of the window, soon followed by the deacon and his man. The window was shut down, the planks thrown atop of the horse-shed roof, and the men disappeared. Investigation in the morning by the witness revealed the fact that the choir-seats and the organ-platform had been torn down and removed. Here was a pretty how d' do! The wiry, raspy little woman, with her gray finger-curls and withered, simpering smile, had, with great forbearance, kept her choice bit of news to herself till "post-office time." Sitting in a big rocking-chair close to the delivery window, knitting vigorously on an elongated stocking, she demurely asserted that she "never wanted to say nothin' 'gin' nobody, or to hurt nobody's feelin's," and then detailed the entire circumstance to the patrons of the office as they came in. The excitement created by the story, which doubtless lost nothing in the telling, was at fever-heat. We were sorely tempted to remain over till Decoration Day,—when, it was freely predicted, there "would be some folks as'd wish they'd never been born,"—and see the outcome of this tempest in a teapot. But our programme, unfortunately, would not admit of such a diversion.

Others came and went, but the gossipy little body with the gray curls rocked on, holding converse with both post-mistress and public, keeping a keen eye on the character of the mail matter obtained by the villagers and neighboring farmers, and freely commenting on it all; so that new-comers were kept quite well-informed as to the correspondence of those who had just departed.

A sad-eyed little woman in rusty black modestly slipped in, and was handed out a much-creased and begrimed envelope, which she nervously clutched. She was hurrying silently away, when the gossip sharply exclaimed, "Good lands, Cynthi' Prescott! some folks don't know a body when they meet. 'Spose ye've been hearin' from Jim at last. I'd been thinkin' 't was about time ye got a letter from his hand, ef he war ever goin' t' write at all. Tell ye, Cynthi' Prescott, ye're too indulgent on that man o' yourn! Ef I—"

But Cynthia Prescott, turning her black, deep-sunken eyes to her inquisitor, with a piteous, tearful look, as though stung to the quick, sidled out backward through the wire-screen door, which sprung closed with a vicious bang, and I saw her hurrying down the village street firmly grasping at her bosom what the mail had brought her,—probably a brutal demand for more money, from a worthless husband, who was wrecking his life-craft on some far-away shore.

"Goodness me! but the Gilberts is a-puttin' on style!" ejaculated the village censor, as a rather smart young horseman went out with a bunch of letters, and a little packet tied up in red twine. "That there was vis'tin' keerds from the printer's shop in Dixon, an' cost a dollar; can't fool me! There's some folks as hev to be leavin' keerds on folks's centre-tables when they goes makin' calls, for fear folks will be a-forgettin' their names. When I go a-callin', I go a-visitin' and take my work along an' stop an' hev a social cup o' tea; an' they ain't a-goin' to forgit for awhile, that I dropped in on 'em, neither. This way they hev down in Dixon, what I hear of, of ringin' at a bell and settin' down with yer bonnet on and sayin', 'How d' do,' an' a 'Pretty well, I thank yer,' and jumpin' up as if the fire bell was ringin' and goin' on through the whole n'ighberhood as ef ye're on springs, an' then a-trancin' back home and braggin' how many calls ye've made,—I ain't got no use for that; it'll do for Dixon folks, what catch the style from Chicargy, an' they git 't from Paris each year, I'm told, but I ain't no use for 't. Mebbe ol' man Gilbert is made o' money,—his women folks act so, with all this a-apein' the Clays, who's been gettin' visitin' keerds all the way from Chicargy, which they ordered of a book agint last fall, with gilt letters an' roses an' sich like in the corners. An' 'twas Clay's brother-in-law as tol' me he never did see such carryin's-on over at the old house, with letter-writin' paper sopped in cologne, an' lace curtains in the bed-room winders. An' ye can't tell me but the Gilberts, too, is a-goin' to the dogs, with their paper patterns from Dixon, and dress samples from a big shop in Chicargy, which I seen from the picture on the envelope was as big as all Grand Detour, an' both ferry-landin's thrown in. Grand Detour fashi'ns ain't good 'nough for some folks, I reckon."

And thus the busy-tongued woman discoursed in a vinegary tone upon the characteristics of Grand Detour folks, as illustrated by the nature of the evening mail, frequently interspersing her remarks with a hearty disclaimer of anything malicious in her temperament. At last, however, the supper-bell rang; the doughty postmistress, who had been remarkably discreet throughout all this village tirade, having darted in and out between the kitchen and the office, attending to her dual duties, locked the postal gate with a snap, and asked her now solitary patron, "Anything I can do for you, Maria?" The gossip gathered up her knitting, hastily averred that she had merely dropped in for her weekly paper, but now remembered that this was not the day for it, and ambled off, to reload with venom for the next day's mail.

After supper we walked about the peaceful, pretty, grass-grown village. Shearing was in progress at the barn of the inn, and the streets were filled with bleating sheep and nodding billy-goats. The place presented many evidences of former prosperity, and we were told that a dozen years before it had boasted of a plough factory, two or three flouring-mills, and a good water-power. But the railroad that it was expected would come to Grand Detour had touched Dixon instead, with the result that the village industries had been removed to Dixon, the dam had fallen in, and now there were less than three hundred inhabitants between the two ferries.

When one of the store-keepers told me he had practically no country trade, but that his customers were the villagers alone, I was led to inquire what supported these three hundred people, who had no industries among them, no river traffic, owing to customary low water in summer, and who seemed to live on each other. Many of the villagers, I found, are laborers who work upon the neighboring farms and maintain their families here; a few are farmers, the corners of whose places run down to the village; others there are who either own or rent or "share" farms in the vicinity, going out to their work each day, much of their live stock and crops being housed at their village homes; there are half a dozen retired farmers, who have either sold out their places or have tenants upon them, and live in the village for sociability's sake, or to allow their children the benefit of the excellent local school. Mingled with these people are a shoemaker, a tailor, a storekeeper, who live upon the necessities of their neighbors. Two fishermen spend the summer here, in a tent, selling their daily catch to the villagers and neighboring farmers and occasionally shipping by the daily mail-stage to Dixon, fourteen miles away. The preacher and his family are modestly supported; a young physician wins a scanty subsistence; and for considerably over half the year the schoolmaster shares with them what honors and sorrows attach to these positions of rural eminence. Our pleasant-spoken host was the driver of the Dixon stage, as well as star-route mail contractor, adding the conduct of a farm to his other duties. With his wife as postmistress, and a pretty, buxom daughter, who waited on our table and was worth her weight in gold, Grand Detour folks said that he was bound to be a millionnaire yet.

As Grand Detour lives, so live thousands of just such little rural villages all over the country. Viewed from the railway track or river channel, they appear to have been once larger than they are to-day. The sight of the unpainted houses, the ruined factory, the empty stores, the grass and weeds in the street, the lack-lustre eyes of the idlers, may induce one to imagine that here is the home of hopeless poverty and despair. But although the railroad which they expected never came; or the railroad which did come went on and scheduled the place as a flag station; still, there is a certain inherent vitality here, an undefined something that holds these people together, a certain degree of hopefulness which cannot rise to the point of ambition, a serene satisfaction with the things that are. Grand Detour folks, and folks like them, are as blissfully content as the denizens of Chicago.

CHAPTER VI.

AN ANCIENT MARINER.

The clock in a neighboring kitchen was striking six, as we reached the lower ferry-landing. The grass in the streets and under the old elms was as wet with dew as though there had been a heavy shower during the night. The village fishermen were just pulling in to the little pier, returning from an early morning trip to their "traut-lines" down stream. In a long wooden cage, which they towed astern, was a fifty-pound sturgeon, together with several large cat-fish. They kindly hauled their cage ashore, to show us the monsters, which they said would probably be shipped, alive, to a Chicago restaurant which they occasionally furnished with curiosities in their line. These fishermen were rough-looking fellows in their battered hats and ragged, dirty overcoats, with faces sadly in need of water and a shave. They had a sad, pinched-up appearance as well, as though the dense fog, which was but just now yielding to the influence of the sun, had penetrated their bones and given them the chills. On engaging them in friendly conversation about their calling, they exhibited good manners and some knowledge of the outer world. Their business, they said, was precarious and, as we could well see, involved much exposure and hardship. Sometimes it meant a start at midnight, often amid rainstorms, fogs, or chilling weather, with a hard pull back again up-stream,—for their lines were all of them below Grand Detour; but to return with an empty boat, sometimes their luck, was harder yet. Knocking about in this way, all of the year around,—for their winters were similarly spent upon the lower waters and bayous of the Mississippi,—neither of them was ever thoroughly well. One was consumptively inclined, he told me, and being an old soldier, was receiving a small pension. A claim agent had him in hand, however, and his thoughts ran largely upon the prospects of an increase by special legislation. He seemed to have but little doubt that he would ultimately succeed. When he came into this looked-for fortune, he said, he would "quit knockin' 'round an' killin' myself fishin'," settle down in Grand Detour for the balance of his days, raising his own "garden sass, pigs, and cow;" and some fine day would make a trip in his boat to the "old home in Injianny, whar I was raised an' 'listed in the war." His face fairly gleamed with pleasure as he thus dwelt upon the flowers of fancy which the pension agent had cultivated within him; and W—— sympathetically exclaimed, when we had swung into the stream and bidden farewell to these men who followed the calling of the apostles, that were she a congressman she would certainly vote for the fisherman's claim, and make happy one more heart in Grand Detour.

Now commences the Great Bend of the Rock River. The water circuit is fourteen miles, the distance gained being but six by land. The stream is broad and shallow, between palisades densely surmounted with trees and covered thick with vines; great willow islands freely intersperse the course; everywhere are evidences of ice-floes, which have blazed the trees and strewn the islands with fallen trunks and driftwood,—a tornado could not have created more general havoc. The visible houses, few of them inviting in appearance, are miles apart. As had been foretold at the village, the outlook for lodgings in this dismal region is not at all encouraging. It was well that we had stopped at Grand Detour.

Below the bend, where the country is more open, though the banks are still deep-cut, the highway to Dixon skirts the river, and for several miles we kept company with the stage.

Dixon was sighted at 10 o'clock. A circus had pitched its tents upon the northern bank, just above the dam, near where we landed for the carry, and a crowd of small boys came swarming down the bank to gaze upon us, possibly imagining, at first, that our outfit was a part of the show. They accompanied us, at a respectful distance, as we pulled the canoe up a grassy incline and down through the vine-clad arches of a picturesque old ruin of a mill. Below the dam, we rowed over to the town, about where the famous pioneer ferry used to be. It was in the spring of 1826 that John Boles opened a trail from Peoria to Galena, by the way of the present locality of Dixon, thus shortening a trail which had been started by one Kellogg the year before, but crossed the Rock a few miles above. The site of Dixon at once sprang into wide popularity as a crossing-place, Indians being employed to do the ferrying. Their manner was simple. Lashing two canoes abreast, the wheels of one side of a wagon were placed in one canoe and the opposite wheels in the other. The horses were made to swim behind. In 1827 a Peoria man named Begordis erected a small shanty here and had half finished a ferry-boat when the Indians, not favoring competition, burned the craft on its stocks and advised Begordis to return to Peoria; being a wise man, he returned. The next year, Joe Ogie, a Frenchman, one of a race that the red men loved, and having a squaw for his wife, was permitted to build a scow, and thenceforth Indians were no longer needed there as common carriers. By the time of the Black Hawk war, Dixon, from whom the subsequent settlement was named, ran the ferry, and the crossing station had henceforth a name in history. A trail in those early days was quite as important as a railroad is to-day; settlements sprang up along the improved "Kellogg's trail," and Dixon was the centre of interest in all northern Illinois. Indeed, it being for years the only point where the river could be crossed by ferry, Dixon was as important a landmark to the settlers of the southern half of Wisconsin who desired to go to Chicago, as any within their own territory.[1]

The Dixon of to-day shelters four thousand inhabitants and has two or three busy mills; although it is noticeable that along the water-power there are some half-dozen mill properties that have been burned, torn down, or deserted, which does not look well for the manufacturing prospects of the place. The land along the river banks is a flat prairie some half-mile in width, with rolling country beyond, sprinkled with oak groves. The banks are of black, sandy loam, from twelve to twenty feet high, based with sandy beaches. The shores are now and then cut with deep ravines, at the mouths of which are fine, gravelly beaches, sometimes forming considerable spits. These indicate that the dry, barren gullies, the gutters of the hillocks, while innocent enough in a drought, sometimes rise to the dignity of torrents and suddenly pour great volumes of drainage into the rapidly filling river,—so often described in the journals of early travelers through this region, as "the dark and raging Rock." This sort of scenery, varied by occasional limestone palisades,—the interesting and picturesque feature of the Rock, from which it derived its name at the hands of the aborigines,—extends down to beyond Sterling.

This city, reached at 3.50 P. M., is a busy place of ten thousand inhabitants, engaged in miscellaneous manufactures. Our portage was over the south and dry end of the dam. We were helped by three or four bright, intelligent boys, who were themselves carrying over a punt, preparatory to a fishing expedition below. Amid the hundreds of boys whom we met at our various portages, these well-bred Sterling lads were the only ones who even offered their assistance. Very likely, however, the reason may be traced to the fact that this was Saturday, and a school holiday. The boys at the week-day carries were the riff-raff, who are allowed to loaf upon the river-banks when they should be at their school-room desks.

While mechanically pulling a "fisherman's stroke" down stream I was dreamily reflecting upon the necessity of enforced popular education, when W——, vigilant at the steersman's post, mischievously broke in upon the brown study with, "Como's next station! Twenty minutes for supper!"

And sure enough, it was a quarter past six, and there was Como nestled upon the edge of the high prairie-bank. I went up into the hamlet to purchase a quart of milk for supper, and found it a little dead-alive community of perhaps one hundred and twenty-five people. There is the brick shell of a fire-gutted factory, with several abandoned stores, a dozen houses from which the paint had long since scaled, a rather smart-looking schoolhouse, and two brick dwellings of ancient pattern,—the homes of well-to-do farmers; while here and there were grass-grown depressions, which I was told were once the cellars of houses that had been moved away. On the return to the beach a bevy of open-mouthed women and children accompanied me, plying questions with a simplicity so rare that there was no thought of impertinence. W—— was talking with the old gray-haired ferryman, who had been transporting a team across as we had landed beside his staging. The old man had stayed behind, avowedly to mend his boat, with a stone for a hammer, but it was quite apparent that curiosity kept him, rather than the needs of his scow. He confided to us that Como—which was indeed prettily situated upon a bend of the river—had once been a prosperous town. But the railroad went to some rival place, and—the familiar story—the dam at Como rotted, and the village fell into its present dilapidated state. It is the fate of many a small but ambitious town upon a river. Settled originally because of the river highway, the railroads—that have nearly killed the business of water transportation—did not care to go there because it was too far out of the short-cut path selected by the engineers between two more prominent points. Thus the community is "side-tracked,"—to use a bit of railway slang; and a side-tracked town becomes in the new civilization—which cares nothing for the rivers, but clusters along the iron ways—a town "as dead as a door-nail."

We had luncheon on a high bank just out of sight of Como. By the time we had reached a point three or four miles below the village it was growing dark, and time to hunt for shelter. While I walked, or rather ran, along the north bank looking for a farm-house, W—— guided the canoe down a particularly rapid current. It was really too dark to prosecute the search with convenience. I was several times misled by clumps of trees, and fruitlessly climbed over board or crawled under barbed-wire fences, and often stumbled along the dusty highway which at times skirted the bank. It was over a mile before an undoubted windmill appeared, dimly silhouetted against the blackening sky above a dense growth of river-timber a quarter of a mile down the stream. A whistle, and W—— shot the craft into the mouth of a black ravine, and clambered up the bank, at the serious risk of torn clothing from the thicket of blackberry-vines and locust saplings which covered it. Together we emerged upon the highway, determined to seek the windmill on foot; for it would have been impossible to sight the place from the river, which was now, from the overhanging trees on both shores and islands, as dark as a cavern. Just as we stepped upon the narrow road—which we were only able to distinguish because the dust was lighter in color than the vegetation—a farm-team came rumbling along over a neighboring culvert, and rolled into view from behind a fringe of bushes. The horses jumped and snorted as they suddenly sighted our dark forms, and began to plunge. The women gave a mild shriek, and awakened a small child which one of them carried in her arms. I essayed to snatch the bits of the frightened horses to prevent them from running away, for the women had dropped the lines, while W—— called out asking if there was a good farm-house where the windmill was. The team quieted down under a few soothing strokes; but the women persisted in screaming and uttering incoherent imprecations in German, while the child fairly roared. So I returned the lines to the woman in charge, and we bade them "Guten Nacht." As they whipped up their animals and hurried away, with fearful backward glances, it suddenly occurred to us that we had been taken for footpads.

We were so much amused at our adventure, as we walked along, almost groping our way, that we failed to notice a farm-gate on the river side of the road, until a chorus of dogs, just over the fence, arrested our attention. A half-dozen human voices were at once heard calling back the animals. A light shone in thin streaks through a black fringe of lilac-bushes, and in front of these was the gate. Opening the creaky structure, we advanced cautiously up what we felt to be a gravel walk, under an arch of evergreens and lilacs, with the paddle ready as a club, in case of another dog outbreak. But there was no need of it, and we soon emerged into a flood of light, which proceeded from a shadeless lamp within an open window.

It was a spacious white farm-house. Upon the "stoop" of an L were standing, in attitudes of expectancy, a stout, well-fed, though rather sinister-expressioned elderly man, with a long gray beard, and his raw-boned, overworked wife, with two fair but dissatisfied-looking daughters, and several sons, ranging from twelve to twenty years. A few moments of explanation dispelled the suspicious look with which we had been greeted, and it was soon agreed that we should, for a consideration, be entertained for the night and over Sunday; although the good woman protested that her house was "topsy-turvy, all torn up" with house-cleaning,—which excuse, by the way, had become quite familiar by this time, having been current at every house we had thus far entered upon our journey.

Bringing our canoe down to the farmer's bank and hauling it up into the bushes, we returned through the orchard to the house, laden with baggage. Our host proved to be a famous story-teller. His tales, often Munchausenese, were inclined to be ghastly, and he had an o'erweening fondness for inconsequential detail, like some authors of serial tales, who write against space and tax the patience of their readers to its utmost endurance. But while one may skip the dreary pages of the novelist, the circumstantial story-teller must be borne with patiently, though the hours lag with leaden heels. In earlier days the old man had been something of a traveler, having journeyed to Illinois by steamboat on the upper lakes, from "ol' York State;" another time he went down the Mississippi River to Natchez, working his way as a deck hand; but the crowning event of his career was his having, as a driver, accompanied a cattle-train to New York city. A few years ago he tumbled down a well and was hauled up something of a cripple; so that his occupation chiefly consists in sitting around the house in an easy-chair, or entertaining the crowd at the cross-roads store with sturdy tales of his adventures by land and sea, spiced with vigorous opinions on questions of politics and theology. The garrulity of age, a powerful imagination, and a boasting disposition are his chief stock in trade.

Propped up in his great chair, with one leg resting upon a lounge and the other aiding his iron-ferruled cane in pounding the floor by way of punctuating his remarks, "that ancient mariner"

"Held us with his glittering eye;

We could not choose but hear."

His tales were chiefly of shooting and stabbing scrapes, drownings and hangings that he claimed to have seen, dwelling upon each incident with a blood-curdling particularity worthy of the reporter of a sensational metropolitan journal. The ancient man must have fairly walked in blood through the greater part of his days; while from the number of corpses that had been fished out of the river, at the head of a certain island at the foot of his orchard, and "laid out" in his best bedroom by the coroner, we began to feel as though we had engaged quarters at a morgue. It was painfully evident that these recitals were "chestnuts" in the house of our entertainer. The poor old lady had a tired-out, unhappy appearance, the dissatisfied-looking daughters yawned, and the sons talked, sotto voce, on farm matters and neighborhood gossip.

Finally, we tore away, much to the relief of every one but the host, and were ushered with much ceremony into the ghostly bed-chamber, the scene of so many coroner's inquests. I must confess to uncanny dreams that night,—confused visions of Rock River giving up innumerable corpses, which I was compelled to assist in "laying out" upon the very bed I occupied.

CHAPTER VII.

STORM-BOUND AT ERIE.

We were somewhat jaded by the time Monday morning came, for Sunday brought not only no relief, but repetitions of many of the most horrible of these "tales of a wayside inn." It was with no slight sense of relief that we paid our modest bill and at last broke away from such ghastly associations. An involuntary shudder overcame me, as we passed the head of the island at the foot of our host's orchard, which he had described as a catch-basin for human floaters.

Our course still lay among large, densely wooded islands,—many of them wholly given up to maples and willows,—and deep cuts through sun-baked mudbanks, the color of adobe; but occasionally there are low, gloomy bottoms, heavily forested, and strewn with flood-wood, while beyond the land rises gradually into prairie stretches. In the bottoms the trees are filled with flocks of birds,—crows, hawks, blackbirds, with stately blue herons and agile plovers foraging on the long gravel-spits which frequently jut far into the stream; ducks are frequently seen sailing near the shores; while divers silently dart and plunge ahead of the canoe, safely out of gunshot reach. A head wind this morning made rowing more difficult, by counteracting the influence of the current.

We were at Lyndon at eleven o'clock. There is a population of about two hundred, clustered around a red paper-mill. The latter made a pretty picture standing out on the bold bank, backed by a number of huge stacks of golden straw. We met here the first rapids worthy of record; also an old, abandoned mill-dam, in the last stages of decay, stretching its whitened skeleton across the stream, a harbor for driftwood. Near the south bank the framework has been entirely swept away for a space several rods in width, and through this opening the pent-up current fiercely sweeps. We went through the centre of the channel thus made, with a swoop that gave us an impetus which soon carried our vessel out of sight of Lyndon and its paper-mill and straw-stacks.

Prophetstown, five miles below, is prettily situated in an oak grove on the southern bank. Only the gables of a few houses can be seen from the river, whose banks of yellow clay and brown mud are here twenty-five feet high. During the first third of the present century, this place was the site of a Winnebago village, whose chief was White Cloud, a shrewd, sinister savage, half Winnebago and half Sac, who claimed to be a prophet. He was Black Hawk's evil genius during the uprising of 1832, and in many ways was one of the most remarkable aborigines known to Illinois history. It was at "the prophet's town," as White Cloud's village was known in pioneer days, that Black Hawk rested upon his ill-fated journey up the Rock, and from here, at the instigation of the wizard, he bade the United States soldiery defiance.

There are rapids, almost continually, from a mile above Prophetstown to Erie, ten miles below. The river bed here has a sharper descent than customary, and is thickly strewn with bowlders; many of them were visible above the surface, at the low stage of water which we found, but for the greater part they were covered for two or three inches. What with these impediments, the snags that had been left as the legacy of last spring's flood, and the frequent sand-banks and gravel-spits, navigation was attended by many difficulties and some dangers.

Four or five miles below Prophetstown, a lone fisherman, engaged in examining a "traut-line" stretched between one of the numerous gloomy islands and the mainland, kindly informed us of a mile-long cut-off, the mouth of which was now in view, that would save us several miles of rowing. Here, the high banks had receded, with several miles of heavily wooded, boggy bottoms intervening. Floods had held high carnival, and the aspect of the country was wild and deserted. The cut-off was an ugly looking channel; but where our informant had gone through, with his unwieldy hulk, we considered it safe to venture with a canoe, so readily responsive to the slightest paddle-stroke. The current had torn for itself a jagged bed through the heart of a dense and moss-grown forest. It was a scene of howling desolation, rack and ruin upon every hand. The muddy torrent, at a velocity of fully eight miles an hour, went eddying and whirling and darting and roaring among the gnarled and blackened stumps, the prostrate trees, the twisted roots, the huge bowlders which studded its course. The stream was not wide enough for the oars; the paddle was the sole reliance. With eyes strained for obstructions, we turned and twisted through the labyrinth, jumping along at a breakneck speed; and, when we finally rejoined the main river below, were grateful enough, for the run had been filled with continuous possibilities of a disastrous smash-up, miles away from any human habitation.

The thunder-storm which had been threatening since early morning, soon burst upon us with a preliminary wind blast, followed by drenching rain. Running ashore on the lee bank, we wrapped the canvas awning around the baggage, and made for a thick clump of trees on the top of an island mudbank, where we stood buttoned to the neck in rubber coats. A vigorous "Halloo!" came sounding over the water. Looking up, we saw for the first time a small tent on the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile away, in front of which was a man shouting to us and beckoning us over. It was getting uncomfortably muddy under the trees, which had not long sufficed as an umbrella, and the rubber coats were not warranted to withstand a deluge, so we accepted the invitation with alacrity and paddled over through the pelting storm.

Our host was a young fisherman, who helped us and our luggage up the slimy bank to his canvas quarters, which we found to be dry, although odorous of fish. While the storm raged without, the young man, who was a simple-hearted fellow, confided to us the details of his brief career. He had been married but a year, he said; his little cabin lay a quarter of a mile back in the woods, and, so as to be convenient to his lines, he was camping on his own wood-lot; the greater part of his time was spent in fishing or hunting, according to the season, and peddling the product in neighboring towns, while upon a few acres of clearing he raised "garden truck" for his household, which had recently become enriched by the addition of an infant son. The phenomenal powers of observation displayed by this first-born youth were reported with much detail by the fond father, who sat crouched upon a boat-sail in one corner of the little tent, his head between his knees, and smoking vile tobacco in a blackened clay pipe. It seemed that his wife was a ferryman's daughter, and her father had besought his son-in-law to follow the same steady calling. To be sure, our host declared, ferries on the Rock River netted their owners from $400 to $800 a year, which he considered a goodly sum, and his father-in-law had offered to purchase an established plant for him. But the young fellow said that ferrying was a dog's life, and "kept a feller home like barn chores;" he preferred to fish and hunt, earning far less but retaining independence of movement, so rejected the offer and settled down, avowedly for life, in his present precarious occupation. As a result, the indignant old man had forbidden him to again enter the parental ferry-house until he agreed to accept his proposals, and there was henceforth to be a standing family quarrel. The fisherman having appealed to my judgment, I endeavored with mild caution to argue him out of his position on the score of consideration for his wife and little one; but he was not to be gainsaid, and firmly, though with admirable good nature, persisted in defending his roving tendencies. In the course of our conversation I learned that the ferrymen, who are more numerous on the lower than on the upper Rock, pay an annual license fee of five dollars each, in consideration of which they are guarantied a monopoly of the business at their stands, no other line being allowed within one mile of an existing ferry.

Within an hour and a half the storm had apparently passed over, and we continued our journey. But after supper another shower and a stiff head wind came up, and we were well bedraggled by the time a ferry-landing near the little village of Erie was reached. The bottoms are here a mile or two in width, with occasional openings in the woods, where small fields are cultivated by the poorer class of farmers, who were last spring much damaged by the flood which swept this entire country.

The ferryman, a good-natured young athlete, was landing a farm-wagon and team as we pulled in upon the muddy roadway. When questioned about quarters, he smiled and pointing to his little cabin, a few rods off in the bushes, said,—"We've four people to sleep in two rooms; it's sure we can't take ye; I'd like to, otherwise. But Erie's only a mile away."

We assured him that with these muddy swamp roads, and in our wet condition, nothing but absolute necessity would induce us to take a mile's tramp. The parley ended in our being directed to a small farm-house a quarter of a mile inland, where luckless travelers, belated on the dreary bottoms, were occasionally kept. Making the canoe fast for the night, we strung our baggage-packs upon the paddle which we carried between us, and set out along a devious way, through a driving mist which blackened the twilight into dusk, to find this place of public entertainment.

It is a little, one-story, dilapidated farm-house, standing a short distance from the country road, amid a clump of poplar trees. Forcing our way through the hingeless gate, the violent removal of which threatened the immediate destruction of several lengths of rickety fence, we walked up to the open front door and applied for shelter.

"Yes, ma'am; we sometimes keeps tavern, ma'am," replied a large, greasy-looking, black-haired woman of some forty years, as, her hands folded within her up-turned apron, she courtesied to W——.

We were at once shown into a frowsy apartment which served as parlor, sitting-room and parental dormitory. There was huddled together an odd, slouchy combination of articles of shabby furniture and cheap decorations, peculiar, in the country, to all three classes of rooms, the evidences of poverty, shiftlessness, and untasteful pretentiousness upon every side. A huge, wheezy old cabinet organ was set diagonally in one corner, and upon this, as we entered, a young woman was pounding and paddling with much vigor, while giving us sidelong glances of curiosity. She was a neighbor, on an evening visit, decked out in a smart jockey-cap, with a green ostrich tip and bright blue ribbons, and gay in a new calico dress,—a yellow field thickly planted to purple pineapples. A jaunty, forward creature, in pimples and curls, she rattled away through a Moody and Sankey hymn-book, the wheezes and groans of the antique instrument coming in like mournful ejaculations from the amen corner at a successful revival. Having exhausted her stock of tunes, she wheeled around upon her stool, and after declaring to her half-dozen admiring auditors that her hands were "as tired as after the mornin's milkin'" abruptly accosted W——: "Ma'am, kin ye play on the orgin?"

W—— confessed her inability, chiefly from lack of practice in the art of incessantly working the pedals.

"That's the trick o' the hul business, ma'am, is the blowin'. It's all in gettin' the bellers to work even like. There's a good many what kin learn the playin' part of it without no teacher; but there has to be lessons to learn the bellers. Don't ye have no orgin, when ye're at home?" she asked sharply, as if to guage the social standing of the new guest.

W—— modestly confessed to never having possessed such an instrument.

"Down in these parts," rejoined the young woman, as she "worked the bellers" into a strain or two of "Hold the Fort," apparently to show how easy it came to trained feet, "no house is now considered quite up to the fashi'n as ain't got a orgin." The rain being now over, she soon departed, evidently much disgusted at W——'s lack of organic culture.

The bed-chamber into which we were shown was a marvel. It opened off the main room and was, doubtless, originally a cupboard. Seven feet square, with a broad, roped bedstead occupying the entire length, a bedside space of but two feet wide was left. Much of this being filled with butter firkins, chains, a trunk, and a miscellaneous riff-raff of household lumber, the standing-room was restricted to two feet square, necessitating the use of the bed as a dressing-place, after the fashion of a sleeping-car bunk. This cubby-hole of a room was also the wardrobe for the women of the household, the walls above the bed being hung nearly two feet deep with the oddest collection of calico and gingham gowns, bustles, hoopskirts, hats, bonnets, and winter underwear I think I had ever laid eyes on.

Much of this condition of affairs was not known, however, until next morning; for it was as dark as Egypt within, except for a few faint rays of light which came straggling through the cracks in the board partition separating us from the sitting-room candle. We had no sooner crossed the threshold of our little box than the creaky old cleat door was gently closed upon us and buttoned by our hostess upon the outside, as the only means of keeping it shut; and we were left free to grope about among these mysteries as best we might. We had hardly recovered from our astonishment at thus being locked into a dark hole the size of a fashionable lady's trunk, and were quietly laughing over this odd adventure, when the landlady applied her mouth to a crack and shouted, as if she would have waked the dead: "Hi, there! Ye'd better shet the winder to keep the bugs out!" A few minutes later, returning to the crack, she added, "Ef ye's cold in the night, jest haul down some o' them clothes atop o' ye which ye'll find on the wall."

Repressing our mirth, we assured our good hostess that we would have a due regard for our personal safety. The window, not at first discernible, proved to be a hole in the wall, some two feet square, which brought in little enough fresh air, at the best. It was fortunate that the night was cool, although our hostess's best gowns were not needed to supplement the horse-blankets under which we slept the sleep of weary canoeists.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LAST DAY OUT.

The following day opened brightly. We had breakfast in the tavern kitchen, en famille. The husband, whom we had not met before, was a short, smooth-faced, voluble, overgrown-boy sort of man. The mother was dumpy, coarse, and good-natured. They had a greasy, easy-tempered daughter of eighteen, with a frowsy head, and a face like a full moon; while the heir of the household, somewhat younger, was a gaping, grinning youth of the Simple Simon order, who shovelled mashed potatoes into his mouth alternately with knife and fork, and took bites of bread large enough for a ravenous dog. The old grandmother, with a face like parchment and one gleaming eye, sat in a low rocking-chair by the stove, crooning over a corn-cob pipe and using the wood-box for a cuspadore. She had a vinegary, slangy tongue, and being somewhat deaf, would break in upon the conversation with remarks sharper than they were pat.

With our host, a glib and rapid talker in a swaggering tone, one could not but be much amused, as he exhibited a degree of self-appreciation that was decidedly refreshing. He had been a veteran in the War of the Rebellion, he proudly assured us, and pointed with his knife to his discharge-paper, which was hung up in an old looking-glass frame by the side of the clock.

"Gemmen,"—he invariably thus addressed us, as though we were a coterie of checker-players at a village grocery,—"Gemmen, when I seen how them Johnny Rebs was a usin' our boys in them prison pens down thar at Andersonville and Libbie and 'roun' thar, I jist says to myself, says I, 'Joe, my boy, you go now an' do some'n' fer yer country; a crack shot like you is, Joe,' says I to myself, 'as kin hit a duck on the wing, every time, an' no mistake, oughtn't ter be a-lyin 'roun' home an' doin' no'hun to put down the rebellion; it's a shame,' says I, 'when our boys is a-suff'r'n' down thar on Mason 'n' Dixie's line;' an' so I jined, an' I stuck her out, gemmen, till the thing was done; they ain't no coward 'bout me, ef I hev the sayin' of it!"

"Were you wounded, sir?" asked W——, sympathetically.

"No, I wa'n't hurt at all,—that is, so to speak, wounded. But thar were a sort of a doctor feller 'round here las' winter, a-stoppin' at Erie; an' he called at my place, an' he says, 'No'hun the matter wi' you, a-growin out o' the war?' says he; an' I says, 'No'hun that I know'd on,' says I,—'I'm a-eatin' my reg'l'r victuals whin I don't have the shakes,' says I. 'Ah!' says he, 'you've the shakes?' he says; 'an' don't you know you ketched 'em in the war?' 'I ketched 'em a-gettin' m'lairy in the bottoms,' says I, 'a-duck-shootin', in which I kin hit a bird on the wing every time an' no mistake,' says I. 'Now,' he says, 'hold on a minute; you didn't hev shakes afore the war?' says he. 'Not as much,' I says, not knowin' what the feller was drivin' at, 'but some; I was a kid then, and kids don't shake much,' says I. 'Hold up! hold up!' he says, 'you 're wrong, an' ye know it; ye don't hev no mem'ry goin' back so far about phys'cal conditions,' says he. Well, gemmen, sure 'nough, when I kem to think things over, and talk it up with the doctor chap, I 'lowed he was right. Then he let on he was a claim agint, an' I let him try his hand on workin' up a pension for me, for he says I wa'n't to pay no'hun 'less the thing went through. But I hearn tell, down at Erie, that they is a-goin' agin these private claims nowadays at Washin'ton, an' I don't know what my show is. But I ought to hev a pension, an' no mistake, gemmen. They wa'n't no fellers did harder work 'n me in the war, ef I do say it myself."

W—— ventured to ask what battles our host had been in.

"Well, I wa'n't in no reg'lar battle,—that is, right in one. Thar was a few of us detailed ter tek keer of gov'ment prop'ty near C'lumby, South Car'liny, when Wade Hamptin was a-burnin' things down thar. We was four miles away from the fightin,' an' I was jest a-achin' to git in thar. What I wanted was to git a bead on ol' Wade himself,—an' ef I do say it myself, the ol' man would 'a' hunted his hole, gemmen. When I get a sight on a duck, gemmen, that duck's mine, an' no mistake. An' ef I'd 'a' sighted Wade Hamptin, then good-by Wade! I tol' the cap'n what I wanted, but he said as how I was more use a-takin' keer of the supplies. That cap'n hadn't no enterprise 'bout him. Things would 'a' been different at C'lumby, ef I'd had my way, an' don't ye forgit it! There was heaps o' blood spilt unnecessary by us boys, a-fightin' to save the ol' flag,—an' we 're willin' to do it agin, gemmen, an' no mistake!"

The old woman had been listening eagerly to this narrative, evidently quite proud of her boy's achievements, but not hearing all that had been said. She now broke out, in shrill, high notes,—

"Joe ought ter 'a' had a pension, he had, wi' his chills 'tracted in the war. He wuk'd hard, Joe did, a hul ten months, doin' calvary service, the last year o' the war; an' he kem nigh onter shootin' ol' Wade Hamptin, an' a-makin' a name for himself, an' p'r'aps a good office with a title an' all that; only they kep' him back with the ammernition wagin, 'count o' the kurnil's jealousy,—for Joe is a dead shot, ma'am, if I'm his mother as says it, and keeps the family in ducks half the year 'roun', an' the kurnil know'd Joe was a-bilin' over to git to the front."

"Ah! you were in the cavalry service, then?" I said to our landlord, by way of helping along the conversation.

There was a momentary silence, broken by Simple Simon, who wiped his knife on his tongue, and made a wild attack on the butter dish.

"Pa, he druv a mule team for gov'ment; an' we got a picter in the album, tuk of him when he were just a-goin' inter battle, with a big ammernition wagin on behind. Pa, in the picter, is a-ridin' o' one o' the mules, an' any one'd know him right off."

This sudden revelation of the strength of the veteran's claim to glory and a pension, put a damper upon his reminiscences of the war; and giving the innocent Simon a savage leer, he soon contrived to turn the conversation upon his wonderful exploits in duck-shooting and fishing—industries in the pursuit of which he, with so many of his fellow-farmers on the bottoms, appeared to be more eager than in tilling the soil.

It was quite evident that the breakfast we were eating was a special spread in honor of probably the only guests the quondam tavern had had these many months. Canoeists must not be too particular about the fare set before them; but on this occasion we were able to swallow but a few mouthfuls of the repast and our lunch-basket was drawn on as soon as we were once more afloat. It is a great pity that so many farmers' wives are the wretched cooks they are. With an abundance of good materials already about them, and rare opportunities for readily acquiring more, tens of thousands of rural dames do manage to prepare astonishingly inedible meals,—sour, doughy bread; potatoes which, if boiled, are but half cooked, and if mashed, are floated with abominable butter or pastey flour gravy; salt pork either swimming in a bowl of grease or fried to a leathery chip; tea and coffee extremely weak or strong enough to kill an ox, as chance may dictate, and inevitably adulterated beyond recognition; eggs that are spoiled by being fried to the consistency of rubber, in a pan of fat deep enough to float doughnuts; while the biscuits are yellow and bitter with saleratus. This bill of fare, warranted to destroy the best of appetites, will be recognized by too many of my readers as that to be found at the average American farm-house, although we all doubtless know of some magnificent exceptions, which only prove the rule. We establish public cooking-schools in our cities, and economists like Edward Atkinson and hygienists like the late Dio Lewis assiduously explain to the metropolitan poor their processes of making a tempting meal out of nothing; but our most crying need in this country to-day is a training-school for rural housewives, where they may be taught to evolve a respectable and economical spread out of the great abundance with which they are surrounded. It is no wonder that country boys drift to the cities, where they can obtain properly cooked food and live like rational beings.

The river continues to widen as we approach the junction with the Mississippi,—thirty-nine miles below Erie,—and to assume the characteristics of the great river into which it pours its flood. The islands increase in number and in size, some of them being over a mile in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth; the bottoms frequently resolve themselves into wide morasses, thickly studded with great elms, maples, and cotton-woods, among which the spring flood has wrought direful destruction. The scene becomes peculiarly desolate and mournful, often giving one the impression of being far removed from civilization, threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream. Penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot, however, and smiling prairies are found beyond, stretching to the horizon and cut up into prosperous farms. The river is here from a half to three-quarters of a mile broad, but the shallows and snags are as numerous as ever and navigation is continually attended with some danger of being either grounded or capsized.

Now and then the banks become firmer, with charming vistas of high, wooded hills coming down to the water's edge; broad savannas intervene, decked out with variegated flora, prominent being the elsewhere rare atragene Americana, the spider-wort, the little blue lobelia, and the cup-weed. These savannas are apparently overflowed in times of exceptionally high water; and there are evidences that the stream has occasionally changed its course, through the sunbaked banks of ashy-gray mud, in years long past.

At Cleveland, a staid little village on an open plain, which we reached soon after the dinner-hour, there is an unused mill-dam going to decay. In the centre, the main current has washed out a breadth of three or four rods, through which the pent-up stream rushes with a roar and a hundred whirlpools. It is an ugly crevasse, but a careful examination showed the passage to be feasible, so we retreated an eighth of a mile up-stream, took our bearings, and went through with a speed that nearly took our breath away and appeared to greatly astonish a half-dozen fishermen idly angling from the dilapidated apron on either side. It was like going through Cleveland on the fast mail.

Fourteen miles above the mouth of the Rock, is the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad bridge, with Carbon Cliff on the north and Coloma on the south, each one mile from the river. The day had been dark, with occasional slight showers and a stiff head wind, so that progress had been slow. We began to deem it worth while to inquire about the condition of affairs at the mouth. Under the bridge, sitting on a bowlder at the base of the north abutment, an intelligent-appearing man in a yellow oiled-cloth suit, accompanied by a bright-eyed lad, peacefully fished. Stopping to question them, we found them both well-informed as to the railway time-tables of the vicinity and the topography of the lower river. They told us that the scenery for the next fourteen miles was similar, in its dark desolation, to that which we had passed through during the day; also that owing to the great number of islands and the labyrinth of channels both in the Rock and on the east side of the Mississippi, we should find it practically impossible to know when we had reached the latter; we should doubtless proceed several miles below the mouth of the Rock before we noticed that the current was setting persistently south, and then would have an exceedingly difficult task in retracing our course and pulling up-stream to our destination, Rock Island, which is six miles north of the delta of the Rock. They strongly advised our going into Rock Island by rail. The present landing was the last chance to strike a railway, except at Milan, twelve miles below. It was now so late that we could not hope to reach Milan before dark; there were no stopping-places en route, and Milan was farther from Rock Island than either Carbon Cliff or Coloma, with less frequent railway service.

For these and other reasons, we decided to accept this advice, and to ship from Coloma. Taking a final spurt down to a ferry-landing a quarter of a mile beyond, on the south bank, we beached our canoe at 5.05 P.M., having voyaged two hundred and sixty-seven miles in somewhat less than seven days and a half. Leaving W—— to gossip with the ferryman's wife, who came down to the bank with an armful of smiling twins, to view a craft so strange to her vision, I went up into the country to engage a team to take our boat upon its last portage. After having been gruffly refused by a churlish farmer, who doubtless recognized no difference between a canoeist and a tramp, I struck a bargain with a negro cultivating a cornfield with a span of coal-black mules, and in half an hour he was at the ferry-landing with a wagon. Washing out the canoe and chaining in the oars and paddle, we lifted it into the wagon-box, piled our baggage on top, and set off over the hills and fields to Coloma, W—— and I trudging behind the dray, ankle deep in mud, for the late rains had well moistened the black prairie soil. It was a unique and picturesque procession.

In less than an hour we were in Rock Island, and our canoe was on its way by freight to Portage, preparatory to my tour with our friend the Doctor,—down the Fox River of Green Bay.