Nor was the foreground less picturesque: the spreading oaks, the tents of the soldiers, the waggons drawn up with the horses tethered, all lighted up by the blaze of our large fires. Now, when I say our large fires, I mean the large fires of America, consisting of three or four oak trees, containing a load of wood each, besides many large boughs and branches, altogether forming a fire some twenty or thirty feet long, with flames flickering up twice as high as one’s head. At a certain distance from this blazing pile you may perceive what in another situation would be considered as a large coffee-pot (before this huge fire it makes a very diminutive appearance). It is placed over some embers drawn out from the mass, which would have soon burnt up coffee-pot and coffee all together; and at a still more respectful distance you may perceive small rods, not above four or five feet long, bifurcated at the smaller end, and fixed by the larger in the ground, so as to hang towards the huge fire, at an angle of forty degrees, like so many tiny fishing-rods. These rods have at their bifurcated ends a piece of pork or ham, or of bread, or perhaps of venison, for we bought some, not having shot any: they are all private property, as each party cooks for himself. Seeing these rods at some distance, you might almost imagine that they were the fishing-rods of little imps bobbing for salamanders in the fiery furnace.
In the mean time, while the meat is cooking and the coffee is boiling, the brandy and whisky are severely taxed, as we lie upon our cloaks and buffalo skins at the front of our tents. There certainly is a charm in this wild sort of life, which wins upon people the more they practise it; nor can it be wondered at: our wants are in reality so few and so easily satisfied, without the restraint of form and ceremony. How often, in my wanderings, have I felt the truth of Shakespeare’s lines in “As You Like It.”
“Now, my co-mates and partners in exile,
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam—
The seasons’ difference.”
On the fourth day we descended, crossed the wide prairie, and arrived at the Fond du Lac, where we again fell in with the Fox river, which runs through the Winnebago lake. The roads through the forests had been very bad, and the men and horses showed signs of fatigue; but we had now passed through all the thickly wooded country, and had entered into the prairie country, extending to Fort Winnebago, and which was beautiful beyond concoction. Its features alone can be described; but its effects can only be felt by being seen. The prairies here are not very large, seldom being above six or seven miles in length or breadth; generally speaking, they lie in gentle undulating flats, and the ridges and hills between them are composed of oak openings. To form an idea of these oak openings, imagine an inland country covered with splendid trees, about as thickly planted as in our English parks; in fact, it is English park scenery, Nature having here spontaneously produced what it has been the care and labour of centuries in our own country to effect. Sometimes the prairie will rise and extend along the hills, and assume an undulating appearance, like the long swell of the ocean; it is then called rolling prairie.
Often, when I looked down upon some fifteen or twenty thousand acres of these prairies, full of rich grass, without one animal, tame or wild, to be seen, I would fancy what thousands of cattle will, in a few years, be luxuriating in those pastures, which, since the herds of buffalo have retreated from them, are now useless, and throwing up each year a fresh crop, to seed and to die unheeded.
On our way we had fallen in with a young Frenchman, who had purchased some land at Fond du Lac, and was proceeding there in company with an American, whom he had hired to settle on it. I now parted company with him; he had gone out with me in my shooting excursions, and talked of nothing but his purchase: it had water; it had a waterfall; it had, in fact, everything that he could desire; but he thought that, after two years, he would go home and get a wife: a Paradise without an Eve would be no Paradise at all.
The price of labour is, as may be supposed, very high in this part of the country. Hiring by the year, you find a man in food, board, and washing, and pay him three hundred dollars per annum (about 70 pounds English.)
The last night that we bivouacked out was the only unfortunate one. We had been all comfortably settled for the night, and fast asleep, when a sudden storm came on, accompanied with such torrents of rain as would have washed us out of our tents, if they had not been already blown down by the violence of the gale. Had we had any warning, we should have provided against it; as it was, we made up huge fires, which defied the rain; and thus we remained till day-light, the rain pouring on us, while the heat of the fire drying us almost as fast as we got wet, each man threw up a column of steam from his still saturating and still heated garments. Every night we encamped where there was a run of water, and plenty of dead timber for our fires; and thus did we go on, emptying our waggons daily of the bread and pork, and filling up the vacancies left by the removal of the empty casks with the sick and lame, until at last we arrived at Fort Winnebago.