The cabin of the "Enterprise" was all aft of the paddle-boxes. It was so divided as to afford sleeping quarters for the crew at the forward part, next the engine, while Captain Eden occupied the after part, which was fitted up as a boudoir, with a little side niche, in which he slept. His pointer dog and his retriever also slept in the same niche. There was a fine library in the cabin—not a great number of books, but the best books, some English, some French, some German, and several Greek and Latin, for Captain Eden was a polyglot in his reading. There was also a gun rack with several rifles, three or four shot guns of big and little calibre, and a pair of duelling pistols. Likewise there were rods, reels, landing nets, and fly-hooks without number, rubber boots and mackintoshes for rough weather, and all the paraphernalia of a gentleman sportsman. It was evident at a glance that Captain Eden was not in financial straits, and it was equally evident that he was not steamboating for profit.
As I knew the St. Croix River well enough to navigate it with a far larger boat than Captain Eden's, and in addition knew also a great deal more about the haunts of bear, deer, prairie chickens, brook trout, and indeed all species of fish inhabiting the waters of the Mississippi River and its tributaries; and further, had a speaking and dining acquaintance with sundry red men, both Sioux and Chippewa, with whom Captain Eden also wished to become acquainted for purposes of original investigation and study, I was deemed a valuable acquisition. On my side a reasonable salary as pilot, with a free run of the guns, fishing tackle, and books was an attractive presentation of the case, and it took but a short time to arrange the details of an engagement.
A day's work on this model craft consisted in steering the boat five or six miles up or down the river or lake to the most inviting hunting or fishing grounds, or to the vicinity of an Indian camp, finding a sheltered place in which to tie up, and then taking a tramp of ten or a dozen miles after deer, bear, or prairie chickens, or a walk of three or four miles up some favorite trout stream, and fishing back to the boat. In that day bear and deer abounded within a very few miles of Prescott, Hudson, or other points. Indeed, as late as 1876 bears were quite common about River Falls, one or two having come right into the village to pick up young pigs and lambs; and deer were also numerous within a few miles of the same place.
This in itself was an ideal occupation. But added to it was the privilege of an intimate association with, and the conversation of, a man from across the ocean, whose father was a baronet, who had himself been schooled in Oxford, who had lived in London, and Paris, and Berlin, and had seen men and things of whom and which I had read in books, but which were all very far removed from the backwoods farm of Michigan where I was born, and from the still wilder surroundings of the upper Mississippi in the middle fifties.
I had been a persistent reader from the time I had learned my letters, and was now seventeen years old. The volumes to which I had had access were principally school books, with here and there a history or biography, and an occasional novel. At one period only, while working in the printing office, had I the run of a well-chosen library belonging to the lawyer-editor. Here, however, was something better than books. I could question this man on points that the books might have passed over, and he could answer. His mind was quick, his powers of observation trained, his brain well stored with the lore of books—history, poetry, eloquence, and in addition he had seen much of the world which lay so far beyond and outside the life of a Western-bred country lad. It was better than any school I had ever attended, and he was a rare teacher. He didn't realize that he was teaching, but I did.
It was not a case of absorption alone on my part, however. In my own field I had much to communicate—the lore of woods and streams, the ways of the red men, the moods and legends of the Great River, matters which seemed of little value to me, but which this stranger from an older civilization was as solicitous to hear about as I was to listen to the stories of his larger life. While I deemed myself fortunate indeed in making the acquaintance of this cosmopolitan man of the world, I was pleased to know that there were some things that I knew better than my more widely-travelled employer. One of these things, insignificant in itself, was the fact that the pilot could catch ten trout to the captain's one, after giving him all possible advantages of first chances at good "holes", and likely riffles, and the first chance in wading ahead down the stream. This was for a long time one of the mysteries to the captain—why a trout would not bite at one man's hook just as readily as at another's, when they were exactly alike as to lures, whether natural or artificial. The fact remains that there is a difference in the manner in which you approach them with the temptation; until you get the "hang of the thing" you will not catch the trout that the more astute disciple of the good Walton catches out of the same stream, in the same hour.
Thrown together as we both were on board the boat and on these excursions, the relation of employer and servant was soon forgotten, and the closer and more intimate relation of friend to friend was established, a relation which lasted as long as Captain Eden remained in America. Two months were passed in idling along the St. Croix, in hunting, fishing, exploring, studying the beautiful, if not grand, rock formations of the Dalles, and in visiting the Indians in their haunts around Wood Lake and the upper St. Croix. Then Captain Eden turned the prow of his little steamboat toward home, descending the river to Prairie du Chien, ascending the Wisconsin, portaging through the canal to the Fox, and thence steaming down to Oshkosh. Disposing of his steamboat there, he entered the office of the Northwestern newspaper, first as a reporter and later as an editorial writer. Not many suburban newspapers fifty years ago could boast of an Oxonian among their editorial writers. But very few people outside of his immediate friends ever knew that the quiet man who represented the Northwestern was either an Oxonian or the son of an English baronet.
In the autumn of 1863 the men of the North were gathering themselves together for the mightiest struggle of modern times—the battle summer of 1864. In Wisconsin, the Thirty-seventh Regiment of Infantry was in process of enrollment, and the whilom Englishman was one of those engaged in recruiting for this regiment, putting his money as well as his time into the work. Captain Eden was so successful in enlisting men for the service, that when the regiment was organized he was commissioned as major. In the strenuous days immediately following the battle of Cold Harbor the writer again met his old employer. The difference in rank between the enlisted man and the commissioned officer was no bar to the recognition of the former friendship existing between the steamboat captain and his pilot—friendship broadened and strengthened by companionship in woods and along streams by mutual interest and respect.
Major Robert C. Eden, or "Bob" Eden, as he was called at the front, was a model officer. His family had for generations been furnishing officers for the British army, and the fighting blood ran in his veins. His regiment was in the hottest of the fight at the Petersburg mine disaster, and he was at the head of his men. Through all the long siege following the first repulse, from June, 1864, until April, 1865, constantly under fire, he proved the metal that was in his composition. When he left England to seek his fortune, he was engaged to a Scotch lassie from one of the old families of the borderland. After a summer's experience of Yankee warfare, pitted against the "Johnnies" under Lee, Longstreet, Gordon, and Wise—men of equal courage, tenacity, and fighting ability—"Bob" concluded that another summer of the same sort as the last might prove too much for him, and that he might lose the number of his mess, as hundreds of his comrades had in the summer just closed. If he hoped or wished to leave a widow when he was called, he had better clinch the contract at once. And so he did.
His fiancée, who also came of fighting stock, promptly responded to the challenge and came overseas to meet her hero. They were married across a stump in the rear of Fort Haskell (Fort Hell, the boys called it, as opposed to Fort Damnation, immediately opposite, in the Confederate line of works). Chaplain Hawes read the full Church of England service for the occasion, the regiment formed in hollow square about them, and the brigade band played the wedding march, while an occasional shell from the Confederate works sang overhead. Major-General O. B. Wilcox, commanding the division, gave away the bride, and all went merry despite the warlike surroundings.