"Then you will go."
"I would that I were dead. I would that I could live as the white teacher taught me—in peace with every one. I would that I had not this blood of fire, and this memory of darkness, and this vow upon my head. The white teacher taught me that all people were brothers. My brain burns—"
Late in the evening Waubeno went to Main-Pogue and sat down by his side under the trees. The river lay before them with its green islands and rapid currents, serene and beautiful. The lights had gone out on the other shore, and the world seemed strangely voiceless and still.
"How did he look, Waubeno?"
"Who look?"
"That man who saved you—stretched his arm over you."
"His arm was long. His face was as sad as an Indian's; and he was tall. He was a head taller than other men; he rose over them like an oak over the trees. The men laughed at him; then his face looked as though it was set against the people—he looked like a chief—and the men cowered, and jeered, and cowered. I can see how he looked, but I can not tell it—I can see it in my mind. I told him that I would tell Waubeno, and he seemed to know your name. Did you never meet such a man?"
"Yes, in the Indiana country. He was journeyed from the Wabash."
The Indians, after the council we have described, began to cross the Mississippi by night, and to make stealthy journeys into the Rock River country, once known as the Red Man's Paradise. Rock River is a beautiful stream of the prairies. It comes dashing out of a bed of rocks, and runs a distance of some two hundred miles to the Mississippi. Here once roamed the deer and came the wild cattle in herds. Here rose great cliffs, like ruins of castles, which were then, as now, cities of the swallows. Eagles built their nests upon them, and wheeled from over the flowers of the prairies. The banks in summer were lined with wild strawberries and wild sunflowers. Here and there were natural mounds and park-like woods, and oaks whose arms were tangled with grapevines.
Into this country ran Black Hawk's trail, and not far from this trail was Prairie Island, with its happy settlers and new school. The German school-master might well love the place. Margaret Fuller (Countess Ossoli) came to the region in 1843, and caught its atmosphere and breathed it forth in her Summer in the Lakes. Here, in this territory of the Red Man's Paradise, "to me enchanting beyond any I have ever seen," where "you have only to turn up the sod to find arrow-heads," she visited the bluff of the Eagles' Nest on the morning of the Fourth of July, and there wrote "Ganymede to his Eagle," one of her grandest poems.