Their attention was attracted by a lonely tomb, deeply shaded with trees, on the banks of the Minnehaha, and the driver told them that it was the tomb of the young wife and child of an officer of the army, who, when stationed at Fort Snelling, buried his beloved ones on the banks of this romantic stream.
The driver stopped; they were on the prairie, with nothing to excite expectation.
“The falls of Minnehaha[[2]]
Did not call them from a distance;
Did not cry to them afar off.”
[2]. See Frontispiece.
Then getting out of the carriage, and descending a narrow path, the fall was before them, perfectly satisfying in its beauty; a gem of a fall, at once stamping its image on the memory; “a thing of beauty” to be “a joy forever.”
The fall is sixty feet high, and makes one graceful leap over an amphitheater of rock, that recedes far enough to enable one to walk round behind the fall, beneath the overhanging cliff. One large tree grew on the steep bank on which they stood, sufficiently near to make a fine foreground to the picture, and throw its masses of foliage across the fall. There was nothing to mar the perfect loveliness of the scene. A stir in the branches of the great tree against which Norman leaned induced him to look up, and there, upon the bough,
“With tail erected
Sat the squirel, Adjidanmo;