VOYAGE UP FOX RIVER
It had been arranged that Judge Doty should accompany us in our boat as far as the Butte des Morts, at which place his attendant would be waiting with horses to convey him to Mineral Point, where he was to hold court.
It was a bright and beautiful morning when we left his pleasant home, to commence our journey up the Fox River. Capt. Harney was proposing to remain a few days longer at “the Bay,” but he called to escort us to the boat, and install us in all its comforts.
As he helped me along over the ploughed ground and other inequalities in our way to the river-bank, where the boat lay, he told me how impatiently Mrs. Twiggs,[[24]] the wife of the commanding officer, who, since the past spring had been the only white lady at Fort Winnebago, was now expecting a companion and friend. We had met in New York shortly after her marriage, and were, therefore, not quite unacquainted. I, for my part, felt sure that when there were two of us—when my piano was safely there—when the Post Library which we had purchased should be unpacked—when all should be fairly arranged and settled, we should be, although far away in the wilderness, the happiest little circle imaginable. All my anticipations were of the most sanguine and cheerful character.
It was a moderate-sized Mackinac boat, with a crew of soldiers, and our own three voyageurs in addition, that lay waiting for us—a dark-looking structure of some thirty feet in length. Placed in the center was a framework of slight posts, supporting a roof of canvas, with curtains of the same, which might be let down at the sides and ends, after the manner of a country stage-coach, or rolled up to admit the light and air.
In the midst of this little cabin or saloon was placed the box containing my piano, and on it a mattress, which was to furnish us a divan through the day and a place of repose at night, should the weather at any time prove too wet or unpleasant for encamping. The boxes of silver were stowed next. Our mess-basket was in a convenient vicinity, and we had purchased a couple of large square covered baskets of the Waubanakees, or New York Indians, to hold our various necessary articles of outward apparel and bedding, and at the same time to answer as very convenient little work or dinner tables.
As a true daughter of New England, it is to be taken for granted I had not forgotten to supply myself with knitting-work and embroidery. Books and pencils were a matter of course.
The greater part of our furniture, together with the various articles for housekeeping with which we had supplied ourselves in New York and Detroit, were to follow in another boat, under the charge of people whose business it professed to be to take cargoes safely up the rapids, and on to Fort Winnebago. This was an enterprise requiring some three weeks of time and a great amount of labor, so that the owners of the goods transported might think themselves happy to receive them at last, in a wet, broken, and dilapidated condition. It was for this reason that we took our choicest possessions with us, even at the risk of being a little crowded.