Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" of the North-West

by Mrs. John H. Kinzie

By pulling, pushing, and tugging, the boat is at length released from her position, and the men walk along beside her, helping and guiding her, until they reach a space of comparatively smooth water, when they again take their seats and their oars.

It will be readily imagined that there were few songs this day, but very frequent pipes, to refresh the poor fellows after such an arduous service.

It was altogether a new spectacle to me. In fact, I had hardly ever before been called upon to witness severe bodily exertion, and my sympathies and sensibilities were, for this reason, the more enlisted on the occasion. It seemed a sufficient hardship to have to labor in this violent manner; but to walk in cold water up to their waists, and then to sit down in their soaking garments without going near a fire! Poor men! this was too much to be borne! What then was my consternation to see my husband, who, shortly after our noon-tide meal, had surprised me by making his appearance in a pair of duck trowsers and light jacket, at the first cry of “fast, again!” spring over into the water with the men, and “bear a hand” throughout the remainder of the day.

When he returned on board, it was to take the oar of a poor, delicate-looking boy, one of the company of soldiers, who from the first had suffered with bleeding at the nose on every unusual exertion. I was not surprised, on inquiring, to find that this lad was a recruit just entered the service. He passed by the name of Gridley, but that was undoubtedly an assumed name. He had the appearance of having been delicately nurtured, and had probably enlisted without at all appreciating the hardships and discomforts of a soldier’s life. This is evident from the dissatisfaction he always continued to feel, until at length he deserted from his post. This was some months subsequent to the time of which I am writing. He was once retaken, and kept for a time in confinement, but immediately on his release deserted again, and his remains were found the following spring, not many miles from the fort. He had died either of cold or starvation. This is a sad interlude—we will return to our boating.

With all our tugging and toiling we had accomplished but thirteen miles since leaving the Kakalin, and it was already late when we arrived in view of the “Grande Chûte,” near which we were to encamp.

We had passed the “Little Chûte” (the post where the town of Appleton now stands) without any farther observation than that it required a vast deal of extra exertion to buffet with the rushing stream, and come off, as we did, victorious.

The brilliant light of the setting sun was resting on the high wooded banks through which broke the beautiful, foaming, dashing waters of the Chûte. The boat was speedily turned toward a little headland projecting from the right bank, which had the advantage of a long strip of level ground, sufficiently spacious to afford a good encamping ground. I jumped ashore before the boat was fairly pulled up by the men, and with the Judge’s help made my way as rapidly as possibly to a point lower down the river, from which, he said, the best view of the Chûte could be obtained. I was anxious to make a sketch before the daylight quite faded away.

The left bank of the river was to the west, and over a portion less elevated than the rest the sun’s parting rays fell upon the boat, the men with their red caps and belts, and the two tents already pitched. The smoke now beginning to ascend from the evening fires, the high wooded bank beyond, up which the steep portage path could just be discerned, and more remote still, the long stretch of waterfall now darkening in the shadow of the overhanging forests, formed a lovely landscape, to which the pencil of an artist could alone do justice.

This was my first encampment, and I was quite enchanted with the novelty of everything about me.

The fires had been made of small saplings and underbrush, hastily collected, the mildness of the weather rendering anything beyond what sufficed for the purposes of cooking and drying the men’s clothes, superfluous. The soldiers' tent was pitched at some distance from our own, but not too far for us to hear distinctly their laughter and apparent enjoyment, after the fatigues of the day.