There is a good natural water-power here, but the Fox-Wisconsin improvement has made it one of the finest in the world. If the improvement scheme is a flat failure elsewhere, as is beginning to be generally believed, it certainly has been the making of this valley of the Lower Fox. From Lake Winnebago down to the mouth, the rapids are frequent, the chief being at Neenah, Appleton, Kaukauna, Little Kaukauna, and Depere. Of the twenty-six locks from Portage down, seventeen are below our stopping-point of last night; the fall at each, at this stage of water being about twelve feet on the average. Each of these locks involves a dam; and when the stream is thus stemmed and all repairs maintained, at the expense of the general government, it is a simple matter to tap the reservoir, carry a race along the bank, and have water-power ad libitum. Not half the water-power in sight, not a tenth of that possible is used. There is enough here, experts declare, to turn the machinery of the world. No wonder the beautiful valley of the Lower Fox is rich, and growing richer.
It was no holiday excursion to portage around the Appleton locks this morning. At none of them could we find the tenders, for the Menasha lock being broken, there is no through navigation from Oshkosh to Green Bay this week, and way traffic is slight. We had neglected to furnish ourselves with a tin horn, and the vigorous use of lung power failed to achieve the desired result. The banks being steep and covered with rock chips left by the stone-cutters employed on the work, we had some awkward carries, and felt, as we finally passed the cordon and set out on the straight eastward stretch for Kaukauna, that we were earning our daily bread.
Kaukauna, the Grand Kackalin of the Jesuits and early French traders, is ten miles below Appleton. Here are the most formidable rapids on the river, the fall being sixty feet, down an irregular series of jagged limestone stairs some half mile in extent. Indians, in their light bark canoes and practically without baggage, can, in high water, make the passage, up or down, by closely hugging the deeper and stiller water on the north bank; but the French traders invariably portaged their goods, allowing the voyageurs to carry over the empty boats, the men walking in the water by the side, pushing, hauling, and balancing, amid a stream of oaths from their bourgeois, or master, who remained at his post. I had had an idea that in our little craft we might safely make the venture of a shoot down the stairs, by exercising caution and following the Indian channel. But this was previous to arrival. Leaving the Doctor to guard the canoe from a crowd of Kaukauna urchins, who were disposed to be over-familiar with our property, I went down through a boggy field to view the situation. It is a grand sight, looking up from the bottom of the rapids. The water is low, and at every few rods masses of rock project above the seething flood, specimens of what line the channel. The torrent comes down with a mighty roar, lashing itself into a fury of spray and foam as it leaps around and over the obstructions, and takes great lunges from step to step. There are several curves in the basin of the cataract, which add to its artistic effect, while it is deeply fringed by stunted pines and scrub oaks, having but a slender footing in the shallow turf which covers the underlying stratum of limestone. Whatever may be the condition of the falls at Kaukauna in high water, it is certain that at this stage a canoe would be dashed to splinters quite early in the attempt to scale them.
But a portage of half a mile was not to our taste in the torrid temperature we have been experiencing to-day, and we determined to maintain the rights of free navigators by obliging the tenders to put us through the five great locks, which are here necessary to lower vessels from the upper to the lower level. These tenders receive ample compensation, and many of them are notoriously lazy. It is but seldom that they are compelled to exercise their muscles on the gates; for navigation on the Fox is spasmodic and unimportant. As I have said in one of my previous letters, even a saw-log has the right of way; and government paid a goodly sum to the speculators from whom it purchased this improvement, that free tollage might be established here for all time. And so it was that, perhaps soured a little by our Appleton experience, we determined at last to test the matter and assert the privileges of American citizens on a national highway.
On regaining my messmate, we took a general view of Kaukauna,—which spreads over the banks and a prairie bottom on both sides of the river, and is a growing, bustling, freshly built little factory town,—and then re-embarked to try our fortune at the lock-gates. Heretofore we had considerately portaged every one of these obstructions, except at Princeton, where we went through under the "Ellen Hardy's" wing.
A stalwart Irishman, in his shirt-sleeves, and smoking a clay pipe with that air of dogged indifference peculiar to so many government officials, leaned over a capstan at the upper lock, and dreamily stared at the approaching canoe. The lock was full, the last boat having passed up a day or two before. The upper gates being open, we pushed in, and took up our station in the centre of the basin, to avoid the "suck" during the emptying process. The Doctor took out of the locker a copy of his medical journal and I a novel, and we settled down as though we had come to stay. The Irishman's face was at first a picture of dumb astonishment, and then he sullenly picked up his coat from the grass, and began to walk off in the direction of the town.
"Hi, my friend!" shouted the Doctor, good-naturedly. "We are waiting to get locked through."
The tender returned a step, his eyes opened wide, his brows knit, and in his wrath he stuttered, "Ph-h-a-t! Locked through in that theer s-s-k-i-ff? Ye're cr-razy, mon!"
"Oh, not at all. We understand our rights, and wish you to lock us through. And, if you please, we're in something of a hurry." As I said this I consulted my watch, and after returning it to my pocket resumed a vacant gaze upon the outspread leaves of the novel.
The tender—for we had guessed rightly; it was the tender—advanced to the edge of the basin, and looked with inexpressible scorn upon our Liliputian craft. "Now, look here, gints," he said, somewhat more conciliatory, "I've been here for twinty years, an' know the law; an' the law don't admit no skiffs, ye mind y'ur eye. An' the divil a bit of lockage will ye git here, an' mind that!" And then he walked away.