The view from the house verandas which overhang the high bank at Prairie du Sac, is superb. Eastward a half mile away, the grand, corrugated bluffs of Black Hawk and the Sugar Loaf tower to a height of over three hundred feet above the river level; while their lesser companions, heavily forested, continue the range, north and south, as far as the eye can reach. The river crosses the foreground with a majestic sweep, while for several miles to the west and southwest stretches the wooded plain, backed by a curved line of gloomy hills which complete the rim of the basin.
A mile below, on the same plain, is Sauk City, a shabby town of about a thousand inhabitants. A spur track of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul railway runs up here from Mazomanie, crossing the river, which is nearly half a mile wide, on an iron bridge. A large and prosperous brewery appears to be the chief industry of the place. Slaughter-houses abut upon the stream, in the very centre of the village. These and the squalid back-door yards which run down to the bank do not make up an attractive picture to the canoeist. River towns differ very much in this respect. Some of them present a neat front to the water thoroughfare, with flower-gardens and well-kept yards and street-ends, while others regard the river as a sewer and the banks as a common dumping ground, giving the traveler by boat a view of filth, disorder, and general unsightliness which is highly repulsive. I have often found, on landing at some villages of this latter class, that the dwellings and business blocks which, riverward, are sad spectacles of foulness and unthrift, have quite pretentious fronts along the land highway which the townsfolk patronize. It is as if some fair dame, who prided herself on her manners and costume, had rags beneath her fine silks, and unwashed hands within her dainty gloves. This coming in at the back door of river towns reveals many a secret of sham.
It was a fine run down to Arena ferry, thirteen miles below Sauk City. The skies had become leaden and the atmosphere gray, and the sparse, gnarled poplars on some of the storm-swept bluffs had a ghostly effect. Here and there, fires had blasted the mountainous slopes, and a light aspen growth was hastening to garb with vivid green the blackened ruins. But the general impression was that of dark, gloomy forests of oak, linden, maple, and elms, on both upland and bottom; with now and then a noble pine cresting a shattered cliff.
There were fitful gleams of sunshine, during which the temperature was as high as could be comfortably tolerated; but the northwest wind swept sharply down through the ravines, and whenever the heavens became overcast, jackets were at once essential.
The islands became more frequent, as we progressed. Many of them are singularly beautiful. The swirling current gradually undermines their bases, causing the trees to topple toward the flood, with many graceful effects of outline, particularly when viewed above the island head. And the colors, too, at this season, are charmingly variegated. The sapping of a tree's foundations brings early decay; and the maples, especially, are thus early in the season gay with the autumnal tints of gold and wine and purple, objects of striking beauty for miles away. Under the arches of the toppling trees, and inside the lines of snags which mark the islet's former limits, the current goes swishing through, white with bubbles and dancing foam. Crouching low, to escape the twigs, one can have enchanting rides beneath these bowers, and catch rare glimpses of the insulated flora on the swift-passing banks. The stately spikes of the cardinal lobelia fairly dazzle the eye with their gleaming color; and great masses of brilliant yellow sneeze-weed and the deep purple of the iron-weed present a symphony which would delight a disciple of Whistler. Thus are the islands ever being destroyed and new ones formed. Those bottom lands, over there, where great forests are rooted, will have their turn yet, and the buffeted sand-bars of to-day given a restful chance to become bottoms. The game of shuttlecock and battledoor has been going on in this dark and awesome gorge since Heaven knows when. Man's attempt to control its movements seem puny indeed.
At six o'clock that evening we had arrived at the St. Paul railway bridge at Helena. The tender and his wife are a hospitable couple, and we engaged quarters in their cosy home at the southern end of the bridge. Mrs. P—— has a delightful flower-garden, which looks like an oasis in the wilderness of sand and bog thereabout. Twenty-three years ago, when these worthy people first took charge of the bridge, the earth for this walled-in beauty spot was imported by rail from a more fertile valley than the Wisconsin; and here the choicest of bulbs and plants are grown with rare floricultural skill, and the trainmen all along the division are resplendent in button-hole bouquets, the year round, products of the bridge-house bower at Helena. W—— and Mrs. P—— at once struck up an enthusiastic botanical friendship.
Bridge houses are generally most forlorn specimens of railway architecture, and have a barricaded look, as though tramps were altogether too frequent along the route, and occasionally made trouble for the watchers of the ties. This one, originally forbidding enough, has been transformed into a winsome vine-clad home, gay with ivies, Madeira vines, and passion, moon, and trumpet flowers, covering from view the professional dull green affected by "the company's" boss painter. The made garden, to one side, was choking with a wealth of bedding plants and greenhouse rarities of every hue and shape of blossom and leaf.
A dozen feet below the railroad level, spread wide morasses and sand patches, thick grown with swamp elms and willows. Down the track, a half mile to the south, Helena's fifty inhabitants are grouped in a dozen faded dwellings. Three miles westward, across the river, is the pretty and flourishing village of Spring Green.
It is needless to say that in the isolated home of these lovers of flowers, we had comfortable quarters. W—— said that it was very much like putting up at Rudder Grange.
