It is not necessary to go to the Maine lakes for canoeing purposes; or to skirt the gloomy wastes of Labrador, or descend the angry current of a mountain stream. Here, in the Mississippi basin, practically boundless opportunities present themselves, at our very doors, to glide through the heart of a fertile and picturesque land, to commune with Nature, to drink in her beauties, to view men and communities from a novel standpoint, to catch pictures of life and manners that will always live in one's memory. The traveler by rail has brief and imperfect glimpses of the landscape. The canoeist, from his lowly seat near the surface of the flood, sees the country practically as it was in pioneer days, in a state of unalloyed beauty. Each bend in the stream brings into view a new vista, and thus the bewitching scene changes as in a kaleidoscope. The people one meets, the variety of landscape one encounters, the simple adventures of the day, the sensation of being an explorer, the fresh air and simple diet, combined with that spirit of calm contentedness which overcomes the happy voyager who casts loose from care, are the never-failing attractions of such a trip.
To those would-be canoeists who are fond of the romantic history of our great West, as well as of delightful scenery, the Fox (of Green Bay), the Rock, and the Wisconsin, each with its sharply distinctive features, will be found among the most interesting of our neighborhood rivers. And this record of recent voyages upon them is, I think, fairly representative of what sights and experiences await the boatman upon any of the streams of similar importance in the vast and well-watered region of the upper Mississippi valley.
Of the three, the Rock river route, through the great prairies of Illinois, perhaps presents the greatest variety of life and scenery. The Rock has practically two heads: the smaller, in a rustic stream flowing from the north into swamp-girted Lake Koshkonong; the larger, in the four lakes at Madison, the charming capital of Wisconsin, which empty their waters into the Avon-like Catfish or Yahara, which in turn pours into the Rock a short distance below the Koshkonong lake. Our course was from Madison almost to the mouth of the Rock, near Rock Island, 267 miles of paddling, as the river winds.
The student of history finds the Rock interesting to him because of its associations with the Black Hawk war of 1832. When the famous Sac warrior "invaded" Illinois, his path of progress was up the south bank of that stream. At Prophetstown lived his evil genius, the crafty White Cloud, and here the Hawk held council with the Pottawattomies, who, under good Shaubena's influence, rejected the war pipe. Dixon is famous as the site of the pioneer ferry over the Rock, on the line of what was the principal land highway between Chicago and southern Wisconsin and the Galena mines for a protracted period in each year. Here, many a notable party of explorers, military officials, miners, and traders have rendezvoused in the olden time. Here was a rallying-point in 1832, as well, when Lincoln was a raw-boned militiaman in a scouting corps, and Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, Zachary Taylor, and Jefferson Davis were of the regular army under bluff old Atkinson. A grove at the mouth of Stillman's Creek, a Rock River tributary, near Byron, is the scene of the actual outbreak of the war. The forest where Black Hawk camped with the white-loving Pottawattomies is practically unchanged, and the open, rolling prairie to the south—on which Stillman's horsemen acted at first so treacherously, and afterwards as arrant cowards—is still there, a broad pasture-land miles in length, along the river. The contemporaneous descriptions of the "battle" field are readily recognizable to-day. Above, as far as Lake Koshkonong, the river banks are fraught with interest; for along them the soldiery followed up the Sac trail, like bloodhounds, and held many an unsatisfactory parley with the double-faced Winnebagoes.
Rock River scenery combines the rustic, the romantic, and the picturesque,—prairies, meadows, ravines, swamps, mountainous bluffs, eroded palisades, wide stretches of densely wooded bottoms, heavy upland forests, shallows, spits, and rapids. Birds and flowers, and uncommon plants and vines, delight the naturalist and the botanist. The many thriving manufacturing cities,—such as Stoughton, Janesville, Beloit, Rockford, Rockton, Dixon, Sterling, and Oregon,—furnish an abundance of sight-seeing. The small villages—some of them odd, out-of-the-way places, of rare types—are worthy of study to the curious in economics and human nature. The farmers are of many types; the fishermen one is thrown into daily communion with are a class unto themselves; while millers, bridge-tenders, boat-renters, and others whose callings are along-shore, present a variety of humanity interesting and instructive. The twenty-odd mill-dam portages, each having difficulties and incidents of its own, are well calculated to vary the monotony of the voyage; there are more or less dangers connected with some of the mill-races, while the lookout for snags, bowlders and shallows must be continuous, sharpening the senses of sight and sound; for a tip-over or the utter demolition of the craft may readily follow carelessness in this direction. The islands in the Rock are numerous, many of them being several miles in length, and nearly all heavily wooded. These frequent divisions of the channel often give rise to much perplexity; for the ordinary summer stage of water is so low that a loaded canoe drawing five inches of water is liable to be stranded in the channel apparently most available.
The Fox and Wisconsin rivers—the former, from Portage to Green Bay, the latter from Portage to Prairie du Chien—form a water highway that has been in use by white men for two and a half centuries. In 1634, Jean Nicolet, the first explorer of the Northwest, passed up the Fox River, to about Berlin, and then went southward to visit the Illinois. In the month of June, 1673, Joliet and Marquette made their famous tour over the interlocked watercourse and discovered the Mississippi River. After they had shown the way, a tide of travel set in over these twin streams, between the Great Lakes and the great river,—a motley procession of Jesuit missionaries, explorers, traders, trappers, soldiers and pioneers. New England was in its infancy when the Fox and Wisconsin became an established highway for enterprising canoeists.
Since the advent of the railway era this historic channel of communication has fallen into disuse. The general government has spent an immense sum in endeavoring to render it navigable for the vessels in vogue to-day, but the result, as a whole, is a failure. There is no navigation on the Fox worthy of mention, above Berlin, and even that below is insignificant and intermittent. On the Wisconsin there is none at all, except for skiffs and an occasional lumber-raft.
The canoeist of to-day, therefore, will find solitude and shallows enough on either river. But he can float, if historically inclined, through the dusky shadows of the past, for every turn of the bank has its story, and there is romance enough to stock a volume.
The upper Fox is rather monotonous. The river twists and turns through enormous widespreads, grown up with wild rice and flecked with water-fowl. These widespreads occasionally free themselves of vegetable growth and become lakes, like the Buffalo, the Puckawa, and the Poygan. There is, however, much of interest to the student in natural history; while such towns as Montello, Princeton, Berlin, Omro, Winneconne, and Oshkosh are worthy of visitation. Lake Winnebago is a notable inland sea, and the canoeist feels fairly lost, in his little cockle shell, bobbing about over its great waves. The lower Fox runs between high, noble banks, and with frequent rapids, past Neenah, Menasha, Appleton, and other busy manufacturing cities, down to Green Bay, hoary with age and classic in her shanty ruins.
The Wisconsin River is the most picturesque of the three. Probably the best route is from the head of the Dells to the mouth; but the run from Portage to the mouth is the one which has the merit of antiquity, and is certainly a long enough jaunt to satisfy the average tourist. It is a wide, gloomy, mountain-girt valley, with great sand-bars and thickly-wooded morasses. Settlement is slight. Portage, Prairie du Sac, Sauk City, and Muscoda are the principal towns. The few villages are generally from a mile to three miles back, at the foot of the bluffs, out of the way of the flood, and the river appears to be but little used. It is an ideal sketching-ground. The canoeist with a camera will find occupation enough in taking views of his surroundings; perplexity as to what to choose amid such a crowd of charming scenes, will be his only difficulty.