Just below, the cliff overhangs the stream, its base having been worn into by centuries of ceaseless washing. On a narrow beach beneath, a group of cows were chewing their cuds in an atmosphere of refreshing coolness. From the rocky roof above them hung ferns in many varieties,—maidenhair, the wood, the sensitive, and the bladder; while in clefts and grottos, or amid great heaps of rock debris, hard by, there were generous masses of king fern, lobelia cardinalis, iron and sneeze weed, golden-rod, daisies, closed gentian, and eupatorium, in startling contrasts of vivid color. It being high noon, we stopped and landed at this bit of fairy land, ate our dinner, and botanized. There was a tinge of triumphant scorn in W——'s voice, when, emerging from a spring-head grotto, bearing in one arm a brilliant bouquet of wild flowers and in the other a mass of fern fronds, she cried, "To think of his calling canoeing a dull business!"
Richland City, on the northern bank, five miles down, is a hamlet of fifteen or twenty houses, some of them quite neat in appearance. Nestled in a grove of timber on a plain at the base of the bluffs, the village presents a quaint old-country appearance for a long distance up-stream. The St. Paul railway, which skirts the northern bank after crossing the Helena bridge, sends out a spur northward from Richland City, to Richland Center, the chief town in Richland county.
Two miles below Richland City, we landed at the foot of an imposing bluff, which rises sharply for three hundred feet or more from the water's edge. It is practically treeless on the river side. We ascended it through a steep gorge washed by a spring torrent. Strewn with bowlders and hung with bushes and an occasional thicket of elms and oaks, the path was rough but sure. From the heights above, the dark valley lay spread before us like a map. Ten miles away, to our left, a splash of white in a great field of green marked the location of Lone Rock village; five miles to the right, a spire or two rising above the trees indicated where Muscoda lay far back from the river reaches; while in front, two miles away, peaceful little Avoca was sunning its gray roofs on a gently rising ground. Between these settlements and the parallel ranges which hemmed in the panoramic view, lay a wide expanse of willow-grown sand-fields, forested morasses, and island meadows through which the many-channeled river cut its devious way. In the middle foreground, far below us, some cattle were being driven through a bushy marsh by boys and dogs. The cows looked the size of kittens to us at our great elevation, but such was the purity of the atmosphere that the shouts and yelps of the drivers rose with wonderful clearness, and the rustling of the brush was as if in an adjoining lot. The noise seemed so disproportioned to the size of the objects occasioning it, that this acoustic effect was at first rather startling.
The whitewashed cabin of a squatter and his few log outbuildings occupy a little basin to one side of the bluff. His cattle were ranging over the hillsides, attended by a colly. The family were rather neatly dressed, but there did not appear to be over an acre of land level enough for cultivation, and that was entirely devoted to Indian corn. It was something of a mystery how this man could earn a living in his cooped-up mountain home. But the honest-looking fellow seemed quite contented, sitting in the shade of his woodpile smoking a corncob pipe, surrounded by a half dozen children. He cheerfully responded to my few queries, as we stopped at his well on the return to our boat. The good wife, a buxom woman with pretty blue eyes set in a smiling face, was peeling a pan of potatoes on the porch, near by, while one foot rocked a rude cradle ingeniously formed out of a barrel head and a lemon box. She seemed mightily pleased as W—— stroked the face of the chubby infant within, and made inquiries as to the ages of the step-laddered brood; and the father, too, fairly beamed with satisfaction as he placed his hands on the golden curls of his two oldest misses and proudly exhibited their little tricks of precocity. There can be no poverty under such a roof. Millionnaires might well envy the peaceful contentment of these hillside squatters.
Down to Muscoda we followed the rocky and wood-crowned northern bank, along which the country highway is cut out. The swift current closely hugs it, and there was needed but slight exertion with the paddles to lead a sewing-machine agent, whom we found to be urging his horse into a vain attempt to distance the canoe. As he seemed to court a race, we had determined not to be outdone, and were not.
Orion, on the northern side, just above Muscoda, is a deserted town. It must have been a pretentious place at one time. There are a dozen empty business buildings, now tenanted by bats and spiders. On one shop front, a rotting sign displays the legend, "World's Exchange;" there is also a "Globe Hotel," and the remains of a bank or two. Alders, lilacs, and gnarled apple-trees in many deserted clumps, tell where the houses once were; and the presence, among these ruins, of a family or two of squalid children only emphasizes the dreary loneliness. Orion was once a "boom" town, they tell us,—an expressive epitaph.
A thin, outcropping substratum of sandstone is noticeable in this section of the river. It underlies the sandy plains which abut the Wisconsin in the Muscoda region, and lines the bed of the stream; near the banks, where there is but a slight depth of water, rapids are sometimes noticeable, the rocky bottom being now and then scaled off into a stairlike form, for the fall is here much sharper than customary.
Because of an outlying shelf of this sandstone, bordered by rapids, but covered with only a few inches of dead water, we had some difficulty in landing at Muscoda beach, on the southern shore. Some stout poling and lifting were essential before reaching land. Muscoda was originally situated on the bank, which rises gently from the water; but as the river trade fell off, the village drifted up nearer the bluff, a mile south over the plain, in order to avoid the spring floods. There is a toll-bridge here and a large brewery, with extensive cattle-sheds strung along the shore. A few scattering houses connect these establishments with the sleepy but neat little hamlet of some five hundred inhabitants. After a brisk walk up town, in the fading sunlight, which cast a dazzling glimmer on the whitened dunes and heightened the size of the dwarfed herbage, we returned to the canoe, and cast off to seek camping quarters for the night, down-stream.
A mile below, on the opposite bank, a large straw-stack by the side of a small farmhouse attracted our attention. We stopped to investigate. There was a good growth of trees upon a gentle slope, a few rods from shore, and a beach well strewn with drift-wood. The farmer who greeted us was pleasant-spoken, and readily gave us permission to pitch our tent in the copse and partake freely of his straw.
Now more accustomed to the river's ways, we keenly enjoyed our supper, seated around our little camp-fire in the early dark. We had occasional glimpses of the lights in Muscoda, through the swaying trees on the bottoms to the south; an owl, on a neighboring island, incessantly barked like a terrier; the whippoorwills were sounding their mournful notes from over the gliding river, and now and then a hoarse grunt or querulous squeal in the wood-lot behind us gave notice that we were quartered in a hog pasture. Soon the moon came out and brilliantly lit the opens,—the glistening river, the stretches of white sand, the farmer's fields,—and intensified the sepulchral shadows of the lofty bluffs which overhang the scene.