Soon after the dinner hour we came in sight of the Boscobel toll-bridge,—an ugly, clumsy structure, housed-in like a tunnel, and as dark as a pocket. I was never quite able to understand why some bridge-makers should cover their structures in this fashion, and others, in the same locality, leave them open to wind and weather. So far as my unexpert observation goes, covered bridges are no more durable than the open, and they are certainly less cheerful and comely. A chill always comes over me as I enter one of these damp and gloomy hollow-ways; and the thought of how well adapted they are to the purposes of the thug or the footpad is not a particularly pleasant one for the lonely traveler by night. A dead little river hamlet, now in abject ruins,—Manhattan by name,—occupies the rugged bank at the north end of the long bridge; while southward, Boscobel is out of sight, a mile and a half inland, across the bottoms. The bluff overtopping Manhattan is a quarry of excellent hard sandstone, and a half dozen men were dressing blocks for shipment, on the rocky shore above us. They and their families constitute Manhattan.
Eight miles down river, also on the north bank, is Boydtown. There are two houses there, in a sandy glen at the base of a group of heavily wooded foot-hills. At one of the dwellings—a neat, slate-colored cottage—we found a cheery, black-eyed woman sitting on the porch with a brood of five happy children playing about her. As she hurried away to get the butter and milk which we had asked for, she apologized for being seen to enjoy this unwonted leisure, apparently not desirous that we should suppose her to be any other than the hard-working little body which her hands and driving manner proclaimed her to be. When she returned with our supplies she said that they had "got through thrashin'," the day before, and she was enjoying the luxury of a rest preparatory to an accumulated churning. I looked incredulously at the sandy waste in which this little home was planted, and the good woman explained that their farm lay farther back, on fair soil, although the present dry season had not been the best for crops.
Her brown-faced boy of ten and two little girls of about eight—the laughing faces and crow-black curls of the latter hid under immense flapping sun-bonnets—accompanied us to the bayou by which we had approached Boydtown. They had a gay, unrestrained manner that was quite captivating, and we were glad to have them row alongside of us for a way down-stream in the unwieldy family punt, the lad handling the crude oars and the girls huddled together on the stern seat, covered by their great sun-bonnet flaps, as with a cape. They were "goin' grapein'," they said; and at an island where the vines hung dark with purple clusters, they piped "Good-by, you uns!" in tittering unison.
By this time, the weather had changed. The haze had lifted. The sky had quickly become overcast with leaden rainclouds, and an occasional big drop gave warning of an approaching storm. A few miles below Boydtown, we stopped to replenish our canteen at the St. Paul railway's fine iron bridge, the last crossing on that line between Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien. On the southern end of the bridge is Woodman; on the northern bank, the tender's house. As we were in the northern channel, it was impracticable to reach the village, separated from us by wide islands and long stretches of swamp and forest, except by walking the bridge and the mile or two of trestle-work approaches to the south. As for the bridge-house, there chanced to be no spare quarters for us there. So we voted to trust to fortune and push on, although the tender's wife, a pleasant, English-faced woman, with black, sparkling eyes and a hospitable smile, was much exercised in spirit, and thought we were running some hazard of a wetting.
The skies lightened for a time, and then there came rolling up from over the range to the southwest great jagged rifts of black clouds, ugly "thunder heads," which seemed to presage a deluge. Below them, veiling the tallest peaks, tossed and sped the light-footed couriers of the wind, and we saw the dark-green bosom of the upper forests heave with the emotions of the air, while the rushing stream below flowed on unruffled. The river is here united in one broad channel. At the first evidence of a blow, we hurried across to the windward bank. We were landing at the swampy, timber-strewn base of a precipitous cliff as the wind passed over the valley, and had just completed our preparations for shelter when the rain began to come in blinding sheets.
The possibility of having to spend the night under the sepulchral arches of this forested morass was not pleasant to contemplate. The storm abated, however, within half an hour, and we were then able to distinguish a large white house apparently set back in an open field a half mile or more from the opposite shore.
Re-embarking, we headed that way, and found a wood-fringed stream several rods wide, pouring a vigorous flood into the Wisconsin, from the north. Our map showed it to be the Kickapoo, an old-time logging river, and the house must be an outlying member of the small railroad village of Wauzeka. A consultation was held on board, at the mouth of the Kickapoo. On the Wisconsin not a house was to be seen, as far as the eye could reach, and wide stretches of swamp and wooded bog appeared to line both its banks. The prospect of paddling up the mad little Kickapoo for a mile to Wauzeka was dispiriting, but we decided to do it; for night was coming on, our tent, even could we find a good camping ground in this marshy wilderness, was disposed to be leaky, and a steady drizzle continued to sound a muffled tattoo on our rubber coats. A voluble fisherman, caught out in the rain like ourselves, came swinging into the tributary, with his cranky punt, just as we were setting our paddles for a vigorous pull up-stream. We had his company, side by side, till we reached the St. Paul railway trestle, and beached at the foot of a deserted stave mill, in whose innermost recesses we deposited our traps. Guided by the village shoemaker's boy, who had been playing by the river side, we started up the track to find the hotel, nearly a half mile away.
It is a quiet, comfortable, old-fashioned little inn, this hostelry at Wauzeka. The landlord greeted his storm-bound guests with polite urbanity, and with none of that inquisitiveness so common in rural hosts. At supper, we met the village philosopher, a quaint, lone old man who has an opinion of his own upon most human subjects, and more than dares to voice it,—insists, in fact, on having it known of all men. A young commercial traveler, the only other patron of the establishment, sadly guyed our philosophical messmate by securing his verdict on a wide range of topics, from the latest league game to abstruse questions of theology. The philosopher bit, and the drummer was in high feather as he crinkled the corners of his mouth behind his huge moustache, and looked slyly around for encouragement that was not offered.
Wauzeka is, in one respect, like too many other country villages. Three saloons disfigure the main street, and in front of them are little knots of noisy loafers, in the evening, filling up the rickety, variously graded sidewalk to the gutter, and necessitating the running of a loathsome gauntlet to those who may wish to pass that way. The boy who can grow up in such an atmosphere, unpolluted, must be of rare material, or his parents exceptionally judicious. There are few large cities where one can see the liquor traffic carried on with such disgusting boldness as in hamlets like this, where screenless, open-doored saloons of a vile character jostle trading shops and dwellings, and monopolize the footway, making of the business street a place which women may abhor at any hour, and must necessarily avoid after sunset. With a local-option law, that but awaits a majority vote to be operative in such communities, it is a strange commentary on the quality of our nineteenth-century civilization that the dissolute few should still, as of old, be able to persistently hold the whip-hand over the virtuous but timid many.
Elsewhere in Wauzeka, there are many pretty grass-grown lanes; some substantial cottages; a prosperous creamery, employing the service of the especial pride of the village, a six-inch spouting well, driven for three hundred feet to the underlying stratum of lime-rock; a saw-mill or two, which are worked spasmodically, according to the log-driving stage in the Kickapoo, and some pleasant, accommodating people, who appear to be quite contented with their lot in life.