There are charming rustic pictures at every turn,—sleek herds of cattle, droves of fat hogs, flocks of sheep that have but recently doffed their winter suits, well-tended fields, trim-looking wire fences, neat farm-houses where rows of milkpans glisten upon sunny drying-benches, farmers and farmers' boys riding aristocratic-looking sulky drags and cultivators,—everywhere an air of agricultural luxuriance, rather emphasized by occasional log-houses, which repose as honored relics by the side of their pretentious successors, sharply contrasting the wide differences between pioneer life and that of to-day.
The marshes are few; and they in this dry season are luxuriant with coarse, glossy wild grass,—the only hay-crop the farmer will have this year,—and dotted with clumps of dead willow-trees, which present a ghostly appearance, waving their white, scarred limbs in the freshening breeze. The most beautiful spot on this section of the Catfish is a point some eight miles above Stoughton. The verdure-clad banks are high and steep. A lanky Norwegian farmer came down an angling path with a pail-yoke over his shoulders to get washing-water for his "woman," and told us that when this country was sparsely settled, a third of a century ago, there was a mill-dam here. That was the day when the possession of water-power meant more than it does in this age of steam and rapid transit,—the day when every mill-site was supposed to be a nucleus around which a prosperous village must necessarily grow in due time. Nothing now remains as a relic of this particular fond hope but great hollows in either bank, where the clay for dam-making purposes has been scooped out, and a few rotten piles, having a slender hold upon the bottom, against which drift-wood has lodged, forming a home for turtles and clumps of semi-aquatic grasses. W—— avers, in a spirit of enthusiasm, that the Catfish between Second and First Lakes is quite similar in parts to the immortal Avon, upon which Shakespeare canoed in the long-ago. If she is right, then indeed are the charms of Avon worthy the praise of the Muses. If the Catfish of to-day is ever to go down to posterity on the wings of poesy, however, I would wish that it might be with the more euphonious title of "Yahara,"—the original Winnebago name. The map-maker who first dropped the liquid "Yahara" for the rasping "Catfish" had no soul for music.
Darting under a quaint rustic foot-bridge made of rough poles, which on its high trestles stalks over a wide expanse of reedy bog like a giant "stick-bug," we emerged into First Lake. The eastern shore, which we skirted, is a wide, sandy beach, backed by meadows. The opposite banks, two or three miles away, present more picturesque outlines. A stately wild swan kept us company for over a mile, just out of musket-shot, and finally took advantage of a patch of rushes to stop and hide. A small sandstone quarry on the southeast shore, with a lone worker, attracted our attention. There was not a human habitation in sight, and it seemed odd to see a solitary man engaged in such labor apparently so far removed from the highways of commerce. The quarryman stuck his crowbar in a crack horizontally, to serve as a seat, and filled his pipe as we approached. We hailed him with inquiries, from the stone pier jutting into the lake at the foot of the bluff into which he was burrowing. He replied from his lofty perch, in rich Norsk brogue, that he shipped stone by barge to Stoughton, and good-humoredly added, as he struck a match and lit his bowl of weed, that he thought himself altogether too good company to ever get lonesome. We left the philosopher to enjoy his pipe in peace, and passed on around the headland.
An iron railway bridge, shut in with high sides, and painted a dullish red, spans the Lower Catfish at the outlet of First Lake. A country boy, with face as dirty as it was solemn, stood in artistic rags at the base of an arch, fishing with a bit of hop-twine tied to the end of a lath; from a mass of sedge just behind him a hoarse cry arose at short intervals.
"Hi, Johnny, what's that making the noise?
"Bird!" sententiously responded the stoic youth. He looked as though he had been bored with a silly question, and kept his eyes on his task.
"What kind of a bird, Johnny?"
"D'no!" rather raspishly. He evidently thought he was being guyed.
We ran the nose of the canoe into the reeds. There was a splash, a wild cry of alarm, and up flew a great bittern. Circling about until we had passed on, it then drifted down to its former location near the uninquiring lad,—where doubtless it had a nest of young, and had been disturbed in the midst of a lecture on domestic discipline.
Wide marshes again appear on either side of the stream. There are great and small bitterns at every view; plovers daintily picking their way over the open bogs, greedily feeding on countless snails; wild ducks in plenty, patiently waiting in the secluded bayous for the development of their young; yellow-headed troopials flitting freely about, uttering a choking, gulping cry; while the pert little wren, with his smart cock-tail, views the varied scene from his perch on a lofty rush, jealously keeping watch and ward over his ball-like castle, with its secret gate, hung among the reeds below.