THE HALF-WAY HOUSE.
The spin down to Roscoe next morning was delightful in every respect.
The air was just sharp enough for vigorous exercise. These were the
pleasantest hours we had yet spent. The blisters that had troubled us
for the first three days were hardening into callosities, and arm and
back muscles, which at first were sore from the unusually heavy strain
upon them, at last were strengthened to their work. Thereafter we felt
no physical inconvenience from our self-imposed task. At night, after
a pull of eleven or twelve hours, relieved only by the time spent in
lunching, in which we hourly alternated at the oars and paddle,
slumber came as a most welcome visitation, while the morning ever
found us as fresh as at the start. Let those afflicted with insomnia
try this sort of life. My word for it, they will not be troubled so
long as the canoeing continues. Every muscle of the body moves
responsive to each pull of the oars or sweep of the paddle; while the
mental faculties are kept continually on the alert, watching for
shallows, snags, and rapids, in which operation a few days' experience
will render one quite expert, though none the less cautious.
As we get farther down into the Illinois country, the herds of
live-stock increase in size and number. Cattle may be seen by hundreds
at one view, dotted all over the neighboring hills and meadows, or
dreamily standing in the cooling stream at sultry noonday. Sheep, in
immense flocks, bleat in deafening unison, the ewes and their young
being particularly demonstrative at our appearance, and sometimes
excitedly following us along the banks. Droves of black hogs and
shoats are ploughing the sward in their search for sweet roots, or
lying half-buried in the wet sand. Horses, in familiar groups, quickly
lift their heads in startled wonder as the canopied canoe glides
silently by,--then suddenly wheel, kick up their heels, sound a snort
of alarm, and dash off at a thundering gallop, clods of turf filling
the air behind them. There are charming groves and parks and treeless
downs, and the river cuts through the alluvial soil to a depth of
eight and ten feet, throwing up broad beaches on either side.
At Roscoe, three or four miles below our morning's starting-point,
there is a collection of three or four neat farm-houses, each with its
spinning windmill.
Latham Station, nine miles below Rockton, was reached at ten o'clock.
The post-office is called Owen. There is a smart little depot on the
Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul railway line, two general stores, and
a half-dozen cottages, with a substantial-looking creamery, where we
obtained buttermilk drawn fresh from one of the mammoth churns. The
concern manufactures from three hundred to nine hundred pounds per
day, according to the season, shipping chiefly to New York city.
Leaning over the hand-rail which fences off the "making" room, and
gossiping with the young man in charge, I conjured up visions of the
days when, as a boy on the farm, I used to spend many weary, almost
tearful hours, pounding an old crock churn, in which the butter would
always act like a balky horse and refuse to "come" until after a long
series of experimental coaxing. Nowadays, rustic youths luxuriously
ride behind the plough, the harrow, the cultivator, the horse-rake,
the hay-loader, and the self-binding harvester, while the
butter-making is farmed out to a factory where the thing is done by
steam. The farmer's boy of the future will live in a world darkened
only by the frown of the district schoolmaster and the intermittent
round of stable chores.
______________________________________
| |
| FARE. |
| |
| Foot Passengere 10 cts. |
| Man & Horse 15 ct. |
| single Carriage 10 c. |
| double " 15 c |
| each Passinger 5 c |
| |
| Night Raites Double Fare. |
| |
| All persons |
| Are cautioned |
| Againts useing |
| this Boat with Out |
| Permistion from |
| the Owners |
|____________________________________|
At Latham Station we encountered the first ferry-boat on our trip,--a
flat-bottomed scow with side-rails, attached by ropes and pulleys to a
suspended wire cable, and working diagonally, with the force of the
current. A sign conspicuously displayed on the craft bore the above
legend.
From the time we had entered Illinois, the large, graceful, white
blossoms of the Pennsylvanian anemone and the pink and white fringe of
the erigeron Canadense had appeared in great abundance upon the river
banks, while the wild prairie rose lent a delicate beauty and
fragrance to the scene. On sandy knolls, where in early spring the
anemone patens and crowfoot violets had thrived in profusion, were now
to be seen the geum triflorum and the showy yellow puccoon; the
long-flowered puccoon, with its delicate pale yellow, crape-like
blossom, was just putting in an appearance; and little white,
star-shaped flowers, which were strangers to us of Wisconsin, fairly
dotted the green hillsides, mingled in striking contrast with dwarf
blue mint. Bevies of great black crows, sitting in the tops of dead
willow-trees or circling around them, rent the air with sepulchral
squawks. Men and boys were cultivating in the cornfields, the
prevalent drought painfully evidenced by the clouds of gray dust which
enveloped them and their teams as they stirred up the brittle earth.
There was now a fine breeze astern, and the awning, abandoned during
the head winds of the day before, was again welcomed as the sun
mounted to the zenith. At 2.30 P. M., we were in busy Rockford, where
the banks are twenty or twenty-five feet high, with rolling prairies
stretching backward to the horizon, except where here and there a
wooded ridge intervenes. Rockford is the metropolis of the valley of
the Rock. It has twenty-two thousand inhabitants, with many elegant
mansions visible from the river, and evidences upon every hand of that
prosperity which usually follows in the train of varied manufacturing
enterprises.
There are numerous mills and factories along both sides of the river,
and a protracted inspection of the portage facilities was necessary
before we could decide on which bank to make our carry. The right was
chosen. The portage was somewhat over two ordinary city blocks in
length, up a steep incline and through a road-way tunnel under a great
flouring mill. We had made nearly half the distance, and were resting
for a moment, when a mill-driver kindly offered the use of his wagon,
which was gratefully accepted. We were soon spinning down the tail of
the race, a half-dozen millers waving a "Chautauqua salute" with as
many dusty flour-bags, and in ten minutes more had left Rockford out
of sight.
Several miles below, there are a half-dozen forested islands in a
bunch, some of them four or five acres in extent, and we puzzled over
which channel to take,--the best of them abounding in shallows. The
one down which the current seemed to set the strongest was selected,
but we had not proceeded over half a mile before the trees on the
banks began to meet in arches overhead, and it was evident that we
were ascending a tributary. It proved to be the Cherry River, emptying
into the main stream from the east. The wind, now almost due-west, had
driven the waves into the mouth of the Cherry, so that we mistook this
surface movement for the current. Coming to a railway bridge, which we
knew from our map did not cross the Rock, our course was retraced, and
after some difficulty with snags and gravel-spits, we were once more
upon our proper highway, trending to the southwest.
Supper was eaten upon the edge of a large island, several miles
farther down stream, in the shade of two wide-spreading locusts.
Opposite are some fine, eroded sandstone palisades, which formation
had been frequently met with during the day,--sometimes on both sides
of the river, but generally on the left bank, which is, as a rule, the
most picturesque along the entire course.
It was still so cold when evening shadows thickened that camping out,
with our meagre preparations for it, seemed impracticable; so we
pushed on and kept a sharp lookout for some friendly farm-house at
which to quarter for the night. The houses in the thickly-wooded
bottoms, however, were generally quite forbidding in appearance, and
the sun had gone down before we sighted a well-built stone dwelling
amid a clump of graceful evergreens. It seemed, from the river, to be
the very embodiment of comfortable neatness; but upon ascending the
gentle slope and fighting off two or three mangy curs which came
snarling at our heels, we found the structure merely a relic of
gentility. There was scarcely a whole pane of glass in the house,
there were eight or ten wretchedly dirty and ragged children, the
parents were repulsive in appearance and manner, and a glimpse of the
interior presented a picture of squalor which would have shocked a
city missionary. The stately stone house was a den of the most abject
and shiftless poverty, the like of which one could seldom see in the
slums of a metropolis. These people were in the midst of a splendid
farming country, had an abundance of pure air and water at command,
and there seemed to be no excuse for their condition. Drink and
laziness were doubtless the besetting sins in this uncanny home.
Making a pretense of inquiring the distance to Byron, the next village
below, we hurried from the accursed spot.
A half-hour later we reached the high bridge of the Chicago, Milwaukee
and St. Paul railway, above Byron, and ran our bow on a little beach
at the base of the left bank, which is here thirty feet high. A
section-man had a little cabin hard by, and his gaunt, talkative wife,
with a chubby little boy by her side, had been keenly watching our
approach from her garden-fence. She greeted us with a shrill but
cheery voice as we clambered up a zigzag path and joined her upon the
edge of the prairie.
"Good ev'nin', folks! Whar'n earth d' ye come from?"
We enlightened her in a few words.
"Don't mean t' say ye come all the way from Weesconsin a' down here in
that thing?" pointing down at the canoe, which certainly looked quite
small, at that depth, in the dim twilight.
"Certainly; why not?"
"Ye'll git drowndid, an' I'm not mistakin, afore ye git to Byron."
"River dangerous, ma'am?"
"Dang'rous ain't no name for 't. There was a young feller drowndid at
this here bridge las' spring. The young feller he worked at the
bridge-mendin', bein' a carpenter,--he called himself a carpenter, but
he warn't no great fist at carpenterin', an' I know it,--and he
boarded up at Byron. A 'nsurance agint kim 'long and got Rollins,--the
young feller his name was Abe Rollins, an' he was a bach,--to promise
to 'sure his life for a thousand dollars, which was to go t' his
sister, what takes in washin', an' her man ran away from her las' year
an' nobody knows where he is,--which I says is good riddance, but she
takes on as though she had los' somebody worth cryin' over: there's no
accountin' for tastes. The agint says to Rollins to go over to the
doctor's of'c' to git 'xamined and Rollins says, 'No, I ain't agoin'
to git 'xamined till I clean off; I'll go down an' take a swim at the
bridge and then come back and strip for the doctor.' An' Rollins he
took his swim and got sucked down inter a hole just yonder down there,
by the openin' of Stillman's Creek, and he was a corpse when they
hauled him out, down off Byron; an' he never hollered once but jist
sunk like a stone with a cramp; an' his folks never got no 'nsurance
money at all, for lackin' the doctor's c'tificate. An' it's heaps o'
folks git drowndid in this river, an' nobody ever hears of 'em agin;
an' I wouldn't no more step foot in that boat nor the biggest ship on
the sea, an' I don't see how you can do it, ma'am!"
No doubt the good woman would have rattled on after this fashion for
half the night, but we felt obliged, owing to the rapidly increasing
darkness, to interrupt her with geographical inquiries. She assured us
that Byron was distant some five or six miles by river, with, so far
as she had heard, many shallows, whirlpools, and snags _en route_;
while by land the village was but a mile and a quarter across the
prairie, from the bridge. We accordingly made fast for the night
where we had landed, placed our heaviest baggage in the tidy
kitchen-sitting-room-parlor of our voluble friend, and trudged off
over the fields to Byron,--a solitary light in a window and the
occasional practice-note of a brass band, borne to us on the light
western breeze, being our only guides.
After a deal of stumbling over a rough and ill-defined path, which we
could distinguish by the sense of feeling alone, we finally reached
the exceedingly quiet little village, and by dint of inquiry from
house to house,--in most of which the denizens seemed preparing to
retire for the night,--found the inn which had been recommended by the
section-man's wife as the best in town. It was the only one. There
were several commercial travelers in the place, and the hostelry was
filled. But the landlord kindly surrendered to us his own
well-appointed chamber, above an empty store where the village band
was tuning up for Decoration Day. It seemed appropriate enough that
there should be music to greet us, for we were now one hundred and
thirty-four miles from Madison, and practically half through our
voyage to the Mississippi.