STORM-BOUND AT ERIE.
We were somewhat jaded by the time Monday morning came, for Sunday
brought not only no relief, but repetitions of many of the most
horrible of these "tales of a wayside inn." It was with no slight
sense of relief that we paid our modest bill and at last broke away
from such ghastly associations. An involuntary shudder overcame me, as
we passed the head of the island at the foot of our host's orchard,
which he had described as a catch-basin for human floaters.
Our course still lay among large, densely wooded islands,--many of
them wholly given up to maples and willows,--and deep cuts through
sun-baked mudbanks, the color of adobe; but occasionally there are
low, gloomy bottoms, heavily forested, and strewn with flood-wood,
while beyond the land rises gradually into prairie stretches. In the
bottoms the trees are filled with flocks of birds,--crows, hawks,
blackbirds, with stately blue herons and agile plovers foraging on the
long gravel-spits which frequently jut far into the stream; ducks are
frequently seen sailing near the shores; while divers silently dart
and plunge ahead of the canoe, safely out of gunshot reach. A head
wind this morning made rowing more difficult, by counteracting the
influence of the current.
We were at Lyndon at eleven o'clock. There is a population of about
two hundred, clustered around a red paper-mill. The latter made a
pretty picture standing out on the bold bank, backed by a number of
huge stacks of golden straw. We met here the first rapids worthy of
record; also an old, abandoned mill-dam, in the last stages of decay,
stretching its whitened skeleton across the stream, a harbor for
driftwood. Near the south bank the framework has been entirely swept
away for a space several rods in width, and through this opening the
pent-up current fiercely sweeps. We went through the centre of the
channel thus made, with a swoop that gave us an impetus which soon
carried our vessel out of sight of Lyndon and its paper-mill and
straw-stacks.
Prophetstown, five miles below, is prettily situated in an oak grove
on the southern bank. Only the gables of a few houses can be seen from
the river, whose banks of yellow clay and brown mud are here
twenty-five feet high. During the first third of the present century,
this place was the site of a Winnebago village, whose chief was White
Cloud, a shrewd, sinister savage, half Winnebago and half Sac, who
claimed to be a prophet. He was Black Hawk's evil genius during the
uprising of 1832, and in many ways was one of the most remarkable
aborigines known to Illinois history. It was at "the prophet's town,"
as White Cloud's village was known in pioneer days, that Black Hawk
rested upon his ill-fated journey up the Rock, and from here, at the
instigation of the wizard, he bade the United States soldiery
defiance.
There are rapids, almost continually, from a mile above Prophetstown
to Erie, ten miles below. The river bed here has a sharper descent
than customary, and is thickly strewn with bowlders; many of them were
visible above the surface, at the low stage of water which we found,
but for the greater part they were covered for two or three inches.
What with these impediments, the snags that had been left as the
legacy of last spring's flood, and the frequent sand-banks and
gravel-spits, navigation was attended by many difficulties and some
dangers.
Four or five miles below Prophetstown, a lone fisherman, engaged in
examining a "traut-line" stretched between one of the numerous gloomy
islands and the mainland, kindly informed us of a mile-long cut-off,
the mouth of which was now in view, that would save us several miles
of rowing. Here, the high banks had receded, with several miles of
heavily wooded, boggy bottoms intervening. Floods had held high
carnival, and the aspect of the country was wild and deserted. The
cut-off was an ugly looking channel; but where our informant had gone
through, with his unwieldy hulk, we considered it safe to venture with
a canoe, so readily responsive to the slightest paddle-stroke. The
current had torn for itself a jagged bed through the heart of a dense
and moss-grown forest. It was a scene of howling desolation, rack and
ruin upon every hand. The muddy torrent, at a velocity of fully eight
miles an hour, went eddying and whirling and darting and roaring among
the gnarled and blackened stumps, the prostrate trees, the twisted
roots, the huge bowlders which studded its course. The stream was not
wide enough for the oars; the paddle was the sole reliance. With eyes
strained for obstructions, we turned and twisted through the
labyrinth, jumping along at a breakneck speed; and, when we finally
rejoined the main river below, were grateful enough, for the run had
been filled with continuous possibilities of a disastrous smash-up,
miles away from any human habitation.
The thunder-storm which had been threatening since early morning, soon
burst upon us with a preliminary wind blast, followed by drenching
rain. Running ashore on the lee bank, we wrapped the canvas awning
around the baggage, and made for a thick clump of trees on the top of
an island mudbank, where we stood buttoned to the neck in rubber
coats. A vigorous "Halloo!" came sounding over the water. Looking up,
we saw for the first time a small tent on the opposite shore, a
quarter of a mile away, in front of which was a man shouting to us and
beckoning us over. It was getting uncomfortably muddy under the trees,
which had not long sufficed as an umbrella, and the rubber coats were
not warranted to withstand a deluge, so we accepted the invitation
with alacrity and paddled over through the pelting storm.
Our host was a young fisherman, who helped us and our luggage up the
slimy bank to his canvas quarters, which we found to be dry, although
odorous of fish. While the storm raged without, the young man, who was
a simple-hearted fellow, confided to us the details of his brief
career. He had been married but a year, he said; his little cabin lay
a quarter of a mile back in the woods, and, so as to be convenient to
his lines, he was camping on his own wood-lot; the greater part of his
time was spent in fishing or hunting, according to the season, and
peddling the product in neighboring towns, while upon a few acres of
clearing he raised "garden truck" for his household, which had
recently become enriched by the addition of an infant son. The
phenomenal powers of observation displayed by this first-born youth
were reported with much detail by the fond father, who sat crouched
upon a boat-sail in one corner of the little tent, his head between
his knees, and smoking vile tobacco in a blackened clay pipe. It
seemed that his wife was a ferryman's daughter, and her father had
besought his son-in-law to follow the same steady calling. To be sure,
our host declared, ferries on the Rock River netted their owners from
$400 to $800 a year, which he considered a goodly sum, and his
father-in-law had offered to purchase an established plant for him.
But the young fellow said that ferrying was a dog's life, and "kept a
feller home like barn chores;" he preferred to fish and hunt, earning
far less but retaining independence of movement, so rejected the offer
and settled down, avowedly for life, in his present precarious
occupation. As a result, the indignant old man had forbidden him to
again enter the parental ferry-house until he agreed to accept his
proposals, and there was henceforth to be a standing family quarrel.
The fisherman having appealed to my judgment, I endeavored with mild
caution to argue him out of his position on the score of consideration
for his wife and little one; but he was not to be gainsaid, and
firmly, though with admirable good nature, persisted in defending his
roving tendencies. In the course of our conversation I learned that
the ferrymen, who are more numerous on the lower than on the upper
Rock, pay an annual license fee of five dollars each, in consideration
of which they are guarantied a monopoly of the business at their
stands, no other line being allowed within one mile of an existing
ferry.
Within an hour and a half the storm had apparently passed over, and we
continued our journey. But after supper another shower and a stiff
head wind came up, and we were well bedraggled by the time a
ferry-landing near the little village of Erie was reached. The
bottoms are here a mile or two in width, with occasional openings in
the woods, where small fields are cultivated by the poorer class of
farmers, who were last spring much damaged by the flood which swept
this entire country.
The ferryman, a good-natured young athlete, was landing a farm-wagon
and team as we pulled in upon the muddy roadway. When questioned about
quarters, he smiled and pointing to his little cabin, a few rods off
in the bushes, said,--"We've four people to sleep in two rooms; it's
sure we can't take ye; I'd like to, otherwise. But Erie's only a mile
away."
We assured him that with these muddy swamp roads, and in our wet
condition, nothing but absolute necessity would induce us to take a
mile's tramp. The parley ended in our being directed to a small
farm-house a quarter of a mile inland, where luckless travelers,
belated on the dreary bottoms, were occasionally kept. Making the
canoe fast for the night, we strung our baggage-packs upon the paddle
which we carried between us, and set out along a devious way, through
a driving mist which blackened the twilight into dusk, to find this
place of public entertainment.
It is a little, one-story, dilapidated farm-house, standing a short
distance from the country road, amid a clump of poplar trees. Forcing
our way through the hingeless gate, the violent removal of which
threatened the immediate destruction of several lengths of rickety
fence, we walked up to the open front door and applied for shelter.
"Yes, ma'am; we sometimes keeps tavern, ma'am," replied a large,
greasy-looking, black-haired woman of some forty years, as, her hands
folded within her up-turned apron, she courtesied to W----.
We were at once shown into a frowsy apartment which served as parlor,
sitting-room and parental dormitory. There was huddled together an
odd, slouchy combination of articles of shabby furniture and cheap
decorations, peculiar, in the country, to all three classes of rooms,
the evidences of poverty, shiftlessness, and untasteful
pretentiousness upon every side. A huge, wheezy old cabinet organ was
set diagonally in one corner, and upon this, as we entered, a young
woman was pounding and paddling with much vigor, while giving us
sidelong glances of curiosity. She was a neighbor, on an evening
visit, decked out in a smart jockey-cap, with a green ostrich tip and
bright blue ribbons, and gay in a new calico dress,--a yellow field
thickly planted to purple pineapples. A jaunty, forward creature, in
pimples and curls, she rattled away through a Moody and Sankey
hymn-book, the wheezes and groans of the antique instrument coming in
like mournful ejaculations from the amen corner at a successful
revival. Having exhausted her stock of tunes, she wheeled around upon
her stool, and after declaring to her half-dozen admiring auditors
that her hands were "as tired as after the mornin's milkin'" abruptly
accosted W----: "Ma'am, kin ye play on the orgin?"
W---- confessed her inability, chiefly from lack of practice in the
art of incessantly working the pedals.
"That's the trick o' the hul business, ma'am, is the blowin'. It's all
in gettin' the bellers to work even like. There's a good many what kin
learn the playin' part of it without no teacher; but there has to be
lessons to learn the bellers. Don't ye have no orgin, when ye're at
home?" she asked sharply, as if to guage the social standing of the
new guest.
W---- modestly confessed to never having possessed such an instrument.
"Down in these parts," rejoined the young woman, as she "worked the
bellers" into a strain or two of "Hold the Fort," apparently to show
how easy it came to trained feet, "no house is now considered quite up
to the fashi'n as ain't got a orgin." The rain being now over, she
soon departed, evidently much disgusted at W----'s lack of organic
culture.
The bed-chamber into which we were shown was a marvel. It opened off
the main room and was, doubtless, originally a cupboard. Seven feet
square, with a broad, roped bedstead occupying the entire length, a
bedside space of but two feet wide was left. Much of this being filled
with butter firkins, chains, a trunk, and a miscellaneous riff-raff of
household lumber, the standing-room was restricted to two feet square,
necessitating the use of the bed as a dressing-place, after the
fashion of a sleeping-car bunk. This cubby-hole of a room was also the
wardrobe for the women of the household, the walls above the bed being
hung nearly two feet deep with the oddest collection of calico and
gingham gowns, bustles, hoopskirts, hats, bonnets, and winter
underwear I think I had ever laid eyes on.
Much of this condition of affairs was not known, however, until next
morning; for it was as dark as Egypt within, except for a few faint
rays of light which came straggling through the cracks in the board
partition separating us from the sitting-room candle. We had no
sooner crossed the threshold of our little box than the creaky old
cleat door was gently closed upon us and buttoned by our hostess upon
the outside, as the only means of keeping it shut; and we were left
free to grope about among these mysteries as best we might. We had
hardly recovered from our astonishment at thus being locked into a
dark hole the size of a fashionable lady's trunk, and were quietly
laughing over this odd adventure, when the landlady applied her mouth
to a crack and shouted, as if she would have waked the dead: "Hi,
there! Ye'd better shet the winder to keep the bugs out!" A few
minutes later, returning to the crack, she added, "Ef ye's cold in the
night, jest haul down some o' them clothes atop o' ye which ye'll find
on the wall."
Repressing our mirth, we assured our good hostess that we would have a
due regard for our personal safety. The window, not at first
discernible, proved to be a hole in the wall, some two feet square,
which brought in little enough fresh air, at the best. It was
fortunate that the night was cool, although our hostess's best gowns
were not needed to supplement the horse-blankets under which we slept
the sleep of weary canoeists.