CHAPTER VIII

THE LAST DAY OUT.

The following day opened brightly. We had breakfast in the tavern

kitchen, _en famille_. The husband, whom we had not met before, was a

short, smooth-faced, voluble, overgrown-boy sort of man. The mother

was dumpy, coarse, and good-natured. They had a greasy, easy-tempered

daughter of eighteen, with a frowsy head, and a face like a full moon;

while the heir of the household, somewhat younger, was a gaping,

grinning youth of the Simple Simon order, who shovelled mashed

potatoes into his mouth alternately with knife and fork, and took

bites of bread large enough for a ravenous dog. The old grandmother,

with a face like parchment and one gleaming eye, sat in a low

rocking-chair by the stove, crooning over a corn-cob pipe and using

the wood-box for a cuspadore. She had a vinegary, slangy tongue, and

being somewhat deaf, would break in upon the conversation with

remarks sharper than they were pat.

With our host, a glib and rapid talker in a swaggering tone, one could

not but be much amused, as he exhibited a degree of self-appreciation

that was decidedly refreshing. He had been a veteran in the War of the

Rebellion, he proudly assured us, and pointed with his knife to his

discharge-paper, which was hung up in an old looking-glass frame by

the side of the clock.

"Gemmen,"--he invariably thus addressed us, as though we were a

coterie of checker-players at a village grocery,--"Gemmen, when I seen

how them Johnny Rebs was a usin' our boys in them prison pens down

thar at Andersonville and Libbie and 'roun' thar, I jist says to

myself, says I, 'Joe, my boy, you go now an' do some'n' fer yer

country; a crack shot like you is, Joe,' says I to myself, 'as kin hit

a duck on the wing, every time, an' no mistake, oughtn't ter be a-lyin

'roun' home an' doin' no'hun to put down the rebellion; it's a shame,'

says I, 'when our boys is a-suff'r'n' down thar on Mason 'n' Dixie's

line;' an' so I jined, an' I stuck her out, gemmen, till the thing was

done; they ain't no coward 'bout me, ef I _hev_ the sayin' of it!"

"Were you wounded, sir?" asked W----, sympathetically.

"No, I wa'n't hurt at all,--that is, so to speak, wounded. But thar

were a sort of a doctor feller 'round here las' winter, a-stoppin' at

Erie; an' he called at my place, an' he says, 'No'hun the matter wi'

you, a-growin out o' the war?' says he; an' I says, 'No'hun that I

know'd on,' says I,--'I'm a-eatin' my reg'l'r victuals whin I don't

have the shakes,' says I. 'Ah!' says he, 'you've the shakes?' he says;

'an' don't you know you ketched 'em in the war?' 'I ketched 'em

a-gettin' m'lairy in the bottoms,' says I, 'a-duck-shootin', in which

I kin hit a bird on the wing every time an' no mistake,' says I.

'Now,' he says, 'hold on a minute; you didn't hev shakes afore the

war?' says he. 'Not as much,' I says, not knowin' what the feller was

drivin' at, 'but some; I was a kid then, and kids don't shake much,'

says I. 'Hold up! hold up!' he says, 'you 're wrong, an' ye know it;

ye don't hev no mem'ry goin' back so far about phys'cal conditions,'

says he. Well, gemmen, sure 'nough, when I kem to think things over,

and talk it up with the doctor chap, I 'lowed he was right. Then he

let on he was a claim agint, an' I let him try his hand on workin' up

a pension for me, for he says I wa'n't to pay no'hun 'less the thing

went through. But I hearn tell, down at Erie, that they is a-goin'

agin these private claims nowadays at Washin'ton, an' I don't know

what my show is. But I ought to hev a pension, an' no mistake, gemmen.

They wa'n't no fellers did harder work 'n me in the war, ef I _do_ say

it myself."

W---- ventured to ask what battles our host had been in.

"Well, I wa'n't in no reg'lar battle,--that is, right _in_ one. Thar

was a few of us detailed ter tek keer of gov'ment prop'ty near

C'lumby, South Car'liny, when Wade Hamptin was a-burnin' things down

thar. We was four miles away from the fightin,' an' I was jest

a-achin' to git in thar. What I wanted was to git a bead on ol' Wade

himself,--an' ef I do say it myself, the ol' man would 'a' hunted his

hole, gemmen. When I get a sight on a duck, gemmen, that duck's mine,

an' no mistake. An' ef I'd 'a' sighted Wade Hamptin, then good-by

Wade! I tol' the cap'n what I wanted, but he said as how I was more

use a-takin' keer of the supplies. That cap'n hadn't no enterprise

'bout him. Things would 'a' been different at C'lumby, ef I'd had my

way, an' don't ye forgit it! There was heaps o' blood spilt

unnecessary by us boys, a-fightin' to save the ol' flag,--an' we 're

willin' to do it agin, gemmen, an' no mistake!"

The old woman had been listening eagerly to this narrative, evidently

quite proud of her boy's achievements, but not hearing all that had

been said. She now broke out, in shrill, high notes,--

"Joe ought ter 'a' had a pension, he had, wi' his chills 'tracted in

the war. He wuk'd hard, Joe did, a hul ten months, doin' calvary

service, the last year o' the war; an' he kem nigh onter shootin' ol'

Wade Hamptin, an' a-makin' a name for himself, an' p'r'aps a good

office with a title an' all that; only they kep' him back with the

ammernition wagin, 'count o' the kurnil's jealousy,--for Joe is a dead

shot, ma'am, if I'm his mother as says it, and keeps the family in

ducks half the year 'roun', an' the kurnil know'd Joe was a-bilin'

over to git to the front."

"Ah! you were in the cavalry service, then?" I said to our landlord,

by way of helping along the conversation.

There was a momentary silence, broken by Simple Simon, who wiped his

knife on his tongue, and made a wild attack on the butter dish.

"Pa, he druv a mule team for gov'ment; an' we got a picter in the

album, tuk of him when he were just a-goin' inter battle, with a big

ammernition wagin on behind. Pa, in the picter, is a-ridin' o' one o'

the mules, an' any one'd know him right off."

This sudden revelation of the strength of the veteran's claim to glory

and a pension, put a damper upon his reminiscences of the war; and

giving the innocent Simon a savage leer, he soon contrived to turn the

conversation upon his wonderful exploits in duck-shooting and

fishing--industries in the pursuit of which he, with so many of his

fellow-farmers on the bottoms, appeared to be more eager than in

tilling the soil.

It was quite evident that the breakfast we were eating was a special

spread in honor of probably the only guests the quondam tavern had had

these many months. Canoeists must not be too particular about the fare

set before them; but on this occasion we were able to swallow but a

few mouthfuls of the repast and our lunch-basket was drawn on as soon

as we were once more afloat. It is a great pity that so many farmers'

wives are the wretched cooks they are. With an abundance of good

materials already about them, and rare opportunities for readily

acquiring more, tens of thousands of rural dames do manage to prepare

astonishingly inedible meals,--sour, doughy bread; potatoes which, if

boiled, are but half cooked, and if mashed, are floated with

abominable butter or pastey flour gravy; salt pork either swimming in

a bowl of grease or fried to a leathery chip; tea and coffee extremely

weak or strong enough to kill an ox, as chance may dictate, and

inevitably adulterated beyond recognition; eggs that are spoiled by

being fried to the consistency of rubber, in a pan of fat deep enough

to float doughnuts; while the biscuits are yellow and bitter with

saleratus. This bill of fare, warranted to destroy the best of

appetites, will be recognized by too many of my readers as that to be

found at the average American farm-house, although we all doubtless

know of some magnificent exceptions, which only prove the rule. We

establish public cooking-schools in our cities, and economists like

Edward Atkinson and hygienists like the late Dio Lewis assiduously

explain to the metropolitan poor their processes of making a tempting

meal out of nothing; but our most crying need in this country to-day

is a training-school for rural housewives, where they may be taught to

evolve a respectable and economical spread out of the great abundance

with which they are surrounded. It is no wonder that country boys

drift to the cities, where they can obtain properly cooked food and

live like rational beings.

The river continues to widen as we approach the junction with the

Mississippi,--thirty-nine miles below Erie,--and to assume the

characteristics of the great river into which it pours its flood. The

islands increase in number and in size, some of them being over a mile

in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth; the bottoms frequently

resolve themselves into wide morasses, thickly studded with great

elms, maples, and cotton-woods, among which the spring flood has

wrought direful destruction. The scene becomes peculiarly desolate and

mournful, often giving one the impression of being far removed from

civilization, threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream.

Penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot, however, and

smiling prairies are found beyond, stretching to the horizon and cut

up into prosperous farms. The river is here from a half to

three-quarters of a mile broad, but the shallows and snags are as

numerous as ever and navigation is continually attended with some

danger of being either grounded or capsized.

Now and then the banks become firmer, with charming vistas of high,

wooded hills coming down to the water's edge; broad savannas

intervene, decked out with variegated flora, prominent being the

elsewhere rare atragene Americana, the spider-wort, the little blue

lobelia, and the cup-weed. These savannas are apparently overflowed in

times of exceptionally high water; and there are evidences that the

stream has occasionally changed its course, through the sunbaked banks

of ashy-gray mud, in years long past.

At Cleveland, a staid little village on an open plain, which we

reached soon after the dinner-hour, there is an unused mill-dam going

to decay. In the centre, the main current has washed out a breadth of

three or four rods, through which the pent-up stream rushes with a

roar and a hundred whirlpools. It is an ugly crevasse, but a careful

examination showed the passage to be feasible, so we retreated an

eighth of a mile up-stream, took our bearings, and went through with a

speed that nearly took our breath away and appeared to greatly

astonish a half-dozen fishermen idly angling from the dilapidated

apron on either side. It was like going through Cleveland on the fast

mail.

Fourteen miles above the mouth of the Rock, is the Chicago, Burlington

and Quincy railroad bridge, with Carbon Cliff on the north and Coloma

on the south, each one mile from the river. The day had been dark,

with occasional slight showers and a stiff head wind, so that progress

had been slow. We began to deem it worth while to inquire about the

condition of affairs at the mouth. Under the bridge, sitting on a

bowlder at the base of the north abutment, an intelligent-appearing

man in a yellow oiled-cloth suit, accompanied by a bright-eyed lad,

peacefully fished. Stopping to question them, we found them both

well-informed as to the railway time-tables of the vicinity and the

topography of the lower river. They told us that the scenery for the

next fourteen miles was similar, in its dark desolation, to that which

we had passed through during the day; also that owing to the great

number of islands and the labyrinth of channels both in the Rock and

on the east side of the Mississippi, we should find it practically

impossible to know when we had reached the latter; we should doubtless

proceed several miles below the mouth of the Rock before we noticed

that the current was setting persistently south, and then would have

an exceedingly difficult task in retracing our course and pulling

up-stream to our destination, Rock Island, which is six miles north

of the delta of the Rock. They strongly advised our going into Rock

Island by rail. The present landing was the last chance to strike a

railway, except at Milan, twelve miles below. It was now so late that

we could not hope to reach Milan before dark; there were no

stopping-places _en route_, and Milan was farther from Rock Island

than either Carbon Cliff or Coloma, with less frequent railway

service.

For these and other reasons, we decided to accept this advice, and to

ship from Coloma. Taking a final spurt down to a ferry-landing a

quarter of a mile beyond, on the south bank, we beached our canoe at

5.05 P.M., having voyaged two hundred and sixty-seven miles in

somewhat less than seven days and a half. Leaving W---- to gossip with

the ferryman's wife, who came down to the bank with an armful of

smiling twins, to view a craft so strange to her vision, I went up

into the country to engage a team to take our boat upon its last

portage. After having been gruffly refused by a churlish farmer, who

doubtless recognized no difference between a canoeist and a tramp, I

struck a bargain with a negro cultivating a cornfield with a span of

coal-black mules, and in half an hour he was at the ferry-landing with

a wagon. Washing out the canoe and chaining in the oars and paddle,

we lifted it into the wagon-box, piled our baggage on top, and set off

over the hills and fields to Coloma, W---- and I trudging behind the

dray, ankle deep in mud, for the late rains had well moistened the

black prairie soil. It was a unique and picturesque procession.

In less than an hour we were in Rock Island, and our canoe was on its

way by freight to Portage, preparatory to my tour with our friend the

Doctor,--down the Fox River of Green Bay.

THE FOX RIVER (OF GREEN BAY).

[Illustration: MAP OF THE FOX-WISCONSIN RIVERS to accompany

THWAITES'S "HISTORIC WATERWAYS"]

THE FOX RIVER (OF GREEN BAY).

FIRST LETTER.

SMITH'S ISLAND.

PACKWAUKEE, WIS., June 7, 1887.

My dear W----: It was 2.25 P. M. yesterday when the Doctor and I

launched the old canoe upon the tan-colored water of the government

canal at Portage, and pointed her nose in the direction of the

historic Fox. You will remember that the canal traverses the low sandy

plain which separates the Fox from the Wisconsin on a line very nearly

parallel to where tradition locates Barth's and Lecuyer's

wagon-portage a hundred years ago. It was a profitable business in the

olden days, when the Fox-Wisconsin highway was extensively patronized,

to thus transport river craft over this mile and a half of bog. The

toll[2] collected by these French creoles and their successors down to

the days of Paquette added materially to the cost of goods and

peltries. In times of exceptionally high water the Wisconsin

overflowed into the Fox, which is ordinarily five feet lower than the

former, and canoes could readily cross the portage afloat, quite

independent of the forwarding agents. In this generation the

Wisconsin is kept to her bounds by levees; but the government canal

furnishes a free highway. The railroads have spoiled water-navigation,

however; and the canal, like the most of the Fox and Wisconsin

river-improvement, is fast relapsing into a costly relic. The timbered

sides are rotting, the peat and sand are bulging them in, the locks

are shaky and worm-eaten, and several moss-covered barges and a

stranded old ruin of a steamboat turned out to grass tell a sad story

of official abandonment.

The scenic effects from the canal are not enlivening. There is a wide

expanse of bog, relieved by some grass-grown railway side-tracks and

the forlorn freight-depot of the Wisconsin Central road. A few

battered sheds yet remain of old Fort Winnebago on a lonesome hillock

near where the canal joins the Fox; while beyond to the north as far

as the eye can reach there is a stretch of wild-rice swamp, through

which the government dredges have scooped a narrow channel, about as

picturesque as a cranberry-marsh drain.

Life at Fort Winnebago during the second quarter of this century must

have been lonesome indeed, its nearest neighbors being Forts Crawford

and Howard, each nearly two hundred miles away. A mile or two to the

southwest is a pretty wooded ridge, girting the Wisconsin River, upon

which the city of Portage is now situated. Then it was a forest, and

the camping-ground of Winnebagoes, who hung around the post in the

half-threatening attitude of beggars who might make trouble if not

adequately bribed with gifts. The fort was erected in 1828-29 at the

solicitation of John Jacob Astor (the American Fur Company), to

protect his trade against encroachments from these Winnebago rascals,

who had become quite impudent during the Red Bird disturbance at

Prairie du Chien, in 1827. Jefferson Davis was one of the three

first-lieutenants in the original garrison, in which Harney, of

Mexican war fame, was a captain. Davis was detailed to the charge of a

squad sent to cut timbers for the fort in a Wisconsin River pinery

just above the portage, and thus became one of the pioneer lumbermen

of Wisconsin. It is related, too, that Davis, who was an amateur

cabinet-maker, designed some very odd wardrobes and other pieces of

furniture for the officers' chambers, which were the wonder and

admiration of every occupant for years to come.[3] In 1853, when

Secretary of War, the whilom subaltern issued an order for the sale of

the fort so intimately connected with his army career, and its crazy

buildings henceforth became tenements.

For a dozen miles beyond the Fox River end of the canal the river, as

I have before said, is dredged out through the swamp like a big ditch.

The artificial banks of sand and peat which line it are generally well

grown with mare's-tail, beautiful clumps of wild roses, purple vetch,

great beds of sensitive ferns, and masses of Pennsylvania anemone,

while the pools are decked with water-anemone. Nature is doing her

best to hide the deformities wrought by man. The valley is generally

about a mile in width, ridges of wooded knolls hemming in the broad

expanse of reeds and rice and willow clumps. Occasionally the

engineers have allowed the ditch to swerve in graceful lines and to

hug closely the firmer soil in the lower benches of the knolls, where

the banks of red and yellow clay attain a height of ten or a dozen

feet, crowned with oaks and elms or pleasant glades. A modest

farm-house now and then appears upon such a shore, with the front yard

running down to the water's edge.

The afternoon shadows are lengthening, and farmers' boys are leading

their horses down to drink, after the day's labor in the fields. Black

and yellow collies are gathering in the cows,--some of them soberly

and quickly corral obedient herds, while others yelp and snap at the

heads of the affrighted animals, and in the noise and confusion seem

to make but little progress. Collies have human-like infirmities.

We had supper at seven o'clock, under a tree which overhangs a weedy

bank, with a high pasture back of us, sloping up to a wooded hill, at

the base of which is a cluster of three neatly painted farm-houses,

whose dogs bayed at us from the distance, but did not venture to

approach. A half-hour later, the sun's setting warned us that quarters

for the night must soon be secured. Stopping at the base of a boggy

pasture-wood, we ascended through a sterile field, accursed with

sheep-sorrel, and through gaps in several crazy fences, to what had

seemed to us from the river a comfortable, repose-inviting house,

commandingly situated on a hill-top among the trees. Near approach

revealed a scene of desolation. The barriers were down, two

spare-ribbed horses were nipping a scant supper among the weeds in a

dark corner of an otherwise deserted barn-yard, the window-sashes were

generally paneless, the porch was in a state of collapse, sand-burrs

choked the paths, and to our knock at the kitchen door the only

response was a hollow echo. The deserted house looked uncanny in the

gloaming, and we retired to our boat wondering what evil spell had

been cast over the place, and whether the horses in the barn-yard had

been deliberately left behind to die of starvation.

The river now takes upon itself many devious windings in a great

widespread over two miles broad. The government engineers have here

left it in all its original crookedness, and the twists and turns are

as fantastic and complicated as those of the Teutonic pretzel in its

native land. As the twilight thickened, great swarms of lake-flies

rose from the sedges and beat their way up-stream, the noise of their

multitudinous wings being at times like the roar of a neighboring

waterfall, as they formed a ceaselessly moving canopy over our heads.

It was noticeable that the flies kept very closely to the windings of

the river, as if guided only by the glittering flood beneath them. The

mass of the procession kept its way up the stream, but upon the

outskirts could be seen a few individuals, apparently larger than the

average, flying back and forth as if marshaling the host.

Two miles below the deserted house, we stopped opposite another marshy

bank, where a rude skiff lay tied to a shaky fence projecting far out

into the reeds. Pushing our way in, we beached in the slimy shore-mud

and scrambled upon the land, where the tall grass was now as sloppy

with dew as though it had been rained upon. It was getting quite dark

now, but through a cleft in the hills the moon was seen to be just

rising above a cloud-bathed horizon, and a small house, neat-looking,

though destitute of paint, was sharply silhouetted against the

lightening sky, at the head of a gentle slope. By the time we had

waded through a quarter of a mile of thriving timothy we were wet to

the skin below the knees and dusted all over with pollen.

Seven children, mostly boys, and gently step-laddered down from

fourteen years, greeted us at the summit with a loud "Hello!" in

shrill unison. They stood in a huddle by the woodpile, holding down

and admonishing a very mild-looking collie, which they evidently

imagined was filled with an overweening desire instantly to devour us.

"Hello there! who be ye?" shouted the oldest lad and the spokesman of

the party. He was a tall, spare boy, and by the light of the rising

moon we could see he was sharp-featured, good-natured, and

intelligent.

"Well," said the Doctor, bantering, "that's what we'd like to know.

You tell us who you are, and we'll tell you who we are. Now that's

fair, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," replied the boy, respectfully, as he touched his rimless

straw hat; "our name's Smith; all 'cept that boy there," pointing to a

sturdy little twelve-year-old, "an' he's a Bixby, he is."

"The Smith family's a big one, I should say," the Doctor remarked, as

he audibly counted the party.

"Oh, this ain't all on 'em, sir; there's two in the house, a-hidin'

'cause o' strangers, besides the baby, which ma and pa has with 'em

inter Packwaukee, a-shoppin'. This is Smith's Island, sir. Didn't ye

ever hear o' Smith's Island?"

We acknowledged our ignorance, up to this time, of the existence of

any such feature in the geography of Wisconsin. But the lad, now

joined by the others, who had by this time vanquished their

bashfulness and all wanted to talk at once, assured us that we were

actually on Smith's Island; that Smith's Island had an area of one

hundred acres, was surrounded on the east by the river, and everywhere

else by either a bayou or a marsh that had to be crossed with a boat

in the spring; that there were three families of Smiths there, and

this group represented but one branch of the clan.

"We're all Smiths, sir, but this boy, who's a Bixby; an' he's our

cousin and only a-visitin'."

After having gained a thorough knowledge of the topography and

population of Smith's Island, we ventured to ask whether it was

presumable that the parental Smiths, when they returned home from the

village, would be willing to entertain us for the night.

"Guess not, sir," replied the spokesman, the idea appearing to strike

him humorously; "there's so many of us now, sir, that we're packed in

pretty close, an' the Bixby boy has to sleep atop o' the orgin. But I

think Uncle Jim might; he kept a tramp over night once, an' give him

his breakfus', too, in the bargain."

The prospect as to Uncle Jim was certainly encouraging, and it was now

too late to go further. It seemed necessary to stop on Smith's Island

for the night, even if we were restricted to quartering in the

corn-crib which the Smith boy kindly put at our disposal in case of

Uncle Jim's refusal,--with the additional inducement that he would

lend us the collie for company and to "keep off rats," which he

intimated were phenomenally numerous on this swamp-girt hill.

The entire troop of urchins accompanied us down to the bank to make

fast for the night, and helped us up with our baggage to the

corn-crib, where we disturbed a large family of hens which were using

the airy structure as a summer dormitory. Then, with the two oldest

boys as pilots, we set off along the ridge to find the domicile of

Uncle Jim, who had established a reputation for hospitality by having

once entertained a way-worn tramp.

The moon had now swung clear of the trees on the edge of the river

basin, and gleamed through a great cleft in the blue-black clouds,

investing the landscape with a luminous glow. Along the eastern

horizon a dark forest-girt ridge hemmed in the reedy widespread,

through which the gleaming Fox twisted and doubled upon itself like a

silvery serpent in agony. The Indians, who have an eye to the

picturesque in Nature, tell us that once a monster snake lay down for

the night in the swamp between the portage and the lake of the

Winnebagoes. The dew accumulated upon it as it lay, and when the

morning came it wriggled and shook the water from its back, and

disappeared down the river which it had thus created in its nocturnal

bed. I had never fully appreciated the aptness of the legend until

last night, when I had that bird's-eye view of the valley of the Fox

from the summit of Smith's Island. To our left, the timothy-field

sloped gracefully down to the sedgy couch of the serpent; to our

right, there were pastures and oak openings, with glimpses of the

moonlit bayou below, across which a dark line led to a forest,--the

narrow roadway leading from Smith's to the outer world. At the edge of

a small wood-lot our guides stopped, telling us to keep on along the

path, over two stiles and through a barn-yard gate, till we saw a

light; the light would be Uncle Jim's.

A cloud was by this time overcasting the moon, and a distant rumble

told us that the night would be stormy. Groping our way through the

copse, we passed the barriers, and, according to promise, the blinding

light of a kerosene lamp standing on the ledge of an open window burst

upon us. Then a door opened, and the form of a tall, stalwart man

stood upon the threshold, a striking silhouette. It was Uncle Jim

peering into the darkness, for he had heard footsteps in the yard. We

were greeted cordially on the porch, and shown into a cosey

sitting-room, where Uncle Jim had been reading his weekly paper, and

Uncle Jim's wife, smiling sweetly amid her curl-papers, was engaged on

a bit of crochet. Charmingly hospitable people they are. They have

been married but a year or two, are without children, and have a

pleasant cottage furnished simply but in excellent taste. Such

delightful little homes are rare in the country, and the Doctor

couldn't help telling Uncle Jim so, whereat the latter was very

properly pleased. Uncle Jim is a fine-looking, manly fellow, six feet

two in his stockings, he told us; and his pretty, blooming wife,

though young, has the fine manners of the olden school. We were

earnestly invited to stop for the night before we had fairly stated

our case, and in five minutes were talking on politics, general news,

and agriculture, as though we had always lived on Smith's Island and

had just dropped in for an evening's chat. I am sure you would have

enjoyed it, W----, it was such a contrast to our night at the Erie

tavern,--only a week ago, though it seems a month. One sees and feels

so much, canoeing, that the days are like weeks of ordinary travel.

Two hundred miles by river are more full of the essence of life than

two thousand by rail.

We had an excellent bed and an appetizing breakfast. The flood-gates

of heaven had been opened during the night, and Smith's Island shaken

to its peaty foundations by great thunder-peals. Uncle Jim was happy,

for the pasturage would be improved, and the corn crop would have a

"show." Uncle Jim's wife said there would now be milk enough to make

butter for market; and the hens would do better, for somehow they

never would lay regularly during the drought we had been experiencing.

And so we talked on while the "clearing showers" lasted. I told Uncle

Jim that I was surprised to see him raising anything at all in what

was apparently sand. He acknowledged that the soil was light, and

inclined to blow away on the slightest aerial provocation, but he

nevertheless managed to get twenty bushels of wheat to the acre, and

the lowlands gave him an abundance of hay and pasturage. He was

decidedly in favor of mixed crops, himself, and was gradually getting

into the stock line, as he wanted a crop that could "walk itself into

market." The Doctor inquired about the health of the neighborhood,

which he found to be excellent. He is much of a gallant, you know; and

Uncle Jim's wife was pleasantly flustered when, in his most winning

tones, the disciple of AEsculapius declared that the climate that could

produce such splendid complexions as hers--and Uncle Jim's--must

indeed be rated as available for a sanitarium.

By a quarter to eight o'clock this morning the storm had ceased, and

the eastern sky brightened. Our kind friends bade us a cheery

farewell, we retraced our steps to the corn-crib, the Smith boys

helped us down with our load, and just as our watches touched eight we

shoved off into the stream, and were once more afloat upon the

serpentine trail.

These great wild-rice widespreads--sloughs, the natives call them--are

doubtless the beds of ancient lakes. In coursing through them, the

bayous, the cul-de-sacs, are so frequent, and the stream switches off

upon such unexpected tangents, that it is sometimes perplexing to

ascertain which body of sluggish water is the main channel. Marquette

found this out when he ascended the Fox in 1673. He says, in his

relation of the voyage, "The way is so cut up by marshes and little

lakes that it is easy to go astray, especially as the river is so

covered with wild oats [wild rice] that you can hardly discover the

channel; hence, we had good need of our two guides."

Little bog-islands, heavily grown with aspens and willows,

occasionally dot the seas of rice. They often fairly hum with the

varied notes of the red-winged blackbird, the rusty grackle, and our

American robin, while whistling plovers are seen upon the mud-spits,

snapping up the choicest of the snails. And such bullfrogs! I have not

heard their like since, when a boy, living on the verge of a New

England pond, I imagined their hollow rumble of a roundelay to bear

the burden of "Paddy, go 'round! Go 'round and 'round!" This in

accordance with a local tradition which says that Paddy, coming home

one night o'erfull of the "craithur," came to the edge of the pond,

which stopped his progress. The friendly frogs, who themselves enjoy a

soaking, advised him to go around the obstruction; and as the wild

refrain kept on, Paddy did indeed "go 'round, and 'round" till morning

and his better-half found him, a foot-sore and a soberer man. They

tell us that on the Fox River the frogs say, "Judge Arndt! Arndt!

Judge Arndt!" Old Judge Arndt was one of the celebrities in the early

day at Green Bay; he was a fur-trader, and accustomed, with his gang

of _voyageurs_, to navigate the Fox and Wisconsin with heavily laden

canoes and Mackinaw boats. A Frenchman, he had a gastronomic affection

for frogs' legs, and many a branch of the house of Rana was cast into

mourning in the neighborhood of his nightly camps. The story goes,

therefore, that unto this time whenever a boat is seen upon the river,

sentinel frogs give out the signal cry of "Judge Arndt!" by way of

deadly warning to their kind. Certain it is that the valley of the

upper Fox, by day or by night, is resonant with the bellow of the

amphibious bull. It is not always "Judge Arndt!" but occasionally, as

if miles and miles away, one hears a sudden twanging note, like that

of the finger-snapped bass string of a violin; whereas the customary

refrain may be likened to the deep reverberations of the bass-viol.

Add the countless chatter and whistle of the birds, the ear-piercing

hum of the cicada, and the muffled chimes from scores of sheep and cow

bells on the hillside pastures, and we have an orchestral

accompaniment upon our voyage that could be fully appreciated only in

a Chinese theatre.

In the pockets and the sloughs, we find thousands of yellow and white

water-lilies, and sometimes progress is impeded by masses of creeping

root-stalks which have been torn from their muddy bed by the upheaval

of the ice, and now float about in great rafts, firmly anchored by the

few whose extremities are still imbedded in the ooze.

Fishing-boats were also occasionally met with this morning, occupied

by Packwaukee people; for in the widespreads just above this village,

the pickerel thrives mightily off the swarms of perch who love these

reedy seas; and the weighty sturgeon often swallows a hook and gives

his captor many a frenzied tug before he consents to enter the

"live-box" which floats behind each craft.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Ten dollars per boat, and fifty cents per 100 lbs. of goods.

[3] Described in Mrs. Kinzie's "Wau-Bun," which gives many interesting

reminiscences of life at the old post.

SECOND LETTER.

FROM PACKWAUKEE TO BERLIN.

BERLIN, WIS., June 8, 1887.

My dear W----: Packwaukee is twenty-five miles by river below Portage,

and at the head of Buffalo Lake. It is a tumble-down little place,

with about one hundred inhabitants, half of whom appeared to be

engaged in fishing. A branch of the Wisconsin Central Railway, running

south from Stevens Point to Portage, passes through the town, with a

spur track running along the north shore of the lake to Montello,

seven miles east. Regular trains stop at Packwaukee, while the engine

draws a pony train out to Montello to pick up the custom of that

thriving village. Packwaukee apparently had great pretensions once,

with her battlement-fronts and verandaed inn; but that day has long

passed, and a picturesque float-bridge, mossy and decayed, remains the

sole point of artistic interest. A dozen boys were angling from its

battered hand-rail, as we painfully crept with our craft through a

small tunnel where the abutment had been washed out by the stream. We

emerged covered with cobwebs and sawdust, to be met by boys eagerly

soliciting us to purchase their fish. The Doctor, somewhat annoyed by

their pertinacity as he vigorously dusted himself with his

handkerchief, declared, in the vernacular of the river, that we were

"clean busted;" and I have no doubt the lads believed his mild fib,

for we looked just then as though we had seen hard times in our day.

Our general course had hitherto been northward, but was now eastward

for a few miles and afterward southeastward as far as Marquette.

Buffalo Lake is seven miles long by from a third to three quarters of

a mile broad. The banks are for the most part sandy, and from five to

fifty feet high. The river here merely fills its bed; being deeper,

the wild rice and reeds do not grow upon its skirts. Were there a

half-dozen more feet of water, the Fox would be a chain of lakes from

Portage to Oshkosh. As it is, we have Buffalo, Puckawa, and Grand

Butte des Morts, which are among the prettiest of the inland seas of

Wisconsin. The knolls about Buffalo Lake are pleasant, round-topped

elevations, for the most part wooded, and between them are little

prairies, generally sandy, but occasionally covered with dark loam.

The day had, by noon, developed into one of the hottest of the season.

The run down Buffalo Lake was a torrid experience long to be

remembered. The air was motionless, the sky without clouds; we had

good need of our awning. The Doctor, who is always experimenting,

picked up a flat stone on the beach, so warm as to burn his fingers,

and tried to fry an egg upon it by simple solar heat, but the venture

failed and a burning-glass was needed to complete the operation.

Montello occupies a position at the foot of the lake, commanding the

entire sheet of water. The knoll upon which the village is for the

most part built is nearly one hundred feet high, and the simple spire

of an old white church pitched upon the summit is a landmark readily

discernible in Packwaukee, seven miles distant. There is a government

lock at Montello, and a small water-power. A levee protects from

overflow a portion of the town which is situated somewhat below the

lake level. The government pays the lock-keepers thirty dollars per

month for about eight months in the year, and house-rent the year

round. Tollage is no longer required, and the keepers are obliged by

the regulations of the engineering department to open the gates for

all comers, even a saw-log. But the services of the keepers are so

seldom required in these days that we find they are not to be easily

roused from their slumbers, and it is easier and quicker to make the

portage at the average up-river lock. Our carry at Montello was two

and a half rods, over a sandy bank, where a solitary small boy, who

had been catching crayfish with a dip-net, carefully examined our

outfit and propounded the inquiry, "Be you fellers on the guv'ment

job?"

Below the lock for three or four miles, the river is again a mere

canal, but the rigid banks of dredge-trash are for the most part

covered with a thrifty vegetation, and have assumed charms of their

own. This stage passed, and the river resumes a natural appearance,--a

placid stream, with now and then a slough, or perhaps banks of peat

and sand, ten feet high and fairly well hung with trees and shrubs.

As we approach the head of Lake Puckawa, the widespreads broaden, with

rows of hills two or three miles back, on either side,--the river

mowing a narrow swath through the expanse of reeds and flags and rice

which unites their bases. Where the widespread becomes a pond, and

the lake commences, there is a sandbar, the dregs of the upper

channel. A government dredge-machine was at work, cutting out a

water-way through the obstruction,--or, rather, had been at work, for

it was seven o'clock by this time, the men had finished their supper,

and were enjoying themselves upon the neat deck of the boarding-house

barge, in a neighboring bayou, smoking their pipes and reading

newspapers. It was a comfortable picture.

A stern-wheel freight steamer, big and cumbersome, came slowly into

the mouth of the channel as we left it, bound up, for Montello. As we

glided along her side, a safe distance from the great wheelbarrow

paddle, she loomed above us, dark and awesome, like a whale

overlooking a minnow. It was the "T. S. Chittenden," wood-laden. The

"Chittenden" and the "Ellen Hardy" are the only boats navigating the

upper Fox this season, above Berlin. Their trips are supposed to be

semi-weekly, but as a matter of fact they dodge around, all the way

from Winneconne to Montello, picking up what freight they can and

making a through trip perhaps once a week. It is poor picking, I am

told, and the profits but barely pay for maintaining the service.

There now being no place to land, without the great labor of poling

the canoe through the dense reed swamp to the sides, we had supper on

board,--the Doctor deftly spreading a bit of canvas on the bottom

between us, for a cloth, and attractively displaying our lunch to the

best advantage. I leisurely paddled meanwhile, occasionally resting to

take a mouthful or to sip of the lemonade, in the preparation of which

the Doctor is such an adept. And thus we drifted down Lake Puckawa,

amid the delightful sunset glow and the long twilight which

followed,--the Doctor, cake in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the

other, becoming quite animated in a detailed description of a patient

he had seen in a Vienna hospital, whose food was introduced through a

slit in his throat. The Doctor is an enthusiast in his profession, and

would stop to advise St. Peter, at the gate, to try his method for

treating locksmith-palsy.

We noticed a great number of black terns as we progressed, perched

upon snags at the head of the lake. They are fearless birds, and would

allow us to drift within paddle's length before they would rise and,

slowly wheeling around our heads, settle again upon their roosts, as

soon as we had passed on.

Lake Puckawa is eight miles long by perhaps two miles wide, running

west and east. Five miles down the eastern shore, the quaint little

village of Marquette is situated on a pleasant slope which overlooks

the lake from end to end. Marquette is on the site of an Indian

fur-trading camp, this lake being for many years a favorite resort of

the Winnebagoes. There are about three hundred inhabitants there, and

it is something of a mystery as to how they all scratch a living; for

the town is dying, if not already dead,--about the only bit of life

noticeable there being a rather pretty club-house owned by a party of

Chicago gentlemen, who come to Lake Puckawa twice a year to shoot

ducks, it being one of the best sporting-grounds in the State. That is

to say, they have heretofore come twice a year, but the villagers were

bewailing the passage by the legislature, last winter, of a bill

prohibiting spring shooting, thus cutting off the business of

Marquette by one half. Marquette, like so many other dead river-towns,

appears to have been at one time a community of some importance. There

are two deserted saw-mills and two or three abandoned warehouses, all

boarded up and falling into decay, while nearly every store-building

in the place has shutters nailed over the windows, and a once

substantial sidewalk has become such a rotten snare that the natives

use the grass-grown street for a footpath. The good people are so

tenacious of the rights of visiting sportsmen that there is no

angling, I was told, except by visitors, and we inquired in vain for

fish at the dilapidated little hotel where we slept and breakfasted.

At the hostlery we were welcomed with open arms, and the landlady's

boy, who officiated as clerk, porter, and chambermaid, assured us that

the village schoolmaster had been the only guest for six weeks past.

It is certainly a quiet spot. The Doctor, who knows all about these

things, diagnosed the lake and declared it to be a fine field for

fly-fishing. He had waxed so enthusiastic over the numbers of nesting

ducks which we disturbed as we came down through the reeds, in the

early evening, that I had all I could do to keep him from breaking the

new game law, although he stoutly declared that revolvers didn't

count. The postmaster--a pleasant old gentleman in spectacles, who

also keeps the drug store, deals in ammunition, groceries, and shoes,

and is an agent for agricultural machinery--got very friendly with the

Doctor, and confided to him the fact that if the latter would come

next fall to Markesan, ten miles distant, over the sands, and

telephone up that he was there, a team would be sent down for him;

then, with the postmaster for a guide, fish and fowl would soon be

obliged to seek cover. It is needless to add that the Doctor struck a

bargain with the postmaster and promised to be on hand without fail. I

never saw our good friend so wild with delight, and the postmaster

became as happy as if he had just concluded a cash contract for a

car-load of ammunition.

The schoolmaster, a very accommodating young man, helped us down to

the beach this morning with our load. Anticipating numerous lakes and

widespreads, where we might gain advantage of the wind, we had brought

a sprit sail along, together with a temporary keel. The sail helped us

frequently yesterday, especially in Buffalo Lake, but the wind had

died down after we passed Montello. This morning, however, there was a

good breeze again, but quartering, and the keel became essential. This

we now attached to our craft, and it was nearly seven o'clock before

we were off, although we had had breakfast at 5.30.

The "Ellen Hardy" was at the dock, loading with wheat for Princeton.

She is a trimmer, faster craft than the "Chittenden." The engineer

told us that the present stage of water was but two and a half feet in

the upper Fox, this year and last being the driest on record. He

informed us that the freight business was "having the spots knocked

off it" by the railroads, and there was hardly enough to make it worth

while getting up steam.

Three miles down is the mouth of the lake. There being two outlets

around a large marsh, we were somewhat confused in trying to find the

proper channel. We ascertained, after going a mile and a half out of

our way to the south, that the northern extremity of the marsh is the

one to steer for. The river continues to wind along between marshy

shores, although occasionally hugging a high bank of red clay or

skirting a knoll of shifting sand; now and then these knolls rise to

the dignity of hills, red with sorrel and sparsely covered with

scrubby pines and oaks.

It was noon when we reached the lock above Princeton. The lock-keeper,

a remarkably round-shouldered German, is a pleasant, gossipy fellow,

fond of his long pipe and his very fat frau. Upon invitation, we made

ourselves quite at home in the lock-house, a pleasant little brick

structure in a plot of made land, the entire establishment having that

rather stiffly neat, ship-shape appearance peculiar to life-saving

stations, navy-yards, and military barracks. The good frau steeped

for us a pot of tea, and in other ways helped us to grace our dinner,

which we spread on a bench under a grape arbor, by the side of the

yawning stone basin of the lock.

The "Ellen Hardy," which had left Marquette nearly an hour later than

we, came along while we were at dinner, waking the echoes with three

prolonged steam groans. We took advantage of the circumstance to lock

through in her company. This was our first experience of the sort, so

we were naturally rather timid as we brushed her great paddle, going

in, and stole along under her overhanging deck, for she quite filled

the lock. The captain kindly allowed the liliputian to glide through

in advance of his steamer, however, when the gates were once more

opened, and we felt, as we shot out, as though we had emerged from

under the belly of a monster.

Beaching again, below the lock, we returned to finish our dinner. The

keeper asked for a ride to Princeton village, three miles below, and

we admitted him to our circle,--pipe, market-basket and all, though it

caused the canoe to sink uncomfortably near to the gunwale. Going

down, our voluble friend talked very freely about his affairs. He said

that his pay of $30 per month ran from about the middle of April to

the first of December, and averaged him, the year round, about $20

and house-rent. He had but little to do, and got along very

comfortably on the twenty-five acres of marsh-land which the

government owned, by raising pigs and cows, a few vegetables, and hay

enough for his stock. He admitted that this was "a heap better" than

he could do in the fatherland.

"I shoost dell you, mine frient," he said to me, as he grinned and

refilled his pipe, "dot Shermany vos a nice guntry, and Bismarck he

vos a grade feller, und I vos brout I vos a Sherman; but I dells mine

vooman vot I dells you,--I mooch rahder read aboud 'em in mine Sherman

newsbaper, dan vot I voot leef dere myself, already. I roon avay vrom

dem conscrip' fellers, und I shoost never seed de time vot I voot go

back again. In dot ol' guntry, I vos nuttings boot a beasant feller;

unt in dis guntry I vos a goov'ment off'cer, vich makes grade

diff'rence, already."

He chuckled a good deal to himself when asked what he thought about

the Fox-Wisconsin river-improvement, but finally said that government

must spend its surplus some way,--if not in this, it would in

another,--and he could not object to a scheme which gave him his bread

and butter. He said that the improvement operations scattered a good

deal of money throughout the valley, for labor and supplies, but

expressed his doubts as to the ultimate national value of the work,

unless the shifting Wisconsin River, thus far unnavigable for

steamers, should be canalled from the portage to its mouth. He is an

honest fellow, and appears to utilize his abundance of leisure in

reading the newspapers.

At Princeton village,--a thriving country town on a steep bank, with

unkempt backyards running down to and defiling the river,--we again

came across the "Ellen Hardy." She was unloading her light cargo of

wheat as we arrived, and left Princeton an eighth of a mile behind us.

We now had a pleasant little race to White River lock, seven miles

below. With sail set, and paddles to help, we led her easily as far as

the lock. But we thought to gain time by portaging over the dam, and

she gained a lead of at least a mile, although we frequently caught

sight of her towering white hull across the widespreads, by dint of

standing on the thwarts and peering over the tall walls of wild rice

which shut us in as closely as though we had been canoeing in a

railroad cut.

It had been fair and cloudy by turns to-day, but delightfully cool,--a

wonderful improvement on yesterday, when we fairly sweltered, coming

down Buffalo Lake. In the middle of the afternoon, below White River,

a thunder-storm overtook us in a widespread several miles in extent.

Seeking a willow island which abutted on the channel, we made a tent

of the sail and stood the brief storm quite comfortably. We then

pushed on, and, rubber-coated, weathered the few clearing showers in

the boat, for we were anxious to reach Berlin by evening.

At Berlin lock, twelve miles below White River, we portaged the dam,

and, getting into a two-mile current, ate our supper on board. The

river now begins to have firmer banks, and to approach the ridges upon

the southern rim of its basin.

We reached Berlin in the twilight, the landscape of hill and meadow

being softened in the golden glow. The better portion of this

beautiful little city of forty-five hundred inhabitants is situated on

a ridge, closely skirted by the river, with the poorer quarters on the

flats spreading away on either side. There are many charming homes and

the main business street has an air of active prosperity.

We went into dock alongside of the "Ellen Hardy."

THIRD LETTER

THE MASCOUTINS.

OSHKOSH, WIS., June 9, 1887.

My Dear W----: As we passed out of Berlin this morning, a government

dredger was at work by the river-side. We paused on our paddles for

some time, to watch the workings of the ingenious mechanism. There was

something demoniac in the action of the monster, as it craned its

jointed neck amid a quick chorus of jerky puffs from the engine and an

accompaniment of rattling chains. Reaching far out over the bubbling

water, it would open its great iron jaws with a savage clank and,

pausing a moment to gather its energies, dive swiftly into the roily

depth; after swaying to and fro as if struggling with its prey, it

soon reappeared, bearing in its filthy maw a ton or two of blue-black

ooze, the water escaping through its teeth in a score of hissing

torrents; then, turning aside to the heap of dredge-trash, suddenly

vomited forth the foul-smelling mess, and returned for another charge.

It was a singularly fascinating sight, though wofully uncanny.

From Berlin down to Omro, pleasant prairie slopes come down at

intervals to the water's edge, on the south bank; the feature of the

north side being wide expanses of bog, the home of the cranberry, for

which this region is famous. The best marshes, however, are the

pockets, back among the ridges; from these, great drainage-ditches,

with flooding gates, come furrowing through the peat, in dark lines as

straight as an arrow, and empty into the river. It was somewhere about

here, nearer Berlin than Omro,--but exactly where, no man now

knoweth,--that the ancient Indian "nation" of the Mascoutins was

located over two centuries ago; their neighbors, if not their village

comrades, being the Miamis and the Kickapoos. Champlain, the intrepid

founder of Quebec, had heard of their warring disposition as early as

1615. In 1634 Jean Nicolet, the first white man known to have set foot

upon territory now included in the State of Wisconsin, came in a bark

canoe as far up the Fox River as the Mascoutins, and after stopping a

time with them, journeyed southward to the country of the

Illinois.[4] Allouez and his companions also came hither in 1670, and

the good father, in the official report of his adventurous canoeing

trip, says the fort of these people was located a French league (2.4

English miles) "over beautiful prairies" to the south of the river.

Joliet and Marquette, on their way to discover the Mississippi River,

arrived at the fort of the Mascoutins on June 7, 1673, and the latter

gives this graceful sketch of the oak openings hereabouts, which have

not meanwhile perceptibly changed their characteristics: "I felt no

little pleasure in beholding the position of this town; the view is

beautiful and very picturesque, for from the eminence on which it is

perched, the eye discovers on every side prairies spreading away

beyond its reach, interspersed with thickets or groves of lofty

trees."

The Mascoutins are now a lost tribe. As the result of warring habits,

they in turn were crowded to the wall, and a generation after

Marquette's visit the banks of their river knew them no more; the

Foxes, from whom the stream ultimately took its name, were then

predominant, and long continued the masters of the highway.

Sacramento--"as dead as a door-nail, sir"--lies sprawled out over a

pleasant riverside slope to the south. There is the customary air of

fallen grandeur at Sacramento,--big hopes gone to decay;

battlement-fronts, houseless cellars, a universal lack of paint. The

railroads, the real highways of our present civilization, have killed

these little river towns that are away from the track, and they will

never be resurrected. The day of inland water navigation, except for

canoeists, is nearing its close. Settlement clings to the neighborhood

of the rails, and generally avoids rivers as an obstruction to free

transit. The towns that have to be reached by a country ferry are

rotting,--they are off the line of progress. Sacramento boasts a

spouting well by the river-bank, a mammoth village ash-leach, and fond

memories of the day when it was "a bigger town than Berlin." As we

stood in the spray of the fountain, filling our canteen with the

purest and coldest of water, I speculated upon the strong probability

of Sacramento being on the identical bank where the Jesuits beached

their canoes to walk across country to the old Indian village. And the

Doctor, apt to be irreverent as to aboriginal lore, suggested that the

defunct Sacramento should have written over its gate this motto:

"Gone to join the Mascoutins!"

Eureka, a few miles farther down, is also paintless, and her

river-front is artistic with the crumbling ruins of two or three

long-deserted saw-mills. A new Eureka appears, however, to be slowly

building up, to one side of the dead little hamlet,--for there are

smart steam flouring-mill and a model little cheese-factory in full

swing here. The cheese man, an accommodating young fellow who appeared

quite up to the times, and is a direct shipper to the London market,

took a just pride in showing us over his establishment, and stocked

our mess-box with samples of his best brands.

Omro spreads over a sandy plain, upon both sides of the river,--an

excellent wagon-bridge crossing the stream near that of the Chicago,

Milwaukee, and St. Paul railway. Omro, which is the headquarters of

the Wisconsin Spiritualists, who have quite a settlement hereabouts,

is growing somewhat, after a long period of stagnation, having at

present a population of fifteen hundred.

The "Ellen Hardy," which had now caught up with us, after chasing the

canoe from Berlin down, went through the draw in our company. As the

crew rolled off a small consignment of freight, the captain--a

raw-boned, red-faced, and thoroughly good-humored man--leaned out of

the pilot-house window and pleasantly chaffed us about our lowly

conveyance. The conversation ended by his offering to give us a "lift"

through the great Winneconne widespread, to the point where the Wolf

joins the Fox, nine or ten miles below. The "Ellen" was bound for

Winneconne and other points up the Wolf, so could help us no farther.

Of course we accepted the kindly offer, and fastening our painter to a

belaying-pin on the "Ellen's" port, scrambled up to the freight-deck

just as the pilot-bell rang "Forward!" in the smoky little engine-room

far aft.

While I went aloft to enjoy the bird's-eye view obtainable from the

pilot-house, the Doctor discussed fishing with the engineer, whom he

found on closer acquaintance to be a rare, though much-begrimed

philosopher. This engineer is a wizened-up little man, with a face

like a prematurely dried apple, but his eyes gleam with a kindly

light, and he is an inveterate angler. We had noticed him at every

stopping stage,--his head, shoulders, and arms reaching out of the

abbreviated rear window of his caboose,--dangling a line astern. The

Doctor learned that this was his invariable habit. He kept the cook's

galley in fish, and utilized each leisure half-hour in the pursuit of

his favorite amusement. The engineer, good man, had fished, he said,

in nearly every known sea, and the Doctor declared that he "could many

a wondrous fish-tale unfold." In fact, the Doctor declared him to be

the most interesting character he had ever met with, outside of a

hospital, and said he should surely report to his favorite medical

journal this remarkable case of abnormal persistency in an art, amid

the most discouraging physical surroundings. He thought the man's

brain should be dissected, in the cause of science.

The Wolf, which has its rise 150 miles nor'-nor'west of Green Bay, in

a Forest-county lakelet, and takes generous, south-trending curves

away down to Lake Poygan, is properly the noble stream which pours

into Lake Winnebago from the northwest, and then, with a mighty rush,

forces its way northeastward to the Great Lakes, along the base of the

watershed which parallels the western coast of Lake Michigan and

terminates in the sands of the Sturgeon-Bay country. The Jesuit

fathers, in seeking the Mississippi, traced this river above Lake

Winnebago, and on reaching the great widespread at the head of the

Grand Butte des Morts, where the tributary flowing from the southwest

empties its lazy flood into the rushing Fox, pursued that tributary to

the portage and erroneously called their highway by one name, from

Green Bay to the carry. Thus the long-unexplored main river, above the

junction, came to be treated on the maps as a tributary, and to be

dubbed the Wolf. This geographical mistake has been so long persisted

in that correction becomes impracticable, and we must continue to

style the branch the trunk.

This has been a delightful day; the heavens were clear and blue, and a

gentle northeaster fanned our faces in the pilot-house, from which

vantage-point, nearly thirty feet above the river-level, there was

obtainable a bird's-eye view well worthy of canvas. The wild-rice bog,

through which the Fox, here not over thirty yards wide, twists like

the snapper of a whip, is from ten to fifteen miles wide,--a sea of

living green, across which the breeze sends a regular succession of

waves, losing themselves upon the far-distant shores. Upon the

northwestern horizon, the Wolf comes stealing down at the base of a

range of wooded hills. To the west, a flashing line tells where Lake

Poygan "holds her mirror to the sun." The tall smoke-stacks of the

Winneconne saw-mills occupy the middle ground westward. To the east,

in the centre of the picture, one catches glimpses of the consolidated

stream, as its goodly flood quickly glides southeasterly, on a short

spurt toward the Grand Butte des Morts, at the head of which is the

old fur-trading village of the same name. Far southeastward, below the

lake, there is just discernible the great brick chimney of a mammoth

planing-mill,--an Algoma landmark,--and just behind that the black

cloud resting above the Oshkosh factories. It is a broad, bounteous

sweep of level landscape,--monotonous, of course, but imposing from

mere immensity.

At the union of the rivers we bade farewell to our friend the captain;

and the Doctor secured a promise from the engineer to send in his

photograph to the hospital with which the former is connected. The

"Ellen Hardy" stopped her engine as we cast off. In another minute,

the great stern-wheel began to splash again, and we were bobbing up

and down on the bubbly swell, waving farewell to our fellow-travelers

and turning our prow to the southeast, while the roving "Ellen" shaped

her course to Winneconne, where a lot of laths, destined for

Princeton, awaited her arrival.

The low ridge which forms the eastern bank of the Wolf, down to the

junction, soon slopes off to the northeast, in the direction of

Appleton, leaving a broad, level plain, of great fertility, between it

and Lakes Grand Butte des Morts and Winnebago. On this plain are built

the cities of Oshkosh, Neenah, and Menasha. Across it, the

northeaster, freshening to a lively breeze, had full sweep, and

stirred up the Grand Butte des Morts into a wild display of opposition

to our progress. Serried ranks of white-caps came sweeping across the

lake, beating on our port bow, and the little sail, almost bursting

with fulness, careened the canoe to the gunwale, as it swept gayly

along through the foam. The paddles were necessary to keep her well

abreast of the tide, and there was exercise enough in the operation to

prevent drowsiness. The spray flew like a drizzling summer shower, but

our baggage and stores were well covered down, and the weather was too

warm for a body dampener to be uncomfortable.

We passed the dark, gloomy, tumbled-down, but picturesque village of

Butte des Morts, just before entering the lake. Of the twenty-five or

so houses in the place, all but two or three are guiltless of paint.

There is a quaintness about the simple architecture, which gives

Butte des Morts a distinctive appearance. To the initiated, it

betokens the remains of an old fur-trading post; and this was the

genesis of Butte des Morts. It was in 1818 that Augustin Grignon and

James Porlier, men intimately connected with the history of the

French-Indian fur-trade in Wisconsin, set up their shanty dwellings

and warehouses on a little lakeside knoll a mile below the present

village, which was founded by their _voyageurs_ on the site of an old

Menomonee town and cemetery. Some of these post-buildings, together

with the remains of the watch-tower, from which the traders obtained

long advance notice of the approach of travelers, red or white, are

still standing. As we sped by, I pointed out to the Doctor the

location of these venerable relics, which I had, with proper

enthusiasm, carefully inspected fully a dozen summers before, and he

suggested that the knowledge of the approach of a possible customer,

by means of the tower, gave the traders an excellent opportunity to

mark up the goods.

James Porlier's son and successor, Louis B. Porlier, now an aged man,

is the present occupant of the establishment, which is one of the

oldest landmarks in Wisconsin; and there, also, died the famous

Augustin Grignon, historian of his clan. Butte des Morts, in the

early day of the northwest, was something more than a trading-post.

Situated near the union of the upper Fox and the Wolf, it was the

rallying-point for both valleys,--long before Appleton, Neenah,

Menasha or Oshkosh were known, or any of the towns on the upper Fox.

It was the only white man's stopping-place between the portage and

Kaukauna. The mail trail between Green Bay and the portage crossed

here,--for strange to say, the great south-stretching widespread,

which lies like a map before the village, was in those days firm

enough for a horse to traverse with safety; while to-day a boat can be

pushed anywhere between the rushes and rice, and it is _par

excellence_ the great breeding-ground of this section for muskrats and

water-fowl. A scow-ferry was maintained in pioneer times for the

benefit of the mail-carrier and other travelers. Butte des Morts is

mentioned in most of the journals left us by travelers over the

Fox-Wisconsin watercourse, previous to 1835, and here several

important Indian treaties were consummated by government

commissioners.

It is somewhat over fifteen miles from the mouth of the Wolf to

Oshkosh. The run down the lake seemed unusually protracted, for the

city was clearly in sight the entire way, and the distance, over the

flat expanse, was deceptive. Algoma, now a portion of Oshkosh, was

something of a settlement long before the lower town began to grow.

But the latter finally overtook and swallowed the original hamlet.

Algoma is now chiefly devoted to the homes of the employees in the

great planing and saw-milling establishments of Philetus Sawyer,

Wisconsin's senior United States senator, and the wealthy Paine

Brothers. The residences of these lumber kings are on a slope to the

north of the iron wagon-bridge, under which we swept as the booming

whistles of the busy locality, in unison with a noisy chorus of

steam-gongs farther down the river, sounded the hour of six. Through

the gantlet of the mills, with their outlying rafts, their lines of

piling, and their great yards of newly sawn lumber, we sped quickly

on. A half-hour later, we were turning up into a peaceful little dock

alongside the south approach to the St. Paul railway-bridge, the

canoe's quarters for the night. The sun was just plunging below the

clear-cut prairie horizon, as we walked across the fields to the home

of our expectant friends.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Butterfield's "Discovery of the Northwest" (Cincinnati, 1861).

FOURTH LETTER.

THE LAND OF THE WINNEBAGOES.

APPLETON, WIS., June 10, 1887.

My dear W----: We had a late start to-day from Oshkosh. It was

half-past nine o'clock by the time we had reloaded our traps, pushed

off from the railway embankment, and received the God-speed of M----,

who had come down to see us off. The busy town, with its twenty-two

thousand thrifty people, was all astir. The factories and the mills

were resonant with the clang and rattle of industry, and across the

two wagon-bridges of the city proper there were continual streams of

traffic.

I suppose that Oshkosh is, in its way, as widely known throughout this

country as almost any city in it. The name is strikingly outlandish,

being equaled only by Kalamazoo, and furnishes the butt of many a

newspaper joke and comic rhyme. Old chief Oshkosh, whose cognomen

signifies "brave" in Menomonee speech, was the head man of his dusky

tribe, a half-century ago. He was a doughty, wrinkled hero, o'er fond

of fire-water, and wore a battered silk hat for a crown. About 1840,

when the settlement here was four years old, the Government offered to

establish a post-office if the inhabitants would unite on a name for

the place. The whites favored Athens, but the Indians, half-breeds,

and traders round about Butte des Morts, wanted their friend Oshkosh

immortalized, so they came down to the new settlement in force, and

the election being a free-for-all, carried the day. It is said that

the Grignons were so anxious in behalf of the Menomonee sachem that

they had a number of squaws array themselves in trousers and cast

ballots like the bucks. And it was fortunate, as events proved, that

the election turned out as it did, for the oddity of the name has been

a permanent advertisement for a very bright community. Oshkosh, as

hackneyed "Athens," would have been lost to fame. Nobody would think

of going to "Athens" to "have fun with the boys."

The morning air was as clear as a bell,--a pleasant northeast zephyr,

coming in off the body of the lake, slightly ruffling the surface and

reducing the temperature to a delightful tone. The wind not being

fair, the sail was useless, so we paddled along through the broad

river, into the lake and northward past a fishermen's colony, rows of

great ice-houses, the water-works park, and beautiful lake-shore

residences, to Garlic Island. It was half-past twelve, P.M., when we

tied up at the crazy pier which projects from this islet of the

loud-smelling vegetable. A half-century ago Garlic Island was the home

of Iowatuk, the beautiful aboriginal relict of a French

fur-trader,--an Indian princess, the old settlers called her; at all

events, she is reputed to have been a most exemplary person,

well-possessed of this world's goods, as well as a large family of

half-breed children. The island is charmingly situated, a half-mile or

more out from the main land, opposite the Northern Insane Hospital; it

is a forest of ancient elms, surrounded by a bowlder-strewn beach of

some three quarters of a mile in length, and occupied by a

summer-hotel establishment. The name "Garlic Island" does not sound

very well for a fashionable resort, so the insular territory has been

dubbed "Island Park" of late; but "Garlic" has good staying qualities,

and I doubt if they can ever efface the objectionable pioneer title.

We had our dinner on the sward near the pier, convenient to a pump,

and were entertained by watching the approach of a little

steam-launch, loaded with a party of "resorters" who had doubtless

been shopping in Oshkosh, the smoke from whose chimneys rose above the

tree-tops, five miles to the southwest. There were some of the usual

types,--the languid Southern woman, with her two pouting boys in

charge of a rather savage-looking colored nurse, who dragged the

little fellows out over the gang-plank, one in each hand, as though

they had been bags of flour; a fashionable dame, from some northern

metropolis, all ribbons and furbelows, starch and whalebones,

accompanied by her willowy daughter of twenty, almost her counterpart

as to dress, with a pert young miss of fourteen, in abbreviated gown

and overgrown hat, bringing up the rear with the family pug; a

dawdling young Anglo-maniac sucked the handle of his cane and looked

sweetly on the society girl, whose papa, apparently a tired-out

broker, in a well made business costume and a wretched straw hat,

stayed behind to treat the skipper to a prime cigar and arrange for a

fishing excursion.

There is a fine view from the island. The hills and cliffs of Calumet

County, a dozen miles to the east, are dimly visible. Toward Fond du

Lac, on the south, the horizon is the lake. South-southwestward, Black

Wolf Point runs out, just over the verge, and the tops of the tall

trees upon it peep up into view, like shadowy pile-work. Westward are

the well-kept hospital grounds, fringed with stately elms overhanging

the firm, gravelly beach, studded with ice-heaved bowlders, which

extends northward to Neenah. The view to the north and northeast is

delightfully hazy, being now dark with delicate fringes of forest

which cap the occasional limestone promontories, and again losing

itself in a watery sky-line.

We had two pleasant hours at this island-home of the lovely Iowatuk,

walking around it on the bowldered beach, and reveling in the shade of

the grand old elms. By the time we were ready to resume our voyage,

the wind had died down, the lake was as smooth as a marble slab, and

the sun's rays reflected from it converted the atmosphere to the

temperature of a bake-oven. No sooner had we pushed out beyond the

deep shadows of the trees than it seemed as though we had at one

paddle-stroke shot into the waters of a tropic sea. The awning was at

once raised, and served to somewhat mitigate our sufferings, but the

dazzling reflection was there still, to the great discomfort of our

eyes.

After two miles of distress, a bank of light but sharply broken clouds

appeared on the northeastern horizon, and soon a gentle breeze brought

blessed relief. In a few minutes more, ripples danced upon our

starboard quarter, and then the awning had to come down, for it filled

like a fixed sail and counteracted the effect of the paddles. The

Doctor, who, you know full well, never paddles when he can sail,

insisted on running up into the wind and spreading the canvas. He was

just in time, for a squall struck us as he was adjusting the boom

sprit, and nearly sent him overboard while attempting to regain his

seat. Little black squalls now rapidly succeeded each other, the wind

freshening between the gusts; and the Doctor, who was the

sailing-master, had to exercise rare vigilance, for the breeze was

rapidly developing into a young gale, and the ripples had now grown to

be by far the largest waves our little craft had yet encountered. The

situation began to be somewhat serious, as the clouds thickened and

the white-caps broke upon the west beach with a sullen roar. We

therefore deemed it advisable to run into a little harbor to the lee

of a wooded spit, and hold council.

It was a wild, storm-tossed headland, two thirds of the distance down

from the island, and the spit was but one of its many points. We

landed and made an extended exploration, deeming it possible that we

might be obliged to pass the night here; but the result of our

discoveries was to discourage any such project. For a half-mile back

or more the forest proved to be a tangled swamp, filled with fallen

timber and sink-holes, while quicksands lined the harbor where the

canoe peacefully rested behind an outlying fringe of gnarled elms. We

wandered up and down the gravelly beach, in the spray of the breakers,

scrambling over great bowlders and overhanging trunks whose

foundations had been sapped by storm-driven floods; but everywhere was

the same hard, forbidding scene of desolation, with the angry surface

of the lake and the canopy of wind-clouds filling out a picture which,

the Doctor suggested, could have only been satisfactorily executed in

water-colors.

In the course of our wanderings, which were sadly destructive to

clothes and shoe-leather, we had some comical adventures. The Doctor

hasn't got over laughing about one of them yet. We came to an

apparently shallow lagoon, perhaps three rods wide and a dozen long,

beyond which we desired to penetrate. It was bedded with sand and

covered with green slime. The Doctor had, just before, divested

himself of shoes and stockings and rolled his trousers above his

knees, in an enthusiastic hunt for a particularly ponderous frog,

which he desired to pickle in the cause of science. He playfully

offered to carry me across the pool on his back, and thus save me the

trouble of imitating his style of undress. With some misgivings as to

the result, I finally mounted. We progressed favorably as far as the

centre, when suddenly I felt my transport sinking; he gave a desperate

lunge as the water suddenly reached his waist, I sprang forward over

his head, and losing my balance, sprawled out flat upon the slimy

water. I hardly know how we reached firm ground again, but when we

did, we were a sorry-looking pair, as you can well imagine. The Doctor

thought it high sport, as he wrung out his clothes and spread them

upon a bowlder to dry, and I tried hard to join in his boisterous

hilarity; but somehow, as I scraped the gluey slime from my only

canoeing suit, with a bit of old drift shingle, and contemplated the

soppy condition of my wardrobe, I know there must have been a tinge of

sadness in my gaze. It was too much like being shipwrecked on a desert

island.

As we sat, clad in rubber coats, sunning ourselves on the lee side of

a fallen tree and waiting for our garments to again become wearable,

the Doctor read to me an article from his medical journal, describing

a novel surgical operation on somebody's splintered backbone,

copiously illustrating the selection with vivid reports of his own

hospital observations in that direction. This sort of thing was well

calculated to send the shivers down one's spinal column, but the

Doctor certainly made the theme quite interesting and the half-hour

necessary to the drying process soon passed.

By this time it was plain to be seen that the velocity of the wind was

not going to increase before sundown, although it had not slacked. We

determined to try the sea again, and pushed out through the breakers,

with sail close-hauled and baggage canvased. Taking a bold offing into

the teeth of the gale, we ran out well into the lower lake, and then,

on a port tack, had a fine run down to Doty's Island, which divides

the lower Fox into two channels. The city of Neenah, noted for its

flouring and paper mills, is built upon both sides of the southern

channel, or Neenah River; Menasha, with several factories, but

apparently less prosperous than the other, guards the north

channel,--the twin cities dividing the island between them. The

government lock is at Menasha, while at Neenah there is a fine

water-power, with a fall of twelve or fifteen feet,--the "Winnebago

Rapids" of olden time.

It was into Neenah channel that we came flying so gayly, before the

wind. There is a fine park on the mainland shore, with a smartly

painted summer hotel and half a dozen pretty cottages that would do

credit to a seaside resort. To the right the island is studded with

picturesque old elms, shading a closely cropped turf, upon which

cattle peacefully graze, while here and there among the trees are

old-fashioned white cottages, with green blinds, quite after the style

of a sleepy New-England village,--a charming scene of semi-rustic

life; while to seaward Lake Winnebago tosses and rolls, almost to the

horizon.

Doty's is an historic landmark. The rapids here necessitated a

portage, and from the earliest times there have been Indian villages

on the island, more or less permanent in character,--Menomonee, Fox,

and Winnebago in turn. As white traffic over the Fox-Wisconsin

watercourse grew, so grew the importance of this village, whatever the

tribe of its inhabitants; for the bucks found employment in helping

the empty boats over the rapids and in "toting" the goods over the

portage-trail. The Foxes overreached themselves by setting up as

toll-gatherers. It is related--but historians are somewhat misty as to

the details--that in the winter of 1706-7 a French captain, Marin by

name, was sent out by the governor of New France to chastise the

blackmailers. At the head of a large party of French creoles and

half-breeds, he ascended the lower Fox on snowshoes, surprising the

aborigines in their principal village, here at Winnebago Rapids, and

slaughtering them by the hundreds. Afterward, this same Marin

conducted a summer expedition against the Foxes. His boats were filled

with armed men and covered down with oilcloth, as traders were wont to

treat their goods _en voyage_, to escape a wetting. Only two men were

visible in each boat, paddling and steering. Nearly fifteen hundred

dusky tax-gatherers were discovered squatting on the beach at the foot

of the rapids, awaiting the arrival of the flotilla. The canoes were

ranged along the shore. Upon a signal being given, the coverings were

thrown off and volley after volley of hot lead poured into the mob of

unsuspecting savages, a swivel-gun in Marin's boat aiding in the

slaughter. Tradition has it that over a thousand Foxes fell in that

brutal assault. In 1716 another captain of New France, named De

Louvigny, is reported to have stormed the audacious Foxes. They had

not, it seems, been exterminated by previous massacres, for five

hundred warriors and three thousand squaws are alleged to have been

collected within a palisaded fort, somewhere in the neighborhood of

these rapids. De Louvigny is credited with having captured the fort

after a three days' siege, but granted the enemy the honors of war.

Twelve years later the Foxes had again become so troublesome as to

need chastisement. This time the agent chosen to command the

expedition was De Lignery, among whose lieutenants was the noted

Charles de Langlade, Wisconsin's first white settler. But the redskins

had become wise, after their fashion, and fled before the Frenchmen,

who found the villages on the Fox, lower and upper, deserted. The

invaders burned every wigwam and cornfield in sight, from Green Bay to

the portage. This expedition appears to have been followed by others,

until the Foxes, with the allied Sacs, fled the valley, never to

return. Much of this is traditionary.

The widening of the Fox below Doty's Island was called Lac Petit

Butte des Morts,--"Lake Little Hill of the Dead," to distinguish it

from the "Great Hill of the Dead," above Oshkosh.

It has long been claimed that the thousands of Foxes who at various

times fell victims to these massacres in behalf of the French

fur-trade were buried in great pits at Petit Butte des Morts,--near

Winnebago Rapids. But modern investigators lean to the opinion that

the "little hill of the dead" was merely an ordinary Indian cemetery,

and the mound or mounds there are prehistoric tumuli, common enough in

the neighborhood of Wisconsin lakes. A like conclusion, also, has been

arrived at in regard to the Grand Butte des Morts. However, this is

something that the archaeological committee must settle among

themselves.

The Winnebagoes succeeded the Foxes, and Doty's Island became the seat

of their power. The master spirit among them for a quarter of a

century previous to the fall of New France was a French fur-trader

named De Korra or De Cora, who had a Winnebago "princess" for a squaw.

They had a numerous progeny, which De Korra left to his wife's charge

when called to serve under Montcalm in the defence of Quebec. He was

killed in a sortie, and Madame De Korra and her brood relapsed into

barbarism. One half of the Winnebagoes now living are descendants,

more or less direct, of this sturdy old fur-trader, and bear his name,

which is also perpetuated, with varied orthography, in many a

northwestern stream and hamlet. During the first third of the present

century Hoo-Tschope, or Four Legs, was the dusky magnate at this

Winnebago capital.[5] Four Legs was a cunning rascal, well known to

the earliest pioneers, but he at last fell a victim to his greatest

enemy, the bottle. Last month I was visiting among the Winnebagoes

around Black River Falls. Desiring to have a "talk" with Walking

Cloud, a wizened-faced redskin of some seventy-two years, I went out

with my interpreters over the hills and through the valley of the

Black, nearly a dozen miles, before I found him and his squatting in

their wigwams at the base of a bold bluff, fronted by a lovely bit of

vale. Cloud's decrepit squaw, blind in one eye and wofully garrulous,

hobbled up to us, and sinking to her knees in front of me, held out a

dirty, bony hand, with nails like the claws of a bird, murmuring,

"Give! Give!" I dropped a coin into the outstretched palm; she

grinned and chattered like an animated skeleton, and crawled away on

her witch-like crutch. This was the once far-famed and beautiful

princess of the Winnebagoes, the winsome Champche Keriwinke, or Flash

of Lightning, eldest daughter of Hoo-Tschope. How are the mighty

fallen!

We portaged around the island end of the Neenah dam and met the

customary shallows below the obstruction. But soon finding a narrow,

rock-imbedded channel, we glided swiftly down the stream, through the

thrifty town, past the mills and under the bridges, just as the six

o'clock bells had sounded and the factory hands were thronging

homeward, their tin dinner-pails glistening in the sun. Scores of them

stopped to lean over the bridge-rails, and curiously watched us as we

threaded the shallows; for canoes long ago ceased to be a daily

spectacle at Winnebago Rapids.

Little Lake Butte des Morts, just below, is where the river spreads to

a full mile in breadth, the average width of the stream being less

than one half that. The wind was fair, and we came swooping down into

the lake, which is two or three miles long. A half-hour before sunset

we hauled up at a high mossy glade on the north shore, and had

delightful down-stream glimpses of deep vine-clad, naturally terraced

banks, the slopes and summits being generally well wooded. A party of

young men and women were having a camp near us. The woods echoed with

their laughing shouts. A number, with their chaperone, a lovely and

lively old lady, in a white cap with satin ribbons, came down to the

shore to inspect our little vessel and question us as to our unusual

voyage. We returned the call and played lawn tennis with fair

partners, until the fact that we must reach Appleton to-night suddenly

dawned upon us, and we bade a hasty farewell to our joyous wayside

friends.

It was a charming run down to Appleton, between the park-like banks,

which rise to an altitude of fifty feet or more. Every now and then a

pretty summer residence stands prominently out upon a bluff-head, an

architectural gem in a setting of oaks and luxurious pines. At their

bases flows the deep flood of the Lower Fox, black as Erebus in the

shadows, but smiling brightly in the patchy sunlight, and thickly

decked with great bubbles which fairly leap along the course, eager to

reach their far-off ocean goal. But swifter by far than the bubbles

went our canoe as we set the paddles deeply and bent to our work, for

the waters were strange to us, the night was setting in, and Appleton

must be made. It will not do to traverse these rivers after dark

unless well acquainted with the currents, the snags, and the dams, for

disaster may readily overtake the unwary.

Cautiously we now crept along, for in the fast-fading twilight we

could just discern the outlines of the Appleton paper-mills and a

labyrinth of railway bridges, while the air fairly trembled with the

mingled roar of water and of mighty gearing. Across the rapid stream

shot piercing rays from the windows of the electric works, whose

dynamos furnish light for the town and power for the street railway. A

fisherman, tugging against the current, shouted to us to keep hard on

the eastern bank, and in a few minutes more we glided by the stone

pier which buttresses the upper dam, and pulled up in a little

dead-water cove at the base of the Milwaukee and Northern railway

bridge. The bridge-tender's children came down to meet us; the man

himself soon followed; we were permitted to chain up for the night at

his pier, and to deposit our bulky baggage in his kitchen; he

accompanied us over the long bridge which spans the noisy apron and

the rushing race. A misstep between the ties would send one on a

short cut to the hereafter, but we safely crossed, ascended two or

three steep flights of stairs to the top of the bank, and in a minute

or two more were speeding up town to our hotel, aboard an electric

street railway car.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] See Mrs. Kinzie's "Wau-Bun" for reminiscences of Four Legs.

FIFTH LETTER.

LOCKED THROUGH.

LITTLE KAUKAUNA, WIS., June 11, 1887.

My Dear W----: We took an extended stroll around Appleton after

breakfast. It is a beautiful city,--the gem of the Lower Fox. The

banks are nearly one hundred feet high above the river level. They are

deeply cut with ravines. Hillside torrents, quickly formed by heavy

rains, as quickly empty into the stream, draining the plateau of its

superfluous surface water, and in the operation carving these great

gulches through the soft clay. And so there are many steep inclines in

the Appleton highways, and the ravines are frequently bridged by dizzy

trestle-works; but the greater part of the city is on a high, level

plain, the wealthy dwellers courting the summits of the river banks,

where the valley view is panoramic. The little Methodist college, with

its high-sounding title of Lawrence University, is an excellent

institution, and said to be growing; it gives a certain scholastic

tinge to Appleton society, which might otherwise be given up to the

worship of Mammon, for there is much wealth among the manufacturers

who rule the city, and prosperity attends their reign.

There is a good natural water-power here, but the Fox-Wisconsin

improvement has made it one of the finest in the world. If the

improvement scheme is a flat failure elsewhere, as is beginning to be

generally believed, it certainly has been the making of this valley of

the Lower Fox. From Lake Winnebago down to the mouth, the rapids are

frequent, the chief being at Neenah, Appleton, Kaukauna, Little

Kaukauna, and Depere. Of the twenty-six locks from Portage down,

seventeen are below our stopping-point of last night; the fall at

each, at this stage of water being about twelve feet on the average.

Each of these locks involves a dam; and when the stream is thus

stemmed and all repairs maintained, at the expense of the general

government, it is a simple matter to tap the reservoir, carry a race

along the bank, and have water-power _ad libitum_. Not half the

water-power in sight, not a tenth of that possible is used. There is

enough here, experts declare, to turn the machinery of the world. No

wonder the beautiful valley of the Lower Fox is rich, and growing

richer.

It was no holiday excursion to portage around the Appleton locks this

morning. At none of them could we find the tenders, for the Menasha

lock being broken, there is no through navigation from Oshkosh to

Green Bay this week, and way traffic is slight. We had neglected to

furnish ourselves with a tin horn, and the vigorous use of lung power

failed to achieve the desired result. The banks being steep and

covered with rock chips left by the stone-cutters employed on the

work, we had some awkward carries, and felt, as we finally passed the

cordon and set out on the straight eastward stretch for Kaukauna, that

we were earning our daily bread.

Kaukauna, the Grand Kackalin of the Jesuits and early French traders,

is ten miles below Appleton. Here are the most formidable rapids on

the river, the fall being sixty feet, down an irregular series of

jagged limestone stairs some half mile in extent. Indians, in their

light bark canoes and practically without baggage, can, in high water,

make the passage, up or down, by closely hugging the deeper and

stiller water on the north bank; but the French traders invariably

portaged their goods, allowing the voyageurs to carry over the empty

boats, the men walking in the water by the side, pushing, hauling, and

balancing, amid a stream of oaths from their bourgeois, or master, who

remained at his post. I had had an idea that in our little craft we

might safely make the venture of a shoot down the stairs, by

exercising caution and following the Indian channel. But this was

previous to arrival. Leaving the Doctor to guard the canoe from a

crowd of Kaukauna urchins, who were disposed to be over-familiar with

our property, I went down through a boggy field to view the situation.

It is a grand sight, looking up from the bottom of the rapids. The

water is low, and at every few rods masses of rock project above the

seething flood, specimens of what line the channel. The torrent comes

down with a mighty roar, lashing itself into a fury of spray and foam

as it leaps around and over the obstructions, and takes great lunges

from step to step. There are several curves in the basin of the

cataract, which add to its artistic effect, while it is deeply fringed

by stunted pines and scrub oaks, having but a slender footing in the

shallow turf which covers the underlying stratum of limestone.

Whatever may be the condition of the falls at Kaukauna in high water,

it is certain that at this stage a canoe would be dashed to splinters

quite early in the attempt to scale them.

But a portage of half a mile was not to our taste in the torrid

temperature we have been experiencing to-day, and we determined to

maintain the rights of free navigators by obliging the tenders to put

us through the five great locks, which are here necessary to lower

vessels from the upper to the lower level. These tenders receive ample

compensation, and many of them are notoriously lazy. It is but seldom

that they are compelled to exercise their muscles on the gates; for

navigation on the Fox is spasmodic and unimportant. As I have said in

one of my previous letters, even a saw-log has the right of way; and

government paid a goodly sum to the speculators from whom it purchased

this improvement, that free tollage might be established here for all

time. And so it was that, perhaps soured a little by our Appleton

experience, we determined at last to test the matter and assert the

privileges of American citizens on a national highway.

On regaining my messmate, we took a general view of Kaukauna,--which

spreads over the banks and a prairie bottom on both sides of the

river, and is a growing, bustling, freshly built little factory

town,--and then re-embarked to try our fortune at the lock-gates.

Heretofore we had considerately portaged every one of these

obstructions, except at Princeton, where we went through under the

"Ellen Hardy's" wing.

A stalwart Irishman, in his shirt-sleeves, and smoking a clay pipe

with that air of dogged indifference peculiar to so many government

officials, leaned over a capstan at the upper lock, and dreamily

stared at the approaching canoe. The lock was full, the last boat

having passed up a day or two before. The upper gates being open, we

pushed in, and took up our station in the centre of the basin, to

avoid the "suck" during the emptying process. The Doctor took out of

the locker a copy of his medical journal and I a novel, and we settled

down as though we had come to stay. The Irishman's face was at first a

picture of dumb astonishment, and then he sullenly picked up his coat

from the grass, and began to walk off in the direction of the town.

"Hi, my friend!" shouted the Doctor, good-naturedly. "We are waiting

to get locked through."

The tender returned a step, his eyes opened wide, his brows knit, and

in his wrath he stuttered, "Ph-h-a-t! Locked through in that theer

s-s-k-i-ff? Ye're cr-razy, mon!"

"Oh, not at all. We understand our rights, and wish you to lock us

through. And, if you please, we're in something of a hurry." As I said

this I consulted my watch, and after returning it to my pocket resumed

a vacant gaze upon the outspread leaves of the novel.

The tender--for we had guessed rightly; it was the tender--advanced to

the edge of the basin, and looked with inexpressible scorn upon our

Liliputian craft. "Now, look here, gints," he said, somewhat more

conciliatory, "I've been here for twinty years, an' know the law; an'

the law don't admit no skiffs, ye mind y'ur eye. An' the divil a bit

of lockage will ye git here, an' mind that!" And then he walked away.

We were very patient. The rim of the lock became lined with small boys

and smaller girls, for this is Saturday, and a school holiday; and

there was great wonderment at the men in the canoe, who "were having a

bloody old row with Barney, the lock-tinder," as one boy vigorously

expressed the situation to a bevy of new-comers. By and by Barney

returned to see if we were still there. We were, and were so

abstracted that we did not heed his presence.

"Will, ye ain't gone yit, I see?" said Barney.

The Doctor roused himself, and pulling out his watch, appeared to be

greatly surprised. "I do declare," he ejaculated, "if we haven't been

waiting here nearly half an hour! I say, my man, this sort of delay is

inexcusable. It will read badly in a report to the Engineering Bureau.

What is your number, sir?" And with a stern expression he produced his

tablets, prepared to jot down the numeral.

Barney was clearly weakening. His return to see if the "bluff" had

worked was an evidence of that. The Doctor's severe official manner,

and our quiet persistence appeared to convince Barney that he had made

a grave mistake. So he hurried off to the lower capstans, growling

something about being "oft'n fooled with fish'n' parties." When we

were through we left Barney a cigar on the curbing, and gently

admonished him never again to be so rude to canoeists, or some day he

would get reported. As we pushed off he bade us an affectionate

farewell, and said he had sent his "lad" ahead to see that we had no

trouble at the four lower locks. We did not see the lad; but certain

it is that the other tenders were prompt and courteous, and we felt

that the cigars which we distributed along the Kaukauna Canal were not

illy bestowed.

Progress was slow to-day, owing to the delays in locking. Ordinarily,

we make from thirty to forty miles,--on the Rock, you remember, we

averaged forty. But it was nearly sunset when we passed under the old

wagon bridge at Wrightstown, only seventeen miles below our

starting-point of this morning. We paused for a minute or two, to talk

with a peaceably disposed lad, who was the sole patron of the bridge

and lay sprawled across the board foot-walk, with his head under the

railing, fishing as contentedly as though he lay on a grassy bank,

after the manner of the gentle Izaak. When old Mr. Wright was around,

Wrightstown may have been quite a place. But it is now going the way

of so many river towns. There is a small, rickety saw-mill in

operation, to which farmers from the back country haul in pine logs,

of which there are some hundreds neatly piled in an adjoining field.

Another saw-mill shell is hard by, the home of owls and bats,--a

deserted skeleton, whose spirit, in the shape of machinery, has

departed to Ashland, a more modern paradise of the buzz-saw. The

village, dressed in that tone of pearly gray with which kind Nature

decks those habitations left paintless by neglectful man,--is

prettily situated on the high banks which uniformly hedge in the Lower

Fox. On the highest knoll of all is a modest little frame church whose

spire--white, after a fashion--is a prominent landmark to river

travelers. There are the remains of once well-kept gardens, upon the

upper terraces; of somewhat elaborate fences, now swaying to and fro

and weak in the knees; of sidewalks which have become pitfalls; of

impenetrable thickets of lilacs, hedging lonely spots that once were

homes. On the village street, only a few idlers were seen, gathered in

knots of two or three in front of the barber shop and the saloons; the

smith at his forge was working late, shoeing a country team; and two

angular dames, in rusty sun-bonnets, were gossiping over a barn-yard

gate. That was all we saw of Wrightstown, as we drifted northward in

company with the reeling bubbles, down through the deepening shadow

cast by the western bank.

Here and there, where the land chances to slope gently to the water's

edge, are small piles of logs, drawn on farm sleds during the winter

season from depleted pineries, all the way from three to ten miles

back. When wanted at the saw-mills down the river, or just above, at

Wrightstown, they are loosely made up into small rafts and poled to

market. Along the stream there are but few pines left, and they

generally crown some rocky ledge, not easily accessible. A few small

clumps are preserved, however, relics of the forest's former state, to

adorn private grounds or enhance the gloomy tone of little hillside

cemeteries. There must have been an impressive grandeur about the

scenery of the Lower Fox in the early day, before the woodman's axe

leveled the great pines which then swept down in solid rank to the

river beach, closely hedging in the dark and rapid flood.

We lunched upon a stone terrace, above which swayed in the evening

breeze the dense, solemn branches of a giant native, one of the last

of his fated race. The channel curved below, and the range of vision

was short, between the stately banks, heavily fringed as they are with

aspen and scrub-oak. As we sat in the gathering gloom and gayly

chatted over the simple adventures which are making up this week of

ideal vacation life, there came up from the depths below the steady

swish and pant of a river steamboat,--rare object upon our lonesome

journey. As the bulky craft came slowly around the bend, the pant

became a subdued roar, awakening a dull echo from the wooded slopes. A

small knot of passengers lolled around the pilot-house, on which we

were just able to discern the name "Evalyn, of Oshkosh," in burnished

gilt; on the freight deck there were bales and boxes of merchandise,

and heaps of lumber; two stokers were feeding cord-wood to the furnace

flames, which lit the scene with lurid glare, after the fashion of

theatric fires; the roustabouts were fastening night lanterns to the

rails. The V-shaped wake of her wheelbarrow stern broke upon the

shores like a tidal wave, and the canoe, luckily well fastened to the

roots of a stranded tree, bobbed up and down as would a chip tossed on

the billows.

Four miles below Wrightstown is Little Kaukauna. There are three or

four cottages here, well up on the pleasant western bank, overlooking

a deserted saw-mill property; while just beyond, a government lock

does duty whenever needed, and the rest of the now broadened stream is

stemmed by a magnificent dam, from the foot of which arises a dense

cloud of vapor, such is the force of the torrent which pours with a

mighty sweep over the great chute. As we stole down upon the hamlet,

the moon, a day or two past full, was just rising over the opposite

hillocks; a tall pine standing out boldly from its lesser fellows,

was weirdly silhouetted across her beaming face, and in the cottage

windows lights gleamed a homely welcome.

We were cordially received at the house of the patriarch of the

settlement. We made our craft secure for the night, "toted" our

baggage up the bank, and paused upon the broad porch of our new-found

friend to contemplate a most charming moonlit view of river and forest

and glade and cataract; the cloud of mist rising high above the

roaring declivity seemed as an incense offering to the goddess of the

night.

SIXTH LETTER.

THE BAY SETTLEMENT.

GREEN BAY, WIS., June 13, 1887.

My Dear W----: We had a quiet Sunday at Little Kaukauna. Being a

delightful day, we went with our entertainers to the country church, a

mile or two back across the fields, and whiled away the rest of the

time in strolling through the woods and gossiping with the farmers

about the crops and the government improvement,--fertile themes. It

appears that this diminutive hamlet of four or five houses anticipates

a "boom," and there is some feverish anxiety as to how much village

lots ought to bring as a "starter" when the rush actually opens. A

syndicate has purchased the long-abandoned water-power, and it is

whispered that paper-mills are to be erected, with cottages for

operatives, and all that sort of thing. Then, the church and the depot

will have to be brought into town; the proprietor of the cross-roads

grocery, now out on the "country road," will be erecting a brick

"block" by the river side; somebody will be starting a daily paper,

printed from stereotype plates imported from Oshkosh or Chicago; and a

summer resort hotel with a magnetic spring, will doubtless cap the

climax of village greatness. I shall look with interest on reports

from the Little Kaukauna boom.

It was nine o'clock this morning before we dipped paddle and bore down

to the lock gates. The good-natured tender "dropped" us through with

much alacrity. The river gradually widens, and here and there the high

rolling banks recede for some distance, and marshes and bayous,

excellent hunting-grounds, border the stream. A half mile below the

lock we noticed a roughly built hut, open at front, such as would

quarter a pig in the shanty outskirts of a great city. It looked

lonesome, on the edge of a wide bog, with no other sign of habitation,

either human or animal, in the watery landscape. Curiosity impelled us

to stop. Crossing a plank, which rested one end on a snag and the

other on a stone in front of the three-sided structure, we peered in.

A bundle of rags lay in one corner of the floor of loosely laid

boards; in another was a heap of clamshells, the contents of which

had doubtless been cooked over a little fire which still smouldered in

a neighboring clump of reeds. The odors were noisome, and a foot rise

of water would have swamped out the dweller in this strange abode. We

at once took it for granted that this was either the home of an Indian

or a tramp. Just as we were leaving, however, a frowsy, dirty, but

apparently good-tempered fisherman came rowing up and claimed the

cabin as his home. He said that he spent the greater part of the year

in this filthy hole, hunting or fishing according to the season; in

the winter, he boarded up the front, leaving a hole to crawl out of,

and banked the hut about with reeds and muck. Wrightstown was his

market; and he "managed to scratch," he said, by being economical. I

asked him how much it cost him in cash to exist in this state, which

was but slightly removed from the condition of our ancestral

cave-dwellers. He thought that with twenty-five dollars in cash, he

could "manage to scratch finely" for an entire year, and have besides

"a week off with the boys,"--in other words, one prolonged drinking

bout,--at Wrightstown. He complained, however, that he seldom received

money, being mainly put off with barter. The poor fellow, evidently

something of a simpleton, is probably the victim of sharp practice

occasionally. As we paddled away from this singular character, the

Doctor said that he had a novel-writing friend, given to the

sensational, to whom he would like to introduce The Wild Fisherman of

Little Kaukauna; he thought there was material for a romance here,

particularly if it could be proved, as was quite possible, that the

hut man was the lost heir of a British dukedom.