But the site of another and a stranger romance is but half a mile

farther down. The river there suddenly broadens into a basin, fully

half a mile in width. To the east, the banks are quite abrupt. The

westward shore is a gentle, grass-grown slope, stretching up beyond a

charming little bay formed by a spit of meadow. Near the sandy beach

of this bay a country highway passes, winding in and out and up and

down, as it follows the river and the bases of the knolls. Above this

and commanding delightful glimpses of forest and stream and bayou and

prairie, a goodly hillock is crowned, some seventy-five feet above the

water's edge, with a dark, unpainted, time-worn, moss-grown house,

part log and part frame, set in a deep tangle of lilacs and crabs.

The quaint old structure is of the simple pioneer pattern,--a story

and a half, with gables on the north and south ends of the main part;

and a small transverse wing to the rear, with connecting rooms. The

ancient picket gate creaks on its one rusty hinge. The front door has

the appearance of being nailed up, and across its frame a dozen fat

spiders, most successful of fly fishers, have stretched their gluey

nets. The path, once leading thither, is now o'ergrown with grass and

lilacs, while in the surrounding snarl of weeds and poplar suckers are

seen the blossoming remnants of peonies, and a few old-fashioned

garden shrubs.

The ground is historic. The house is an ancient landmark. It was the

old home of Eleazar Williams, in his day Episcopal missionary and

pretender to the throne of France. Williams was the reputed son of a

mixed-blood couple of the Mohawk band of Indians; in early life, he

claimed to have been born in the vicinity of Montreal, in 1792. A

bright youth, he was educated for the ministry of the Protestant

Episcopal church and sent as a missionary in 1816-1817 to the Oneida

Indians, then located in Oneida county, New York. During the war of

1812, he had been employed as a spy by the American authorities to

trace the movements of British troops in Canada. Williams, from the

first, became engaged in intrigues among the New York Indians, and was

the originator of the movement which resulted, in 1822, in the

purchase by the war department of a large strip of land from the

Menomonees and Winnebagoes, along the Lower Fox River, and the removal

hither of several of the New York bands, accompanied by the scheming

priest. But the result was jealousy between the newcomers and the

original tribes, with sixteen years of confusion and turmoil, during

which Congress was frequently engaged in settling the squabbles that

arose. Williams's original idea was said, by those who knew him best,

to be the "total subjugation of the whole [Green Bay] country and the

establishment of an Indian government, of which he was to be sole

dictator."[6]

But his purpose failed. He came to be recognized as an unscrupulous

fellow, and the majority of the whites and Indians on the Lower Fox,

as well as his clerical brethren, regarded him with contempt. In 1853,

Williams, baffled in every other field of notoriety which he had

worked, suddenly posed before the American public as Louis XVII.,

hereditary sovereign of France. Upon the downfall of the Bourbons in

1792, you will remember that Louis XVI. and his queen, Marie

Antoinette, were beheaded, while their son, the dauphin Louis, an

imbecile child of eight, was cast into the temple tower by the

revolutionists. It is officially recorded that after an imprisonment

of two years the dauphin died in the tower and was buried. But the

story was started and popularly believed, that the real dauphin had

been abducted by the royalists and another child cunningly substituted

to die there in the dauphin's place. The story went that the dauphin

had been sent to America and all traces of him lost, thus giving any

adventurer of the requisite age and sufficiently obscure birth,

opportunity to seek such honor as might be gained in claiming identity

with the escaped prisoner. Williams was too young by eight years to be

the dauphin; he was clearly of Indian extraction,--a fair type of the

half-breed, in color, form, and feature. But he succeeded in deceiving

a number of good people, including several leading doctors in his

church; while an Episcopal clergyman named John H. Hanson attempted,

in two articles in "Putnam's Magazine," in 1853, and afterwards in an

elaborate book, "The Lost Prince," to prove conclusively to the world

that Williams was indeed the son of the executed monarch. While those

who really knew Williams treated his claims as fraudulent, and his

dusky father and mother protested under oath that Eleazar was their

son, and every allegation of Williams, in the premises, had been often

exposed as false, there were still many who believed in him. The

excitement attracted attention in France. One or two royalists came

over to see Williams, but left disappointed; and Louis Philippe sent

him a present of some finely bound books, believing him to be the

innocent victim of a delusion. Williams died in 1858, keeping up his

absurd pretensions to the last.

It was in this house near Little Kaukauna that Williams lived for so

many years, managing and preaching to his scattered flock of immigrant

Indians, and forever seeking some sort of especially profitable

employment, such as accompanying tribal delegations to Washington, or

acting as special commissioner at government payments. In the earliest

days, the house was situated on the spit of meadow I have previously

spoken of; but when the dam at Depere raised the water, the frame was

carried to this higher position.

Williams's wife, an octoroon, whose portrait shows her to have been a

thick-set, stolid sort of woman, died here, a year ago, and is buried

hard by. The present occupants of the house are Mary Garritty, an

Indian woman of sixty-five years, and her half-breed daughter,

Josephine Penney, who in turn has an infant child of two. Mary was

reared by the Williamses, and told us many a curious story of life at

the "agency," as she called it, during the time when "Mr. Williams and

Ma" were alive. Josephine, who confided to me that she was thirty

years old, was regularly adopted by Mrs. Williams, for whose memory

both women seem to have a very strong respect. What little personal

property was left by the old woman goes to her grandchildren,

intelligent and well-educated Oshkosh citizens, but Josephine has the

sandy farm of sixty-five acres. She took me into the attic to exhibit

such relics of the alleged dauphin as had not been disposed of by the

administrator of the estate. There were a hundred or two mice-eaten

volumes, mainly theological and school text-books; several old volumes

of sermons,--for Eleazar is said to have considered it better taste in

him to copy a discourse from an approved authority than to endeavor to

compose one that would not satisfy him half as well; a boxful of

manuscript odds and ends, chiefly letters, Indian glossaries and

copied sermons; two or three leather-bound trunks, a copper tea-kettle

used by him upon his long boat journeys, and a pair of antiquated

brass candlesticks.

Then we descended to the old orchard. Mary pointed out the spot, a rod

or two south of the dwelling, where Williams had his library and

mission-office in a log-house that has long since been removed for

firewood. In this cabin, which had floor dimensions of fifteen by

twenty feet, Williams met his Indian friends and transacted business

with them. Mary, in her querulous tone, said that in those days the

place abounded with Indians, night and day, and as they always

expected to be fed, she had her hands full attending to their wants.

"There wa'n't no peace at all, sir, so long as Mr. Williams were here;

when he were gone there wa'n't so many of them, an' we got a rest,

which I were mighty thankful for." Garrulous Mary, in her moccasins

and blanket skirt, with a complexion like brown parchment and as

wrinkled,--almost a full-blood herself,--has lived so long apart from

her people that she appears to have forgotten her race, and inveighed

right vigorously against the unthrifty and beggarly habits of the

aborigines. "I hate them pesky Indians," she cried in a burst of

righteous indignation, and then turned to croon over Josephine's

baby, as veritable a "little Indian boy" as I ever met with in a

forest wigwam. "He's a fine feller, isn't he?" she cried, as she

chucked her grandson under the chin; "some says as he looks like Mr.

Williams, sir." The Doctor, who is a judge of babies, declared, in a

professional tone that did not admit of contradiction, that the infant

was, indeed, a fine specimen of humanity.

And thus we left the two women in a most contented frame of mind, and

descended to the beach, bearing with us Josephine's parting salute,

shouted from the garden gate,--"Call agin, whene'er ye pass this way!"

Depere is five miles below. The banks are bold as far as there; but

beyond, they flatten out into gently sloping meadows, varied here and

there by the re-approach of a high ridge on the eastern shore,--the

western getting to be quite marshy by the time Fort Howard is reached.

At Depere are the first rapids of the Fox, the fall being about twelve

feet. From the earliest period recorded by the French explorers, there

was a polyglot Indian settlement upon the portage-trail, and in

December, 1669, the Jesuit missionary Allouez established St. Francis

Xavier mission here, the locality being henceforth styled "Rapide des

Peres." It was from this station that Allouez, Dablon, Joliet, and

Marquette started upon their memorable canoe voyages up the Fox, in

search of benighted heathen and the Mississippi River. For over a

century Rapide des Peres was a prominent landmark in Northwestern

history. The Depere of to-day is a solid-looking town, with an iron

furnace, saw-mills, and other industries; and after a long period of

stagnation is experiencing a healthy business revival.

Unable to find the tender at this the last lock on our course, we

portaged after the manner of old-time canoeists, and set out upon the

home stretch of six miles. Green Bay, upon the eastern bank and Fort

Howard upon the western, were well in view; and, it being not past two

o'clock in the afternoon of a cool and somewhat cloudy day, we allowed

the current to be our chief propeller, only now and then using the

paddles to keep our bark well in the main current.

The many pretty residences of South Green Bay, including the ruins of

Navarino, Astor, and Shanty Town, are situated well up on an

attractive sloping ridge; but the land soon drops to an almost swampy

level, upon which the greater portion of the business quarter is

built. Opposite, Fort Howard with her mills and coal-docks skirts a

wide-spreading bog, much of the flat, sleepy old town being built

on a foundation of saw-mill offal. Historically, both sides of the

river may be practically treated as the old "Bay Settlement" for two

and a half centuries one of the most conspicuous outposts of

American civilization. Here came savage-trained Nicolet, exploring

agent of Champlain, in 1634, when Plymouth colony was still in

swaddling-clothes. It was the day when the China Sea was supposed to

be somewhere in the neighborhood of the Great Lakes. Nicolet had heard

that at Green Bay he would meet a strange people, who had come from

beyond "a great water" to the west. He was therefore prepared to meet

here a colony of Chinamen or Japanese, if indeed Green Bay were not

the Orient itself. His mistake was a natural one. The "strange people"

were Winnebago Indians. A branch of the Dakotahs, or Sioux, a distinct

race from the Algonquins, they forced themselves across the

Mississippi River, up the Wisconsin, and down the Fox, to Green Bay,

entering the Algonquin territory like a wedge, and forever after

maintaining their foothold upon this interlocked water highway. "The

great water," supposed by Nicolet to mean the China Sea, was the

Mississippi River, beyond which barrier the Dakotah race held full

sway. As he approached, one of his Huron guides was sent forward to

herald his coming. Landing near the mouth of the river, he attired

himself in a gorgeous damask gown, decorated with gayly colored birds

and flowers, expecting to meet mandarins who would be similarly

dressed. A horde of four or five thousand naked savages greeted him.

He advanced, discharging the pistols which he held in either hand, and

women and children fled in terror from the manitou who carried with

him lightning and thunder.

The mouth of the Fox was always a favorite rallying-point for the

savages of this section of the Northwest, and many a notable council

has been held here between tribes of painted red men and Jesuits,

traders, explorers, and military officers. Being the gateway of one of

the two great routes to the Mississippi, many notable exploring and

military expeditions have rested here; and French, English, and

Americans in turn have maintained forts to protect the interests of

territorial possession and the fur-trade.

Here it was that a white man first set foot on Wisconsin soil; and

here, also, in 1745, the De Langlades, first permanent settlers of

the Badger State, reared their log cabins and initiated a semblance of

white man's civilization. Green Bay, now hoary with age, has had an

eventful, though not stirring history. For a hundred years she was a

distributing-point for the fur-trade.

The descendants of the De Langlades, the Grignons and other colonists

of nearly a century and a half standing, are still on the spot; and

the gossip of the hour among the _voyageurs_ and old traders still

left among us is of John Jacob Astor, Ramsay Crooks, Robert Stuart,

Major Twiggs, and other characters of the early years of our century,

whose names are well known to frontier history. The creole quarter of

this ancient town, shiftless and improvident to-day as it always has

been, lives in an atmosphere hazy with poetic glamour, reveling in the

recollection of a once festive, half-savage life, when the _courier de

bois_ and the _engage_ were in the ascendency at this forest outpost,

and the fur-trade the be-all and end-all of commercial enterprise.

Your _voyageur_, scratching a painful living for a hybrid brood from

his meager potato patch, bemoans the day when Yankee progressiveness

dammed the Fox for Yankee saw-mills, into whose insatiable maws were

swept the forests of his youth, and remembers nought but the sweets

of his early calling among his boon companions, the denizens of the

wilderness.

In Shanty Town, Astor, and Navarino there yet remain many dwellings

and trading warehouses of the olden time,--unpainted, gaunt,

poverty-stricken, but with their hand-hewed skeletons of oak still

intact beneath the rags of a century's decay. A hundred years is a

period quite long enough in our land to warrant the brand of

antiquity, although a mere nothing in the prolonged career of the Old

World. In the rapidly developing West, a hundred years and less mark

the gap between a primeval wilderness and a complete civilization.

Time, like space, is, after all, but comparative. In these hundred

years the Northwest has developed from nothing to everything. It is as

great a period, judging by results, as ten centuries in

Europe,--perhaps fifteen. America is said to have no history. On the

contrary, it has the most romantic of histories; but it has lived

faster and crowded more and greater deeds into the past hundred years

than slow-going Europe in the last ten hundred. The American

centenarian of to-day is older by far than the fabled Methuselah.

Green Bay, classic in her shanty ruins, has been somewhat halting in

her advance, for the creoles hamper progressiveness. But as the

_voyageurs_ and their immediate progeny gradually pass away, the

community creeps out from the shadow of the past and asserts itself.

The ancient town appears to be taking on a new and healthy growth, in

strange contrast to the severe and battered architecture of frontier

times. Socially, Green Bay is delightful. There are many old families,

whose founders were engaged in superintending the fur-trade and

transportation lines, or holding government office, civil or military,

at the wilderness post. This element, well educated and reared in

comfort, gives a tone of dignified, old-school hospitality to the best

society,--it is the Knickerbocker Colony of the Bay Settlement.

At four o'clock we pushed into a canal in front of the Fort Howard

railway depot, and half an hour later had crossed the bridge and were

registered at a Green Bay hotel. The Doctor, called home to resume the

humdrum of his hospital life, will leave for the South to-morrow noon.

I shall remain here for a week, reposing in the shades of antiquity.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Wis. Hist. Colls., vol. ii. p. 425.

THE WISCONSIN RIVER.

THE WISCONSIN RIVER.

CHAPTER I.

ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS.

Our watches, for a wonder, coincided on Monday afternoon, Aug. 22,

1887. This phenomenon is so rare that W---- made a note in her diary

to the effect that for once in its long career my time-piece was

right. It was five minutes past two. The place was the beach at

Portage, just below the old red wagon-bridge which here spans the

gloomy Wisconsin. A teamster had hauled us, our canoe, and our baggage

from the depot to the verge of a sand-bank; and we had dragged our

faithful craft down through a tangle of sand-burrs and tin cans to the

water's edge, and packed the locker for its third and final voyage of

the season. A German housewife, with red kerchief, cap, and tucked-up

skirt, stood out in the water on the edge of a gravel-spit, engaged in

her weekly wrestle with the family wash,--a picturesque,

foreign-looking scene. On the summit of a sandy promontory to our

left, two other German housewives leaned over a pig-yard fence and

gazed intently down at these strange preparations. Back of us were the

wooded sand-drifts of Portage, once a famous camping-ground of the

Winnebagoes; before us, the dark, treacherous river, with its shallows

and its mysterious depths; beyond that, great stretches of sand-fields

thick-strewn with willow forests and, three or four miles away, the

forbidding range of the Baraboo Bluffs, veiled in the heavy mist which

was rapidly closing upon the valley.

We feared that we were booked for a stormy trip, as we pushed out into

the bubble-strewn current and found that a cold east wind was blowing

over the flats and rowing-jackets were essential.

Portage City, a town of twenty-five hundred inhabitants, occupies the

southeastern bank for a mile down. Like Green Bay and Prairie du

Chien, it was an outgrowth of the necessities of the early fur-trade.

Upon the death of that trade it languished and for a generation or

two was utterly stagnant. As a rural trading centre it has since grown

into a state of fair prosperity, although the presence of many of the

old-time buildings of the Indian traders and transporters gives to

much of the town a sadly decayed appearance. For two or three miles we

had Portage in view, down a straight course, until at last the

thickening mist hid the time-worn houses from view, and we were fairly

on our way down the historic Wisconsin, in the wake of Joliet and

Marquette, who first traversed this highway to the Mississippi, two

hundred and fourteen years ago.

Marquette, in the journal of his memorable voyage, says of the

Wisconsin, "It is very broad, with a sandy bottom, forming many

shallows, which render navigation very difficult." The river has been

frequently described in the journals of later voyagers, and government

engineers have written long reports upon its condition, but they have

not bettered Marquette's comprehensive phrase.

The general government has spent enormous sums in an endeavor to make

the Fox-Wisconsin water highway practicable for the passage of large

steam-vessels between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. It

was of great service, in its natural state, for the passage into the

heart of the continent of that motley procession of priests,

explorers, cavaliers, soldiers, trappers, and traders who paddled

their canoes through here for nearly two hundred years, the pioneers

of French, English, and American civilization in turn. It is still a

tempting scheme, to tap the main artery of America, and allow modern

vessels of burden to make the circuit between the lakes and the gulf.

The Fox River is reasonably tractable, although this season the stage

of water above Berlin has been hardly high enough to float a

flat-boat. But the Wisconsin remains, despite the hundreds of

wing-dams which line her shores, a fickle jade upon whom no reliance

whatever can be placed. The current and the sand-banks shift about at

their sweet will over a broad valley, and the pilot of one season

would scarcely recognize the stream another. Navigation for crafts

drawing over a foot of water is practically impossible in seasons of

drought, and uncertain in all. A noted engineer has playfully said

that the Wisconsin can never be regulated, "until the bottom is lathed

and plastered;" and another officially reported, over fifteen years

ago, that nothing short of a continuous canal along the bank, from

Portage to Prairie du Chien, will suffice to meet the expectations of

those who favor the government improvement of this impossible highway.

In the neighborhood of Portage, the wing-dams,--composed of mattresses

of willow boughs, weighted with stone,--are in a reasonable degree of

preservation and in places appear to be of some avail in contracting

the channel. But elsewhere down the river, they are generally mere

hindrances to canoeing. The current, as it caroms from shore to shore,

pays but little heed to these obstructions and we often found it

swiftest over the places where black lines of willow twigs bob and

sway above the surface of the rushing water; while the channel staked

out by the engineers was the site of a sand-field, studded with

aspen-brush.

It is a lonely run of an hour and a half down to the mouth of the

Baraboo River, through the mazes of the wing-dams, surrounded by

desolate bottom lands of sand and wooded bog. The east wind had

brought a smart shower by the time we had arrived off the mouth of

this northern tributary and we hauled up at a low, forested bank just

below the junction, where rubber coats were brought out and canvas

spread over the stores. The rain soon settled into a mere drizzle,

and W----, ever eager in her botanical researches, wandered about

regardless of wet feet, investigating the flora of the locality. The

yellow sneeze-weed and purple iron-weed predominate in great clumps

upon the verge of the bank, and lend a cheerful tone to what would

otherwise be a desolate landscape.

The drizzle finally ceasing, we were again afloat, and after shooting

by scores of wing-dams that had been "snowed under" by shifting sand,

and floating over others that were in the heart of the present

channel, we came to Dekorra, some seven miles below Portage. Dekorra

is a quaint little hamlet, with just five weather-worn houses and a

blacksmith-shop in sight, nestled in a hollow at the base of a bluff

on the southern bank. The river courses at its feet, and from the top

of a naked cliff a ferry-wire stretches high above the stream and

loses itself among the trees on the opposite bottoms. The east wind

whistled a pretty note as it was split by the swaying thread, and the

anvil by the smith's forge rang out in unison, clear as a well-toned

bell. A crude cemetery, apparently containing far more graves than

Dekorra's present census would show inhabitants, flanks the faded-out

settlement on the shoulder of an adjoining hill. The road to the

tattered ferry-boat, rotting on the beach, gave but little evidence

of recent use, for Dekorra is a relic.

The valley of the Wisconsin is from three to five miles broad, flanked

on either side, below the Portage, by an undulating range of imposing

bluffs, from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty feet in

height. They are heavily wooded, as a rule, although there is much

variety,--pleasant grass-grown slopes; naked, water-washed

escarpments, rising sheer above the stream; terraced hills, with

eroded faces, ascending in a regular succession of benches to the

cliff-like tops; steep uplands, either covered with a dense and

regular growth of forest, or shattered by fire or tornado. The ravines

and pocket-fields between the bluffs are often of exceeding beauty,

especially when occupied by a modest little village,--or better, by

some small settler, whose outlet to the country beyond the edge of his

mountain basin may be seen threading the woodlands which tower above

him, or zigzagging through a neighboring pass, worn deep by some

impatient spring torrent in a hurry to reach the river level.

Between these ranges stretches a wide expanse of bottoms, either bog

or sand plain, over all of which the river flows at high water, and

through which the swift current twists and bounds like a serpent in

agony, constantly cutting out new channels and filling up the old,

obeying laws of its own, ever defying the calculations of pilots and

engineers. As it thus sweeps along, wherever its fancy listeth, here

to-day and there to-morrow, it forms innumerable islands which greatly

add to the picturesqueness of the view. Now and then there are two or

three parallel channels, running along for miles before they join,

perplexing the traveler with a labyrinth of water paths. These islands

are often mere sandbars, sometimes as barren as Sahara, again

thick-grown with willows and seedling aspens; but for the most part

they are well-wooded, their banks gay with the season's flowers, and

luxuriant vines hanging in deep festoons from the trees which overhang

the flood. At their heads, often high up among the branches of the

elms, are great masses of driftwood, the remains of shattered

lumber-rafts or saw-mill offal from the great northern pineries,

evidencing the height of the spring flood which so often converts the

Wisconsin into an Amazon.

Because of this spreading habit of the stream, the few villages along

the way are planted on the higher land at the base of the bluffs, or

on an occasional sandy pocket-plateau which the river, as in ages

past it has worn its bed to lower levels, has left high and dry above

present overflows. Some of these towns, in their fear of floods, are

situated two or three miles back from the water highway; others, where

the channel chances to closely hug a line of bluffs, are directly

abutting the river, which is crossed at such points by either a ferry

or a toll-bridge.

Desolate as is the prospect from Dekorra's front door, we found the

limestone cliff there, a mine of attractiveness. The river has worn

miniature caves and grottoes in its base; at the mouths of several of

these there are little rocky beaches, whose overhanging walls are

flecked with ferns, lichens, and graceful columbines.

At six o'clock that evening, in the midst of a dispiriting Scotch

mist, we disembarked upon the northern bank, at the foot of a wooded

bluff, and prepared to settle for the night. Fortunately, we had

advance knowledge of the sparseness of settlement along the river, and

had come with a tent and a cooking outfit, prepared for camping in

case of need. Upon a rocky bench, fifty feet up from the water, we

stretched a rope between two trees, to serve in lieu of a ridge-pole,

and pitched our canvas domicile. It was a lonesome spot which we had

chosen for our night's halt. Owing to the configuration of the bluffs,

it was unlikely that any person dwelt within a mile of us on our

shore. Across the valley, we looked over several miles of bottom

woods, while far up on the opposite slopes could just be discerned the

gables of two white farm-houses, peering out from a wilderness of

trees stretching far and wide, till its limits were lost in the

gathering fog.

It was pitchy dark by the time we had completed our camping

arrangements, and W---- announced that the coffee was boiling over. I

fancy we two must have presented a rather forlorn appearance, as we

crouched at our evening meal around the sputtering little fire, clad

in heavy jackets and rubber coats, for the atmosphere was raw and

clammy. The wood was wet, and the shifting gusts would persist in

blowing the smoke in our eyes, whichever position we took. Every

falling bough, or rustle of a water-laden sapling, was suggestive of

tramps or of inquisitive hogs or cattle, for we knew not what

neighbors we had; many a time we paused, and peering out into the

black night, listened intently for further developments. And then the

strange noises from the river, unnoticed during daylight, were not

conducive to mental ease, when we nervously associated them with

roving fishermen, or perhaps tramps, attracted by our light from the

opposite shore. Sometimes we felt positive that we heard the muffled

creak of oars, fast approaching; then would come loud splashes and

gurgles, and ever and anon it would seem as if some one were slapping

the water with a board. Now near, now far away, approaching and

receding by turns, these mysterious sounds continued through the

night, occasionally relieved by moments of absolute silence. We

afterward discovered that these were the customary refrains sung by

the gay tide, as it washed over the wing-dams, swished around the

sandbanks, and dashed against great snags and island heads.

But we did not know this then, and a certain uneasy lonesomeness

overcame us as strangers to the scene; and I must confess that,

despite our philosophizing, there was but little sleep for us that

first camp out. A neglect to procure straw to soften our rocky

couches, and a woful insufficiency of bed-clothing for a phenomenally

cold August night, added to our manifold discomforts.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAST OF THE SACS.

Dawn came at five, and none too soon. But after thawing out over the

breakfast fire and draining the coffee-pot dry, we were wondrously

rejuvenated; and as we struck camp, were right merry between ourselves

over the foolish nervousness of the night. There was still a raw

northwest wind, but the clouds soon broke, and when, at half-past six,

we again pushed out into the swift-flowing stream, it was evident that

the day would be bright and comfortably cool.

We had some splendid vistas of bluff-girt scenery this morning,

especially near Merrimac, where some of the elevations are the highest

along the river. There are a score of houses at Merrimac, which is the

point where the Chicago and Northwestern railway crosses, over an

immense iron bridge 1736 feet long, spanning two broad channels and

the sand island which divides them. The village is on a rolling

plateau some fifty feet above the water level, on the northern side.

Climbing up to the bridge-tender's house, that one-armed veteran of

the spans, whose service here is as old as the bridge, told me that it

was seldom indeed the river highway was used in these days. "The

railroads kill this here water business," he said.

I found the tender to be something of a philosopher. Most

bridge-tenders and fishermen, and others who pursue lonely occupations

and have much spare time on their hands, are philosophers. That their

speculations are sometimes cloudy does not detract from their local

reputation of being deep thinkers. The Merrimac tender was given to

geology, I found, and some of his ideas concerning the origin of the

bluffs and the glacial streaks, and all that sort of thing, would

create marked attention in any scientific journal. He had some

original notions, too, about the habits of the stream above which he

had almost hourly walked, day and night, the seasons round, for

sixteen long years. The ice invariably commenced to form on the bottom

of the river, he stoutly claimed, and then rose to the surface,--the

ingenious reason given for this remarkable phenomenon being that the

underlying sand was colder than the water. These and other novel

results of his observation, our philosophical friend good-humoredly

communicated, together with scraps of local tradition regarding the

Black Hawk War, and lurid tales of the old lumber-raft days. At last,

however, his hour came for walking the spans, and we descended to our

boat. As we shot into the main channel, far above us a red flag

fluttered from the draw, and we knew it to be the parting salute of

the grizzled sentinel.

At the head of an island half a mile below, it is said there are the

remains of an Indian fort. We landed with some difficulty, for the

current sweeps by its wooded shore with particular zest. Our

examination of the locality, however, revealed no other earth lines

than might have been formed by a rushing flood. But as a reward for

our endeavors, we found the lobelia cardinalis in wonderful profusion,

mingled in striking contrast of color with the iron and sneeze weeds,

and the common spurge. The prickly ash, with its little scarlet berry,

was common upon this as upon other islands, and the elms were of

remarkable size.

We were struck, as we passed along where the river chanced to wash the

feet of steepy slopes, with the peculiar ridging of the turf. The

water having undermined these banks, the friable soil upon their

shoulders had slid, regularly breaking the sod into long horizontal

strips a foot or two wide, the white sand gleaming between the rows of

rusty green. Sometimes the shores were thus striped with zebra-like

regularity for miles together, presenting a very singular and

artificial appearance.

Prominent features of the morning's voyage, also, were deep

bowlder-strewn and often heavily wooded ravines running down from the

bluffs. Although perfectly dry at this season, it can be seen that

they are the beds of angry torrents in the spring, and many a poor

farmer's field is deeply cut with such gulches, which rapidly grow in

this light soil as the years go on. We stopped at one such farm, and

walked up the great breach to very near the house, up to which we

clambered, over rocks and through sand-burrs and thickets, being met

at the gate by a noisy dog, that appeared to be suspicious of

strangers who approached his master's castle by means of the covered

way. The farmer's wife, as she supplied us with exquisite dairy

products, said that the metes and bounds of their little domain were

continually changing; four acres of their best meadow had been washed

out within two years, their wood-lot was being gradually undermined,

and the ravine was eating into their ploughed land with the

persistence of a cancer. On the other hand, her sister's acres, down

the river a mile or two, on the other bank, were growing in extent.

However, she thought their "luck would change one of these seasons,"

and the river swish off upon another tangent.

Upon returning by the gully, we found that its sunny, sloping walls,

where not wooded with willows and oak saplings, were resplendent with

floral treasures, chief among them being the gerardia, golden-rod in

several varieties, tall white asters, a blue lobelia, and vervain,

while the seeds of the Oswego tea, prairie clover, bed-straw, and wild

roses were in all the glory of ripeness. There was a broad, pebbly

beach at the base of the torrent's bed, thick-grown with yearling

willows. A stranded pine-log, white with age and worn smooth by a

generation of storms, lay firmly imbedded among the shingle. The

temperature was still low enough to induce us to court the sunshine,

and, leaning against this hoary castaway from the far North, we sat

for a while and basked in the radiant smiles of Sol.

Prairie du Sac, thirty miles below Portage, is historically noted as

the site for several generations of the chief village of the Sac

Indians. Some of the earliest canoeists over this water-route, in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, describe the aboriginal

community in some detail. The dilapidated white village of to-day

numbers but four hundred and fifty inhabitants,--about one-fourth of

the population assigned to the old red-skin town. The "prairie" is an

oak-opening plateau, more or less fertile, at the base of the northern

range of bluffs, which here takes a sudden sweep inland for three or

four miles.

The Sacs had deserted this basin plain by the close of the eighteenth

century, and taken up their chief quarters in the neighborhood of Rock

Island, near the mouth of Rock River, in close proximity to their

allies, the Foxes, who now kept watch and ward over the west bank of

the Mississippi.

By a strange fatality it chanced that in the last days of July, 1832,

the deluded Sac leader, Black Hawk, flying from the wrath of the

Illinois and Wisconsin militiamen, under Henry and Dodge, chose this

seat of the ancient power of his tribe to be one of the scenes of that

fearful tragedy which proved the death-blow to Sac ambition. Black

Hawk, after long hiding in the morasses of the Rock above Lake

Koshkonong, suddenly flew from cover, hoping to cross the Wisconsin

River at Prairie du Sac, and by plunging across the mountainous

country over a trail known to the Winnebagoes, who played fast and

loose with him as with the whites, to get beyond the Mississippi in

quiet, as he had been originally ordered to do. His retreat was

discovered when but a day old; and the militiamen hurried on through

the Jefferson swamps and the forests of the Four Lake country,

harrying the fugitives in the rear. At the summit of the Wisconsin

Heights, on the south bank, overlooking this old Sac plain on the

north, Black Hawk and his rear-guard stood firm, to allow the women

and children and the majority of his band of two thousand to cross the

intervening bottoms and the island-strewn river. The unfortunate

leader sat upon a white horse on the summit of the peak now called by

his name, and shouted directions to his handful of braves. The

movements of the latter were well executed, and Black Hawk showed good

generalship; but the militiamen were also well handled, and had

superior supplies of ammunition, so when darkness fell the fated

ravine and the wooded bottoms below were strewn with Indian bodies,

and victory was with the whites. During the night the surviving

fugitives, now ragged, foot-sore, and starving, crossed the river by

swimming. A party of fifty or so, chiefly non-combatants, made a raft,

and floated down the Wisconsin, to be slaughtered near its mouth by a

detail of regulars and Winnebagoes from Prairie du Chien; but the mass

of the party flying westward in hot haste over the prairie of the

Sacs, headed for the Mississippi. They lined their rugged path with

the dead and dying victims of starvation and despair, and a sorry lot

these people were when the Bad Axe was finally reached, and the united

army of regulars and militiamen under Atkinson, Henry, and Dodge,

overtook them. The "battle" there was a slaughter of weaklings. But

few escaped across the great river, and the bloodthirsty Sioux

despatched nearly all of those.

Black Hawk was surrendered by the servile Winnebagoes, and after being

exhibited in the Eastern cities, he was turned over to the besotted

Keokuk for safe-keeping. He died, this last of the Sacs, poor, foolish

old man, a few years later; and his bones, stolen for an Iowa museum,

were cremated twenty years after in a fire which destroyed that

institution. A sad history is that of this once famous people. We

glory over the stately progress of the white man's civilization, but

if we venture to examine with care the paths of that progress, we find

our imperial chariot to be as the car of Juggernaut.

The view from the house verandas which overhang the high bank at

Prairie du Sac, is superb. Eastward a half mile away, the grand,

corrugated bluffs of Black Hawk and the Sugar Loaf tower to a height

of over three hundred feet above the river level; while their lesser

companions, heavily forested, continue the range, north and south, as

far as the eye can reach. The river crosses the foreground with a

majestic sweep, while for several miles to the west and southwest

stretches the wooded plain, backed by a curved line of gloomy hills

which complete the rim of the basin.

A mile below, on the same plain, is Sauk City, a shabby town of about

a thousand inhabitants. A spur track of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and

St. Paul railway runs up here from Mazomanie, crossing the river,

which is nearly half a mile wide, on an iron bridge. A large and

prosperous brewery appears to be the chief industry of the place.

Slaughter-houses abut upon the stream, in the very centre of the

village. These and the squalid back-door yards which run down to the

bank do not make up an attractive picture to the canoeist. River

towns differ very much in this respect. Some of them present a neat

front to the water thoroughfare, with flower-gardens and well-kept

yards and street-ends, while others regard the river as a sewer and

the banks as a common dumping ground, giving the traveler by boat a

view of filth, disorder, and general unsightliness which is highly

repulsive. I have often found, on landing at some villages of this

latter class, that the dwellings and business blocks which, riverward,

are sad spectacles of foulness and unthrift, have quite pretentious

fronts along the land highway which the townsfolk patronize. It is as

if some fair dame, who prided herself on her manners and costume, had

rags beneath her fine silks, and unwashed hands within her dainty

gloves. This coming in at the back door of river towns reveals many a

secret of sham.

It was a fine run down to Arena ferry, thirteen miles below Sauk City.

The skies had become leaden and the atmosphere gray, and the sparse,

gnarled poplars on some of the storm-swept bluffs had a ghostly

effect. Here and there, fires had blasted the mountainous slopes, and

a light aspen growth was hastening to garb with vivid green the

blackened ruins. But the general impression was that of dark, gloomy

forests of oak, linden, maple, and elms, on both upland and bottom;

with now and then a noble pine cresting a shattered cliff.

There were fitful gleams of sunshine, during which the temperature was

as high as could be comfortably tolerated; but the northwest wind

swept sharply down through the ravines, and whenever the heavens

became overcast, jackets were at once essential.

The islands became more frequent, as we progressed. Many of them are

singularly beautiful. The swirling current gradually undermines their

bases, causing the trees to topple toward the flood, with many

graceful effects of outline, particularly when viewed above the island

head. And the colors, too, at this season, are charmingly variegated.

The sapping of a tree's foundations brings early decay; and the

maples, especially, are thus early in the season gay with the autumnal

tints of gold and wine and purple, objects of striking beauty for

miles away. Under the arches of the toppling trees, and inside the

lines of snags which mark the islet's former limits, the current goes

swishing through, white with bubbles and dancing foam. Crouching low,

to escape the twigs, one can have enchanting rides beneath these

bowers, and catch rare glimpses of the insulated flora on the

swift-passing banks. The stately spikes of the cardinal lobelia fairly

dazzle the eye with their gleaming color; and great masses of

brilliant yellow sneeze-weed and the deep purple of the iron-weed

present a symphony which would delight a disciple of Whistler. Thus

are the islands ever being destroyed and new ones formed. Those bottom

lands, over there, where great forests are rooted, will have their

turn yet, and the buffeted sand-bars of to-day given a restful chance

to become bottoms. The game of shuttlecock and battledoor has been

going on in this dark and awesome gorge since Heaven knows when. Man's

attempt to control its movements seem puny indeed.

At six o'clock that evening we had arrived at the St. Paul railway

bridge at Helena. The tender and his wife are a hospitable couple, and

we engaged quarters in their cosy home at the southern end of the

bridge. Mrs. P---- has a delightful flower-garden, which looks like an

oasis in the wilderness of sand and bog thereabout. Twenty-three years

ago, when these worthy people first took charge of the bridge, the

earth for this walled-in beauty spot was imported by rail from a more

fertile valley than the Wisconsin; and here the choicest of bulbs and

plants are grown with rare floricultural skill, and the trainmen all

along the division are resplendent in button-hole bouquets, the year

round, products of the bridge-house bower at Helena. W---- and Mrs.

P---- at once struck up an enthusiastic botanical friendship.

Bridge houses are generally most forlorn specimens of railway

architecture, and have a barricaded look, as though tramps were

altogether too frequent along the route, and occasionally made trouble

for the watchers of the ties. This one, originally forbidding enough,

has been transformed into a winsome vine-clad home, gay with ivies,

Madeira vines, and passion, moon, and trumpet flowers, covering from

view the professional dull green affected by "the company's" boss

painter. The made garden, to one side, was choking with a wealth of

bedding plants and greenhouse rarities of every hue and shape of

blossom and leaf.

A dozen feet below the railroad level, spread wide morasses and sand

patches, thick grown with swamp elms and willows. Down the track, a

half mile to the south, Helena's fifty inhabitants are grouped in a

dozen faded dwellings. Three miles westward, across the river, is the

pretty and flourishing village of Spring Green.

It is needless to say that in the isolated home of these lovers of

flowers, we had comfortable quarters. W---- said that it was very much

like putting up at Rudder Grange.

CHAPTER III.

A PANORAMIC VIEW.

The fog on the river was so thick, next morning, that objects four

rods away were not visible. To navigate among the snags and shallows

under such conditions was impossible. But W---- closely investigated

the garden while waiting for the mist to rise, and Mr. P----

entertained me with intelligent reminiscences of his long experience

here. It had been four years, he said, since he last swung the draw

for a river craft. That was a small steamboat attempting to make the

passage, on what was considered a good stage of water, from Portage to

the mouth. She spent two weeks in passing from Arena to Lone Rock, a

distance of twenty-two miles, and was finally abandoned on a sand-bank

for the season. He doubted whether he would have occasion again to

swing the great span. As for lumber rafts, but three or four small

ones had passed down this year, for the railroads were transporting

the product of the great mills on the Upper Wisconsin, about as cheap

as it could be driven down river and with far less risk of disaster.

The days of river traffic were numbered, he declared, and the little

towns that had so long been supported by the raftsmen, on their long

and weary journey from the northern pineries to the Hannibal and St.

Louis markets, were dying of starvation.

I questioned our host as to his opinion of the value of the

Fox-Wisconsin river improvement. He was cautious at first, and claimed

that the money appropriated had "done a great deal of good to the poor

people along the line." Closer inquiry developed the fact that these

poor people had been employed in building the wing dams, for which

local contracts had been let. When his opinion of the value of these

dams was sought, Mr. P---- admitted that the general opinion along the

river was, that they were "all nonsense," as he put it. Contracts had

been let to Tom, Dick, and Harry, in the river villages, who had made

a show of work, in the absence of inspectors, by sinking bundles of

twigs and covering them with sand. Stone that had been hauled to the

banks, to weight the mattresses, had remained unused for so long that

popular judgment awarded it to any man who was enterprising enough to

cart it away; thus was many a barn foundation hereabouts built out of

government material. Sand-ballasted wing-dams built one season were

washed out the next; and so government money has been recklessly

frittered away. Such sort of management is responsible for the loose

morality of the public concerning anything the general government has

in hand. A man may steal from government with impunity, who would be

socially ostracized for cheating his neighbor. There exists a popular

sentiment along this river, as upon its twin, the Fox, that government

is bound to squander about so much money every year in one way or

another, and that the denizens of these two valleys are entitled to

their share of the plunder. One honest captain on the Fox said to me,

"If it wa'n't for this here appropriation, Wisconsin wouldn't get her

proportion of the public money what each State is regularly entitled

to; so I think it's necessary to keep this here scheme a-goin', for to

get our dues; of course the thing ain't much good, so far as what is

claimed for it goes, but it keeps money movin' in these valleys and

makes times easier,--and that's what guvment's for." The honest

skipper would have been shocked, probably, if I had called him a

socialist, for a few minutes after he was declaiming right vigorously

against Herr Most and the Chicago anarchists.

It was half-past nine before the warmth of the sun's rays had

dissipated the vapor, and we ventured to set forth. It proved to be an

enchanting day in every respect.

A mile or so below the bridge we came to the charming site, on the

southern bank, at the base of a splendid limestone bluff, of the

village of Old Helena, now a nameless clump of battered dwellings.

There is a ferry here and a wooden toll-bridge in process of erection.

The naked cliff, rising sheer above the rapid current, was, early in

this century, utilized as a shot tower. There are lead mines some

fifteen miles south, that were worked nearly fifty years before

Wisconsin became even a Territory; and hither the pigs were, as late

as 1830, laboriously drawn by wagons, to be precipitated down a rude

stone shaft built against this cliff, and thus converted into shot.

Much of the lead used by the Indians and white trappers of the region

came from the Helena tower, and its product was in great demand during

the Black Hawk War in 1832. The remains of the shaft are still to be

seen, although much overgrown with vines and trees.

Old Helena, in the earlier shot-tower days, was one of the "boom"

towns of "the howling West." But the boom soon collapsed, and it was a

deserted village even at the time of the Black Hawk disturbance. After

the battle of Wisconsin Heights, opposite Prairie du Sac, the white

army, now out of supplies, retired southwest to Blue Mound, the

nearest lead diggings, for recuperation. Spending a few days there,

they marched northwest to Helena. The logs and slabs which had been

used in constructing the shanties here were converted into rafts, and

upon them the Wisconsin was crossed, the operation consuming two days.

A few miles north, Black Hawk's trail, trending westward to the Bad

Axe, was reached, and soon after that came the final struggle.

We found many groups of pines, this morning, in the amphitheater

between the bluffs, and under them the wintergreen berries in rich

profusion. Some of the little pocket farms in these depressions are

delightful bits of rugged landscape. In the fields of corn, now neatly

shocked, the golden pumpkins seemed as if in imminent danger of

rolling down hill. There are curious effects in architecture, where

the barns and other outbuildings far overtop the dwellings, and have

to be reached by flights of steps or angling paths. Yet here and there

are pleasant, gently rolling fields, nearer the bank, and smooth,

sugar-loaf mounds upon which cattle peacefully graze. The buckwheat

patches are white with blossom. Now and then can just be distinguished

the forms of men and women husking maize upon some fertile upland

bench. And so goes on the day. Now, with pretty glimpses of rural

life, often reminding one of Rhineland views, without the castles;

then, swishing off through the heart of the bottoms for miles, shut in

except from distant views of the hill-tops, and as excluded from

humanity, in these vistas of sand and morass, as though traversing a

wilderness; anon, darting past deserted rocky slopes or through the

dark shadow of beetling cliffs, and the gloomy forests which crown

them.

Lone Rock ferry is nearly fourteen miles below Helena bridge. As we

came in view, the boat was landing a doctor's gig at the foot of a

bold, naked bluff, on the southern bank. The doctor and the ferryman

gave civil answers to our queries about distances, and expressed great

astonishment when answered, in turn, that we were bound for the

mouth of the river. "Mighty dull business," the doctor remarked,

"traveling in that little cockle-shell; I should think you'd feel

afraid, ma'am, on this big, lonesome river; my wife don't dare look at

a boat, and I always feel skittish coming over on the ferry." I

assured him that canoeing was far from being a dull business, and

W---- good-humoredly added that she had as yet seen nothing to be

afraid of. The doctor laughed and said something, as he clicked up his

bony nag, about "tastes differing, anyhow." And, the ferryman trudging

behind,--the smoke from his cabin chimney was rising above the

tree-tops in a neighboring ravine,--the little cortege wound its way

up the rough, angling roadway fashioned out of the face of the bluff,

and soon vanished around a corner. Lone Rock village is a mile and a

half inland to the south.

Just below, the cliff overhangs the stream, its base having been worn

into by centuries of ceaseless washing. On a narrow beach beneath, a

group of cows were chewing their cuds in an atmosphere of refreshing

coolness. From the rocky roof above them hung ferns in many

varieties,--maidenhair, the wood, the sensitive, and the bladder;

while in clefts and grottos, or amid great heaps of rock debris, hard

by, there were generous masses of king fern, lobelia cardinalis, iron

and sneeze weed, golden-rod, daisies, closed gentian, and eupatorium,

in startling contrasts of vivid color. It being high noon, we stopped

and landed at this bit of fairy land, ate our dinner, and botanized.

There was a tinge of triumphant scorn in W----'s voice, when, emerging

from a spring-head grotto, bearing in one arm a brilliant bouquet of

wild flowers and in the other a mass of fern fronds, she cried, "To

think of his calling canoeing a dull business!"

Richland City, on the northern bank, five miles down, is a hamlet of

fifteen or twenty houses, some of them quite neat in appearance.

Nestled in a grove of timber on a plain at the base of the bluffs, the

village presents a quaint old-country appearance for a long distance

up-stream. The St. Paul railway, which skirts the northern bank after

crossing the Helena bridge, sends out a spur northward from Richland

City, to Richland Center, the chief town in Richland county.

Two miles below Richland City, we landed at the foot of an imposing

bluff, which rises sharply for three hundred feet or more from the

water's edge. It is practically treeless on the river side. We

ascended it through a steep gorge washed by a spring torrent. Strewn

with bowlders and hung with bushes and an occasional thicket of elms

and oaks, the path was rough but sure. From the heights above, the

dark valley lay spread before us like a map. Ten miles away, to our

left, a splash of white in a great field of green marked the location

of Lone Rock village; five miles to the right, a spire or two rising

above the trees indicated where Muscoda lay far back from the river

reaches; while in front, two miles away, peaceful little Avoca was

sunning its gray roofs on a gently rising ground. Between these

settlements and the parallel ranges which hemmed in the panoramic

view, lay a wide expanse of willow-grown sand-fields, forested

morasses, and island meadows through which the many-channeled river

cut its devious way. In the middle foreground, far below us, some

cattle were being driven through a bushy marsh by boys and dogs. The

cows looked the size of kittens to us at our great elevation, but such

was the purity of the atmosphere that the shouts and yelps of the

drivers rose with wonderful clearness, and the rustling of the brush

was as if in an adjoining lot. The noise seemed so disproportioned to

the size of the objects occasioning it, that this acoustic effect was

at first rather startling.

The whitewashed cabin of a squatter and his few log outbuildings

occupy a little basin to one side of the bluff. His cattle were

ranging over the hillsides, attended by a colly. The family were

rather neatly dressed, but there did not appear to be over an acre of

land level enough for cultivation, and that was entirely devoted to

Indian corn. It was something of a mystery how this man could earn a

living in his cooped-up mountain home. But the honest-looking fellow

seemed quite contented, sitting in the shade of his woodpile smoking a

corncob pipe, surrounded by a half dozen children. He cheerfully

responded to my few queries, as we stopped at his well on the return

to our boat. The good wife, a buxom woman with pretty blue eyes set in

a smiling face, was peeling a pan of potatoes on the porch, near by,

while one foot rocked a rude cradle ingeniously formed out of a barrel

head and a lemon box. She seemed mightily pleased as W---- stroked the

face of the chubby infant within, and made inquiries as to the ages of

the step-laddered brood; and the father, too, fairly beamed with

satisfaction as he placed his hands on the golden curls of his two

oldest misses and proudly exhibited their little tricks of precocity.

There can be no poverty under such a roof. Millionnaires might well

envy the peaceful contentment of these hillside squatters.

Down to Muscoda we followed the rocky and wood-crowned northern bank,

along which the country highway is cut out. The swift current closely

hugs it, and there was needed but slight exertion with the paddles to

lead a sewing-machine agent, whom we found to be urging his horse into

a vain attempt to distance the canoe. As he seemed to court a race, we

had determined not to be outdone, and were not.

Orion, on the northern side, just above Muscoda, is a deserted town.

It must have been a pretentious place at one time. There are a dozen

empty business buildings, now tenanted by bats and spiders. On one

shop front, a rotting sign displays the legend, "World's Exchange;"

there is also a "Globe Hotel," and the remains of a bank or two.

Alders, lilacs, and gnarled apple-trees in many deserted clumps, tell

where the houses once were; and the presence, among these ruins, of a

family or two of squalid children only emphasizes the dreary

loneliness. Orion was once a "boom" town, they tell us,--an expressive

epitaph.

A thin, outcropping substratum of sandstone is noticeable in this

section of the river. It underlies the sandy plains which abut the

Wisconsin in the Muscoda region, and lines the bed of the stream; near

the banks, where there is but a slight depth of water, rapids are

sometimes noticeable, the rocky bottom being now and then scaled off

into a stairlike form, for the fall is here much sharper than

customary.

Because of an outlying shelf of this sandstone, bordered by rapids,

but covered with only a few inches of dead water, we had some

difficulty in landing at Muscoda beach, on the southern shore. Some

stout poling and lifting were essential before reaching land. Muscoda

was originally situated on the bank, which rises gently from the

water; but as the river trade fell off, the village drifted up nearer

the bluff, a mile south over the plain, in order to avoid the spring

floods. There is a toll-bridge here and a large brewery, with

extensive cattle-sheds strung along the shore. A few scattering houses

connect these establishments with the sleepy but neat little hamlet of

some five hundred inhabitants. After a brisk walk up town, in the

fading sunlight, which cast a dazzling glimmer on the whitened dunes

and heightened the size of the dwarfed herbage, we returned to the

canoe, and cast off to seek camping quarters for the night,

down-stream.

A mile below, on the opposite bank, a large straw-stack by the side of

a small farmhouse attracted our attention. We stopped to investigate.

There was a good growth of trees upon a gentle slope, a few rods from

shore, and a beach well strewn with drift-wood. The farmer who greeted

us was pleasant-spoken, and readily gave us permission to pitch our

tent in the copse and partake freely of his straw.

Now more accustomed to the river's ways, we keenly enjoyed our supper,

seated around our little camp-fire in the early dark. We had

occasional glimpses of the lights in Muscoda, through the swaying

trees on the bottoms to the south; an owl, on a neighboring island,

incessantly barked like a terrier; the whippoorwills were sounding

their mournful notes from over the gliding river, and now and then a

hoarse grunt or querulous squeal in the wood-lot behind us gave notice

that we were quartered in a hog pasture. Soon the moon came out and

brilliantly lit the opens,--the glistening river, the stretches of

white sand, the farmer's fields,--and intensified the sepulchral

shadows of the lofty bluffs which overhang the scene.

CHAPTER IV.

FLOATING THROUGH FAIRYLAND.

Undisturbed by hogs or river tramps, we slept soundly until seven, the

following morning. There was a heavy fog again, but by the time we had

leisurely eaten our breakfast, struck camp, and had a pleasant chat

with our farmer host and his "hired man," who had come down to the

bank to make us a call, the mists had rolled away before the advances

of the sun.

At half past ten we were at Port Andrew, eight miles below camp on the

north shore. The Port, or what is left of it, lies stretched along a

narrow bench of sand, based with rock, some forty feet above the

water, with a high, naked bluff backing it to the north. There is

barely room for the buildings, on either side of its one avenue

paralleling the river; this street is the country road, which skirts

the bank, connecting the village with the sparse settlements, east

and west. In the old rafting days, the Port was a stopping-place for

the lumber pilots. There being neither rafts nor pilots, nowadays,

there is no business for the Port, except what few dollars may be

picked up from the hunters who frequent this place each fall,

searching for woodcock. But even the woodcocking industry has been

overdone here, and two sportsmen whom we met on the beach declared

that there were not enough birds remaining to pay for the trouble of

getting here. For, indeed, Port Andrew is quite off the paths of

modern civilization. There is practically no communication with the

country over the bluffs, northward; and Blue River, the nearest

railway station, to which there is a tri-weekly mail, is four miles

southward, over the bottoms, with an uncertain ferryage between. There

are less than fifty human beings in Port Andrew now, but double that

number of dogs, the latter mostly of the pointer breed, kept for the

benefit of huntsmen.

We climbed the bank and went over to the post-office and general

store. It seems to be the only business establishment left alive in

the hamlet; although there are a dozen deserted buildings which were

stores in the long ago, but are now ghostly wrecks, open to wind and

weather on every side, and, with sunken ridge-poles, waiting for the

first good wind-storm to furnish an excuse for a general collapse. A

sleepy, greasy-looking lad, whose originally white shirt-front was

sadly stained with water-melon juice, had charge of the meager

concern. He said that the farmers north of the bluffs traded in towns

more accessible than this, and that south of the stream, Blue River,

being a railroad place, was "knockin' the spots off'n the Port." Ten

years ago, he had heard his "pa" say the Port was "a likely place,"

but it "ain't much shakes now."

But there is a certain quaintness about these ruins of Port Andrew

that is quite attractive. A deep ravine, cut through the shale-rock,

comes winding down from a pass among the bluffs, severing the hamlet

in twain. Over it there is sprung a high-arched, rough stone bridge,

with crenelled walls, quite as artistic in its way as may be found in

pictures of ancient English brook-crossings. On the summit of a

rising-ground beyond, stands the solitary, whitened skeleton of a once

spacious inn, a broad double-decked veranda stretching across its

river front, and hitching-posts and drinking-trough now almost lost to

view in a jungle of docks and sand-burrs. The cracks in the rotten

veranda floors are lined with grass; the once broad highway is now

reduced to an unfrequented trail through the yielding sand, which is

elsewhere hid under a flowery mantle made up of delicate, fringed

blossoms of pinkish purple, called by the natives "Pike's weed," and

the rich yellow and pale gold of the familiar "butter and eggs." The

peculiar effect of color, outline, and perspective, that hazy August

day, was indeed charming. But we were called from our rapt

contemplation of the picture, by the assemblage around us of half the

population of Port Andrew, led by the young postmaster and accompanied

by a drove of playful hounds. The impression had somehow got abroad

that we had come to prospect for an iron mine, in the bed of the old

ravine, and there was a general desire to see how the thing was done.

The popular disappointment was evidently great, when we descended from

our perch on the old bridge wall, and returned to the little vessel on

the beach, which had meanwhile been closely overhauled by a knot of

inquisitive urchins. A part of the crowd followed us down, plying

innocent questions by the score, while on the summit of the bank above

stood a watchful group of women and girls, some in huge sun-bonnets,

others with aprons thrown over their heads. There was a general

waving of hats and aprons from the shore, as we shot off into the

current again, and our "Good-by!" was answered by a cheery chorus. It

is evident that Port Andrew does not have many exciting episodes in

her aimless, far-away life.

Flocks of crows were seen to-day, winging their funereal flight from

shore to shore, and uttering dismal croaks. The islands presented a

more luxurious flora than we had yet seen; the marsh grass upon them

was rank and tall, the overhanging trees sumptuously vine-clad, the

autumn tints deeper and richer than before, the banks glowing with

cardinal and yellow and purple; while on the sandy shores we saw

loosestrife, white asters, the sensitive plant, golden-rod, and

button-bush. Blue herons drifted through the air on their wide-spread

wings, heads curved back upon their shoulders, and legs hanging

straight down, to settle at last upon barren sand-spits, and stand in

silent contemplation of some pool of dead water where perhaps a stray

fish might reward their watchfulness. Solitary kingfishers kept their

vigils on the numerous snags. Now and then a turtle shuffled from his

perch and went tumbling with a loud splash into his favorite

watering-place.

Although yet too early for Indian summer, the day became, by noon,

very like those which are the delight of a protracted northwestern

autumn. A golden haze threw a mystic veil over the landscape; distant

shore lines were obliterated, sand and sky and water at times merged

in an indistinct blur, and distances were deceptive. Now and then the

vistas of white sand-fields would apparently stretch on to infinity.

Again, the river would seem wholly girt with cliffs and we in the

bottom of a huge mountain basin, from which egress was impossible; or

the stream would for a time appear a boundless lake. The islands ahead

were as if floating in space, and there were weird reflections of

far-away objects in the waters near us. While these singular effects

lasted we trimmed our bark to the swift-gliding current, and floated

along through fairy-land, unwilling to break the charm by disturbing

the mirrored surface of the flood.

Soon after the dinner hour we came in sight of the Boscobel

toll-bridge,--an ugly, clumsy structure, housed-in like a tunnel, and

as dark as a pocket. I was never quite able to understand why some

bridge-makers should cover their structures in this fashion, and

others, in the same locality, leave them open to wind and weather. So

far as my unexpert observation goes, covered bridges are no more

durable than the open, and they are certainly less cheerful and

comely. A chill always comes over me as I enter one of these damp and

gloomy hollow-ways; and the thought of how well adapted they are to

the purposes of the thug or the footpad is not a particularly pleasant

one for the lonely traveler by night. A dead little river hamlet, now

in abject ruins,--Manhattan by name,--occupies the rugged bank at the

north end of the long bridge; while southward, Boscobel is out of

sight, a mile and a half inland, across the bottoms. The bluff

overtopping Manhattan is a quarry of excellent hard sandstone, and a

half dozen men were dressing blocks for shipment, on the rocky shore

above us. They and their families constitute Manhattan.

Eight miles down river, also on the north bank, is Boydtown. There are

two houses there, in a sandy glen at the base of a group of heavily

wooded foot-hills. At one of the dwellings--a neat, slate-colored

cottage--we found a cheery, black-eyed woman sitting on the porch with

a brood of five happy children playing about her. As she hurried away

to get the butter and milk which we had asked for, she apologized for

being seen to enjoy this unwonted leisure, apparently not desirous

that we should suppose her to be any other than the hard-working

little body which her hands and driving manner proclaimed her to be.

When she returned with our supplies she said that they had "got

through thrashin'," the day before, and she was enjoying the luxury of

a rest preparatory to an accumulated churning. I looked incredulously

at the sandy waste in which this little home was planted, and the good

woman explained that their farm lay farther back, on fair soil,

although the present dry season had not been the best for crops.

Her brown-faced boy of ten and two little girls of about eight--the

laughing faces and crow-black curls of the latter hid under immense

flapping sun-bonnets--accompanied us to the bayou by which we had

approached Boydtown. They had a gay, unrestrained manner that was

quite captivating, and we were glad to have them row alongside of us

for a way down-stream in the unwieldy family punt, the lad handling

the crude oars and the girls huddled together on the stern seat,

covered by their great sun-bonnet flaps, as with a cape. They were

"goin' grapein'," they said; and at an island where the vines hung

dark with purple clusters, they piped "Good-by, you uns!" in tittering

unison.

By this time, the weather had changed. The haze had lifted. The sky

had quickly become overcast with leaden rainclouds, and an occasional

big drop gave warning of an approaching storm. A few miles below

Boydtown, we stopped to replenish our canteen at the St. Paul

railway's fine iron bridge, the last crossing on that line between

Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien. On the southern end of the bridge is

Woodman; on the northern bank, the tender's house. As we were in the

northern channel, it was impracticable to reach the village, separated

from us by wide islands and long stretches of swamp and forest, except

by walking the bridge and the mile or two of trestle-work approaches

to the south. As for the bridge-house, there chanced to be no spare

quarters for us there. So we voted to trust to fortune and push on,

although the tender's wife, a pleasant, English-faced woman, with

black, sparkling eyes and a hospitable smile, was much exercised in

spirit, and thought we were running some hazard of a wetting.

The skies lightened for a time, and then there came rolling up from

over the range to the southwest great jagged rifts of black clouds,

ugly "thunder heads," which seemed to presage a deluge. Below them,

veiling the tallest peaks, tossed and sped the light-footed couriers

of the wind, and we saw the dark-green bosom of the upper forests

heave with the emotions of the air, while the rushing stream below

flowed on unruffled. The river is here united in one broad channel. At

the first evidence of a blow, we hurried across to the windward bank.

We were landing at the swampy, timber-strewn base of a precipitous

cliff as the wind passed over the valley, and had just completed our

preparations for shelter when the rain began to come in blinding

sheets.

The possibility of having to spend the night under the sepulchral

arches of this forested morass was not pleasant to contemplate. The

storm abated, however, within half an hour, and we were then able to

distinguish a large white house apparently set back in an open field a

half mile or more from the opposite shore.

Re-embarking, we headed that way, and found a wood-fringed stream

several rods wide, pouring a vigorous flood into the Wisconsin, from

the north. Our map showed it to be the Kickapoo, an old-time logging

river, and the house must be an outlying member of the small railroad

village of Wauzeka. A consultation was held on board, at the mouth of

the Kickapoo. On the Wisconsin not a house was to be seen, as far as

the eye could reach, and wide stretches of swamp and wooded bog

appeared to line both its banks. The prospect of paddling up the mad

little Kickapoo for a mile to Wauzeka was dispiriting, but we decided

to do it; for night was coming on, our tent, even could we find a good

camping ground in this marshy wilderness, was disposed to be leaky,

and a steady drizzle continued to sound a muffled tattoo on our rubber

coats. A voluble fisherman, caught out in the rain like ourselves,

came swinging into the tributary, with his cranky punt, just as we

were setting our paddles for a vigorous pull up-stream. We had his

company, side by side, till we reached the St. Paul railway trestle,

and beached at the foot of a deserted stave mill, in whose innermost

recesses we deposited our traps. Guided by the village shoemaker's

boy, who had been playing by the river side, we started up the track

to find the hotel, nearly a half mile away.

It is a quiet, comfortable, old-fashioned little inn, this hostelry at

Wauzeka. The landlord greeted his storm-bound guests with polite

urbanity, and with none of that inquisitiveness so common in rural

hosts. At supper, we met the village philosopher, a quaint, lone old

man who has an opinion of his own upon most human subjects, and more

than dares to voice it,--insists, in fact, on having it known of all

men. A young commercial traveler, the only other patron of the

establishment, sadly guyed our philosophical messmate by securing his

verdict on a wide range of topics, from the latest league game to

abstruse questions of theology. The philosopher bit, and the drummer

was in high feather as he crinkled the corners of his mouth behind his

huge moustache, and looked slyly around for encouragement that was not

offered.

Wauzeka is, in one respect, like too many other country villages.

Three saloons disfigure the main street, and in front of them are

little knots of noisy loafers, in the evening, filling up the rickety,

variously graded sidewalk to the gutter, and necessitating the running

of a loathsome gauntlet to those who may wish to pass that way. The

boy who can grow up in such an atmosphere, unpolluted, must be of rare

material, or his parents exceptionally judicious. There are few large

cities where one can see the liquor traffic carried on with such

disgusting boldness as in hamlets like this, where screenless,

open-doored saloons of a vile character jostle trading shops and

dwellings, and monopolize the footway, making of the business street a

place which women may abhor at any hour, and must necessarily avoid

after sunset. With a local-option law, that but awaits a majority vote

to be operative in such communities, it is a strange commentary on the

quality of our nineteenth-century civilization that the dissolute few

should still, as of old, be able to persistently hold the whip-hand

over the virtuous but timid many.

Elsewhere in Wauzeka, there are many pretty grass-grown lanes; some

substantial cottages; a prosperous creamery, employing the service of

the especial pride of the village, a six-inch spouting well, driven

for three hundred feet to the underlying stratum of lime-rock; a

saw-mill or two, which are worked spasmodically, according to the

log-driving stage in the Kickapoo, and some pleasant, accommodating

people, who appear to be quite contented with their lot in life.

CHAPTER V.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.

There was fog on the river in the morning. Across the broad expanse of

field and ledge which separates Wauzeka from the Wisconsin, we could

see the great white mass of vapor, fifty feet thick, resting on the

broad channel like a dense coverlid of down. Soon after seven o'clock,

the cloud lifted by degrees, and then broke into ragged segments,

which settled sluggishly for a while on the tops of the southern line

of bluffs and screened their dark amphitheaters from view, till at

last dissipated into thin air.

We were off at eight o'clock, fifteen or twenty men coming down to the

railway-bridge to watch the operation. One of them helped us

materially with our bundles, while the rest sat in a row along the

trestle, dangling their feet through the spaces between the stringers,

and gazing at us as though we were a circus company on the move. A

drizzle set in, just as we pushed from the bank, and we descended the

Kickapoo under much the same conditions of atmosphere as those we had

experienced in pulling against its swirling tide the evening before.

But by nine o'clock the storm was over, and we had, for a time, a

calm, quiet journey, a gray light which harmonized well with the

wildly picturesque scenery, and a fresh west breeze which helped us on

our way. We were now but twenty miles from the mouth. The parallel

ranges of bluff come nearer together, until they are not much over a

mile apart, and the stream, now broader, swifter, and deeper, is less

encumbered with islands. Upon the peaty banks are the tall white

spikes of the curious turtlehead, occasional masses of balsam-apple

vines, the gleaming lobelia cardinalis, yellow honeysuckles just going

out of blossom, and acres of the golden sneeze-weed, which deserves a

better name.

At Wright's Ferry, ten miles below, there are domiciled two German

families, and on the shore is a saw-mill which is operated in the

spring, to work up the logs which farmers bring down from the gloomy

mountains which back the scene.

Bridgeport, four miles farther,--still on the northern side,--is

chiefly a clump of little red railway buildings set up on a high bench

carved from the face of the bluff, their fronts resting on the

road-bed and their rears on high scaffolding. A few big bowlders

rolling down from the cliffs would topple Bridgeport over into the

river. There is a covered country toll-bridge here, and the industrial

interest of the Liliputian community is quarrying. It is the last

hamlet on the river.

A mist again formed, casting a blue tinge over the peaks and giving

them a far distant aspect; dark clouds now and then lowered and rolled

through the upper ravines, reflecting their inky hue upon the surface

of the deep, gliding river. The bluffs, which had for many miles

closely abutted the stream, at last gradually swept away to the north

and south, to become part of the great wall which forms the eastern

bulwark of the Upper Mississippi. At their base spreads a broad, flat

plain, fringed with boggy woods and sandy meadows, the delta of the

Wisconsin, which, below the Lowertown bridge of the Burlington and

Northern railway, is cut up into flood-washed willow islands, flanked

by a wide stretch of shifting sand-bars black with tangled roots and

stranded logs, the debris of many a spring-time freshet.

It was about half-past twelve o'clock when we came to the junction of

the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. Upon a willow-grown sand-reef

edging the swamp, which extends northward for five miles to the

quaint, ancient little city of Prairie du Chien, a large barge lies

stranded. A lone fisherman sat upon its bulwark rail, which overhangs

the rushing waters as they here commingle. We landed with something

akin to reverence, for this must have been about the place where

Joliet and Marquette, two hundred and fourteen years ago, gazed with

rapture upon the mighty Mississippi, which they had at last

discovered, after so many thousands of miles of arduous journeying

through a savage-haunted wilderness. And indeed it is an imposing

sight. To the west, two miles away, rise the wooded peaks on the Iowa

side of the great river. Northward there are pretty glimpses of cliffs

and rocky beaches through openings in the heavy growth which covers

the islands of the upper stream. Southward is a long vista of curving

hills and glinting water shut in by the converging ranges. Eastward

stretches the green delta of the Wisconsin, flanked by those imposing

bluffs, between whose bases for two centuries has flowed a curious

throng of humanity, savage and civilized, on errands sacred and

profane, representing many clashing nationalities.

The rain descended in a gentle shower as I was lighting a fire on

which to cook our last canoeing meal of the season; and W---- held an

umbrella over the already damp kindling in order to give it a chance.

We no doubt made a comical picture as we crouched together beneath

this shelter, jointly trying to fan the sparks into a flame, for the

fisherman, who had been heretofore speechless, and apparently rapt in

his occupation, burst out into a hearty laugh. When we turned to look

at him he hid his face under his upturned coat-collar, and giggled to

himself like a schoolgirl. He was a jolly dog, this fisherman, and

after we had presented him with a cup of coffee and what solids we

could spare from our now meager store, he warmed into a very

communicative mood, and gave us much detailed, though rather highly

colored, information about the locality, especially as to its natural

features.

The rain had ceased by the time dinner was over; so we bade farewell

to the happy fisherman and the presiding deities of the Wisconsin, and

pulled up the giant Mississippi to Prairie du Chien, stopping on our

way to visit an out-of-the-way bayou, botanically famous, where

flourishes the rare nelumbium luteum--America's nearest approach to

the lotus of the Nile.

And thus was accomplished the season's stint of six hundred miles of

canoeing upon the Historic Waterways of Illinois and Wisconsin.

INDEX.

Algoma, 182, 186.

Allouez, Father Claude, 176, 228, 229.

American Fur Co., 145.

Anderson, Maj. Robert, U.S.A., 19.

Antoinette, Marie, Queen of France, 224.

Appleton, Wis., 23, 27, 185, 202-207, 209.

Arena Ferry, Wis., 27, 257, 262.

Arndt, Judge John P., 158.

Astor, John Jacob, 145, 232.

Atkinson, Gen. Henry, U. S. A., 19, 255.

Avoca, Wis., 270.

Bad Axe, battle of, 255, 266.

Baraboo River, 241.

Barth, Laurent, 143.

Beloit, Wis., 20, 26, 65.

Berlin, Wis., 21, 22, 27, 164, 173-175, 177, 240.

Black Hawk War, 18, 19, 87, 119, 250, 253-255, 266.

Black Hawk Mountain, 256.

Black River Falls, Wis., 200.

Black Wolf Point, Lake Winnebago, 191.

Blue Mound, Wis., 266.

Blue River Village, Wis., 276.

Boscobel, Wis., 27, 280, 281.

"Bourbon, The American." _See_ Williams, Eleazar.

Boydtown, Wis., 27, 281, 282.

Bridgeport, Wis., 27, 289, 290.

Buffalo Lake, 22, 160-162, 168, 173.

Butte des Morts, Lake Grand, 161, 181-183, 199.

Butte des Morts, Lake Petit, 199, 201, 202.

Butte des Morts Village, 183-185, 188.

Butterfield, Consul W., _cited_, 176.

Byron, Ill., 19, 26, 82-85.

Canoeing, pleasures of, 15, 16.

Canoeists, suggestions to, 23-26.

Canoes, styles of, 15, 16.

Carbon Cliff, Ill., 138, 139.

Catfish River, Wis., 18, 31-59.

Champche Keriwinke, Winnebago princess, 200, 201.

Champlain, Governor of Quebec, 175, 230.

Cherry River, 80.

Chicago, Burlington, and Northern Ry., 290.

Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Ry., 137-139.

Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Ry., 76, 82, 178, 186, 256,

259-265, 269, 283, 285.

Chicago and Northwestern Ry., 65, 248-250.

Cleveland, Ill., 137.

Coloma, Ill., 26, 138-140.

Como, Ill. 26, 109-111.

Crooks, Ramsay, 232.

Dablon, Father Claude, 229.

Dakotah Indians. _See_ Sioux and Winnebagoes.

Davis, Jefferson, 19, 145, 146.

Dekorra, Wis., 242-245.

De Korra, early fur trader, 199, 200.

Depere, Wis., 206, 225, 228, 229.

Dixon, Ill., 18, 20, 26, 87, 93, 94, 97-101, 106-108.

Dodge, Maj. Henry, 253, 255.

Doty's Island, Wis., 195-201.

Dunkirk, Wis., 52, 53.

Erie, Ill., 26, 124-136.

Eureka, Wis., 178.

First Lake, 40, 43-45.

Fond du Lac, Wis., 191.

Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien, Wis.), 145.

Fort Howard, Wis., 145, 228-234.

Fort Winnebago (Portage, Wis.), 144-146.

Four Lake country, Wis., 18, 33, 254.

Four Legs, Winnebago chief, 200, 201.

Fox Indians (_see_, also, Sacs), 176, 196-199.

Fox River, Wis., 17, 21-23, 26, 141-234, 239, 240, 255.

Fulton, Wis., 56-58.

Fur trade in Wisconsin, 189, 196-200, 207, 208, 231, 234.

Ganymede Springs, Ill., 89, 90.

Garlic Island, Lake Winnebago, 189-191.

Garritty, Mary, 226-228.

Grand Detour, Ill., 92-106.

Great Bend of Rock River, 105-106.

Green Bay, Wis., 23, 27, 180, 181, 185, 198, 207, 229-234, 238.

Grignon, Augustin, 184, 185, 188, 232.

Hanson, John H., _cited_, 224, 225.

Harney, Gen. William S., U. S. A., 145.

Helena Village, Wis., 27, 259-265.

Helena, Wis., Old, 265, 266.

Henry, Maj. James D., 253, 255.

Hoo-Tschope. _See_ Four Legs.

Illinois Indians, 21, 176.

Iowatuk, Winnebago princess, 189, 191.

Janesville, Wis., 20, 26, 60-65.

Jesuit missionaries, 21, 24, 176, 177, 180, 181, 228, 229, 231.

Joliet, Sieur de, 21, 176, 229, 239.

Kackalin, Grand. _See_ Kaukauna.

Kaukauna, Wis., 27, 185, 206-213.

Kellogg's trail, 106, 107.

Keokuk, Fox chief, 255.

Kickapoo Indians, 175.

Kickapoo River, Wis., 27, 284, 285, 287, 288.

Kinzie, Mrs. John H., _cited_, 146, 200.

Koshkonong, Lake, 18, 19, 59, 254.

Lakeside, Third Lake, 32.

Langlade, Charles de, 198, 232.

Latham Station, Ill., 76, 77.

Lawrence University, 205, 206.

Lead mines at Galena, 18.

Lecuyer, Jean B., 143, 144.

Lignery, Sieur Marchand de, 198.

Lincoln, Abraham, 19.

Little Kaukauna, Wis., 206, 216-219, 221, 225.

Lone Rock, Wis., 27, 262, 267-270.

Louis XVI., King of France, 223-225.

Louis XVII., Dauphin of France, 223-225.

Louvigny, Sieur de, 198.

Lyndon, Ill., 26, 118.

Madison, Wis., 18, 26.

Manhattan, Wis., 281.

Marin, Sieur de, 197, 198.

Marquette, Father James, 21, 157, 176, 229, 239.

Marquette Village, Wis., 26, 161, 166-170.

Mascoutin Indians, 175-178.

Mazomanie, Wis., 256.

Menasha, Wis., 23, 183, 185, 195, 196, 207.

Menomonee Indians, 187, 188, 196, 197, 223.

Merrimac, Wis., 27, 248-250.

Miami Indians, 175.

Milan, Ill., 139.

Milwaukee and Northern Ry., 203, 204.

Mississippi River, 21, 26, 27, 136, 138, 180, 229-231, 239,

253-255, 290-293.

Mohawk Indians, 222.

Montello, Wis., 22, 26, 160, 162-164, 168.

Muscoda, Wis., 23, 27, 270, 272-274.

Neenah, Wis., 22, 27, 183, 185, 191, 195-201, 206.

New York Indians. _See_ Oneidas.

Nicolet, Jean, 21, 175, 176, 230, 231.

Northern Insane Hospital, Wis., 189-191.

Omro, Wis., 22, 27, 175, 178, 179.

Oneida Indians, 222-228.

Oregon, Ill., 20, 26, 88-90.

Orion, Wis., 272.

Oshkosh, Menomonee chief, 187, 188.

Oshkosh, Wis., 27, 161, 182, 183, 185-188, 190, 207.

Ott's Farm, Madison, Wis., 33.

Owen, Ill. _See_ Latham Station.

Packwaukee, Wis., 26, 150, 159-161, 163.

Paine Bros., 186.

Paquette, Pierre, 144.

Penney, Josephine, 226-228.

Philippe, Louis, King of France, 225.

Pope's Springs, Wis., 60.

Porlier, James, 184, 185.

Porlier, Louis B., 184, 185.

Portage, Wis., 21, 23, 26, 27, 143-146, 160, 161, 185, 198, 206,

237-242.

Port Andrew, Wis., 27, 275-279.

Pottawattomie Indians, 18, 19, 87.

Poygan Lake, 22, 180, 181.

Prairie du Chien, Wis., 21, 27, 145, 238, 240, 255, 291-293.

Prairie du Sac, Wis., 23, 27, 252-256, 266.

Princeton, Wis., 22, 27, 168-172, 210.

Prophetstown, Ill., 18, 26, 118-120.

Puckawa Lake, 22, 161, 163-169.

Red Bird, Winnebago chief, 145.

Richland Center, Wis., 269.

Richland City, Wis., 269.

Rockford, Ill., 20, 26, 79.

Rock Island, Ill., 18, 26, 139, 140, 253.

Rock River, 17-21, 29-140, 213, 253.

Rockton, Ill., 20.

Roscoe, Ill., 74, 76.

Sac Indians, 18, 19, 119, 198, 253-256.

Sacramento, Wis., 177, 178.

Sauk City, Wis., 23, 256, 257.

Sawyer, Philetus, 186.

Second Lake, 33, 36-39, 43.

Shaubena, Pottawattomie chief, 18.

Sioux Indians, 230, 231, 255.

Smith's Island, Wis., 149-156.

Spring Green, Wis., 261.

Stebbinsville, Wis., 53, 54.

Sterling, Ill., 20, 26, 108, 109.

Stillman's Creek, 19, 83, 86, 87.

Stillman's defeat, 19, 87.

Stoughton, Wis., 20, 26, 42, 44, 46-50, 52.

Stuart, Robert, 232.

Taylor, Zachary, 19.

Third Lake, 31, 33.

Turvill's Bay, Third Lake, 32, 33.

Twiggs, Maj. David, 232.

Walking Cloud, a Winnebago, 200.

Wauzeka, Wis., 27, 285-288.

White Cloud, Indian prophet, 18, 119.

White River lock, 172, 173.

Williams, Eleazar, 222-228.

Williams, Mrs. Eleazar, 225, 226.

Winnebago Indians, 19, 119, 145, 166, 189, 196, 197, 199-201,

223, 230, 231, 238, 254, 255.

Winnebago Lake, 22, 180, 183, 189-196, 206.

Winnebago prophet. _See_ White Cloud.

Winnebago Rapids, 196-201.

Winneconne, 22, 164, 179-182.

Wisconsin Central Ry., 144, 160.

Wisconsin Heights, battle of, 254, 266.

Wisconsin River, 17, 21-23, 27, 143-146, 230, 231, 237-293.

Wisconsin River Dells, 23.

Wolf River, 179-183, 185.

Woodman, Wis., 283.

Wright's Ferry, Wis., 27, 289.

Wrightstown, Wis., 213, 214, 220.

Yahara River. _See_ Catfish.