Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880. Various
among the scrub-clothed hills. A new feature had become apparent in many of them: a low reef of marsh entirely encircling the inner waters and separating them from a still outer lagoon, reminding us, with a difference, of coral-reefs encircling lakes in mid-ocean. The shores of these lakes were not marshy, but firm and hard, like the lakes of the hilltops, with the same smooth forest-slope surrounding. Is a reverse process going on here, we wondered, from that we have seen in the prairies, and are these sheets of water to change slowly into marsh, and so to firm land again? There are a number of such lakes as these, and on the heights above one of the largest, which they have called Bethel, a family of Canadian emigrants have recently "taken up a homestead."
There was still another chain of prairie-lakes, the "Old Field Ponds," stretching north and south on our right, and as we wound around them, plashing now and again through the slowly-encroaching water, we had 'Gator-bone Pond upon our right. The loneliness of the scene was indescribable: for hours we had been winding in and out among the still lagoons or climbing and descending the ever-steeper, darker hills. Night was drawing on; stealthy mists came creeping grayly up from the endless Old Field Ponds; fireflies and glow-worms and will-o'-the-wisps danced and glowered amid the intense blackness; frogs croaked, mosquitos shrilled, owls hooted; Barney's usual deliberate progress became a snail's pace, which hinted plainly at blankets and the oat-sack,—when, all at once, a bonfire flamed up from a distant height, and the sagacious quadruped quickened his pace along the steep hill-road.
A very pandemonium of sounds saluted our ears as we emerged from the forest—lowings and roarings and shriekings of fighting cattle, wild hoots from hoarse masculine throats, the shrill tones of a woman's angry voice, the discordant notes of an accordion, the shuffle of heavy dancing feet. We had but happened upon a band of cow-hunters returning homeward with their spoils, and the fightings of their imprisoned cattle were only less frightful than their own wild orgies. If we had often before been reminded of Italian skies and of the freshness and brightness of Swiss mountain-air, now thoughts of the Black Forest, with all of weird or horrible that we had ever read of that storied country, rushed to our minds—robber-haunted mills, murderous inns, treacherous hosts, "terribly-strange beds." Not that we apprehended real danger, but to our unfranchised and infant minds the chills and fevers which mayhap lurked in the mist-clothed forest, or even a wandering "cat," seemed less to be dreaded than the wild bacchanals who surrounded us. We would fain have returned, but it was too late. Barney was already in the power of unseen hands, which had seized upon him in the darkness; an old virago had ordered us into the house; and when we had declined to partake of the relics of a feast which strewed the table, we were ignominiously consigned to a den of a lean-to opening upon the piazza. A "terribly-strange bed" indeed was the old four-poster, which swayed and shrieked at the slightest touch, and myriad the enemies which there lay in wait for our blood. We were not murdered, however, nor did our unseen foes—as had once been predicted by a Cracker friend—quite "eat us plum up, bodaciously alive." In the early morning we fled, though not until we had seen how beautiful a home the old plantation once had been. These were not Crackers among whom we had passed the night, but the "native and best." Not a fair specimen of this class, surely, but such as here and there, in the remoter corners of the South, are breeding such troubles as may well become a grave problem to the statesman—the legitimate outgrowth of the old régime. War-orphaned, untutored, unrestrained, contemning legitimate authority, spending the intervals of jail-life in wild revels and wilder crimes,—such were the men in whose ruined home we had passed the night.
There was yet one more morning among the gorgeous-foliaged "scrub-hills," one more gypsy meal by a lakeside, one more genial welcome to a hospitable Cracker board, and we were at home again in the wide sea of pines which stretches to the St. John's. In the ten days of our journey we had seen, within a tract of land some thirty miles long by forty in breadth, more than fifty isolated lakes and three prairie-chains; had visited four enterprising Northern colonies and numerous thrifty Southern farms; had found an air clear and invigorating as that of Switzerland, soft and balmy as in the tropics, while the gorgeous colorings of tree and flower, of water and sky, were like a dream of the Orient.
"But there!" said the Small Boy, stopping suddenly with a half-unbuckled strap of Barney's harness in his hand: "we forgot one thing, after all: never found William Townsend!"—LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.
CANOEING ON THE HIGH MISSISSIPPI
CONCLUDING PAPER
Itasca Lake was first seen of white men by William Morrison, an old trader, in 1804. Several expeditions attempted to find the source of the Great River, but the region was not explored till 1832—by Schoolcraft, who regarded himself as the discoverer of Itasca. Much interesting matter concerning the lake and its vicinity has been written by Schoolcraft, Beltrami and Nicollet, but the exceeding difficulty of reaching it, and the absence of any other inducements thither than a spirit of adventure and curiosity, make visitors to its solitudes few and far between. Itasca is fed in all by six small streams, each too insignificant to be called the river's source. It has three arms—one to the south-east, about three and a half miles long, fed by a small brook of clear and lively water; one to the south-west, about two miles and a half long, fed by the five small streams already described; and one reaching northward to the outlet, about two and a half miles. These unite in a central portion about one mile square. The arms are from one-fourth of a mile to one mile wide, and the lake's extreme length is about seven miles. Its water is clear and warm. July thirteenth, when the temperature of the air was 76°, the water in the largest arm of the lake varied between 74° and 80°. We saw no springs nor evidences of them, and the water's temperature indicates that it receives nothing from below. Still, it is sweet and pure to the taste and bright and sparkling to the eye. Careful soundings gave a depth varying between fourteen and a half and twenty-six feet. The only island is that named by Schoolcraft after himself in 1832. It is in the central body of the lake, and commands a partial view of each arm. It is about one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred feet long, varying in height from its water-line to twenty-five feet, and is thickly timbered with maple, elm, oak and a thicket of bushes.
On Tuesday morning, July 14, at six o'clock, we paddled away from the island to the foot of the lake. The outlet is entirely obscured by reeds and wild rice, through which the water converges in almost imperceptible current toward the river's first definite banks. This screen penetrated, I stopped the Kleiner Fritz in mid-stream and accurately measured width, depth and current. I found the width twenty feet, the depth on either side of my canoe as she pointed down the stream thirty-one inches, and the speed of the current two and one-tenth miles to the hour. The first four miles of the infant's course is swift and crooked, over a bed of red sand and gravel, thickly interspersed with mussel and other small shells, and bordered with reeds. Through these, at two points, we beat our way on foot, dragging the canoes through unmade channels. Indeed, nearly all of these first four miles demanded frequent leaps from the boats to direct their swift and crooked course, until we came to a stretch of savanna country, through which the river washes its way in serpentine windings for nine miles with a gentle current from thirty to sixty feet wide, bordered by high grass, bearing the appearance and having the even depth of a canal. An easy, monotonous paddle through these broad meadows brought us to the head of the first rapids, the scene of our two days' upward struggle. These rapids extend about twelve miles as the river runs, alternating between rattling, rocky plunges and swift, smooth water, for the most part through a densely-wooded ravine cleft through low but abrupt hills, and as lonely and cheerless as the heart of Africa. The solitude is of that sort which takes hold upon the very soul and weaves about it hues of the sombrest cast. From our parting with the Indians on first reaching the river we had neither seen nor heard a human being, nor were there save here and there remote traces of man's hand. No men dwell there: nothing invites men there. A few birds and fewer animals hold absolute dominion. Wandering there, one's senses become intensely alert. But for the hoot of the owl, the caw of the crow, the scream of the eagle, the infrequent twitter of small birds, the mighty but subdued roar of insects, the rush of water over the rocks and the sigh and sough of the wind among the pines, the lonely wanderer has no sign of aught but the rank and dank vegetation and a gloomy, oppressive plodding on and on, without an instant's relief in the sights and sounds of human life. We entered upon the descent of the rapids in no very cheerful mood.
The downward way was easier, and we had cleared