The following day opened brightly. We had breakfast in the tavern kitchen, en famille. The husband, whom we had not met before, was a short, smooth-faced, voluble, overgrown-boy sort of man. The mother was dumpy, coarse, and good-natured. They had a greasy, easy-tempered daughter of eighteen, with a frowsy head, and a face like a full moon; while the heir of the household, somewhat younger, was a gaping, grinning youth of the Simple Simon order, who shovelled mashed potatoes into his mouth alternately with knife and fork, and took bites of bread large enough for a ravenous dog. The old grandmother, with a face like parchment and one gleaming eye, sat in a low rocking-chair by the stove, crooning over a corn-cob pipe and using the wood-box for a cuspadore. She had a vinegary, slangy tongue, and being somewhat deaf, would break in upon the conversation with remarks sharper than they were pat.

With our host, a glib and rapid talker in a swaggering tone, one could not but be much amused, as he exhibited a degree of self-appreciation that was decidedly refreshing. He had been a veteran in the War of the Rebellion, he proudly assured us, and pointed with his knife to his discharge-paper, which was hung up in an old looking-glass frame by the side of the clock.

"Gemmen,"—he invariably thus addressed us, as though we were a coterie of checker-players at a village grocery,—"Gemmen, when I seen how them Johnny Rebs was a usin' our boys in them prison pens down thar at Andersonville and Libbie and 'roun' thar, I jist says to myself, says I, 'Joe, my boy, you go now an' do some'n' fer yer country; a crack shot like you is, Joe,' says I to myself, 'as kin hit a duck on the wing, every time, an' no mistake, oughtn't ter be a-lyin 'roun' home an' doin' no'hun to put down the rebellion; it's a shame,' says I, 'when our boys is a-suff'r'n' down thar on Mason 'n' Dixie's line;' an' so I jined, an' I stuck her out, gemmen, till the thing was done; they ain't no coward 'bout me, ef I hev the sayin' of it!"

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

"No, I wa'n't hurt at all,—that is, so to speak, wounded. But thar were a sort of a doctor feller 'round here las' winter, a-stoppin' at Erie; an' he called at my place, an' he says, 'No'hun the matter wi' you, a-growin out o' the war?' says he; an' I says, 'No'hun that I know'd on,' says I,—'I'm a-eatin' my reg'l'r victuals whin I don't have the shakes,' says I. 'Ah!' says he, 'you've the shakes?' he says; 'an' don't you know you ketched 'em in the war?' 'I ketched 'em a-gettin' m'lairy in the bottoms,' says I, 'a-duck-shootin', in which I kin hit a bird on the wing every time an' no mistake,' says I. 'Now,' he says, 'hold on a minute; you didn't hev shakes afore the war?' says he. 'Not as much,' I says, not knowin' what the feller was drivin' at, 'but some; I was a kid then, and kids don't shake much,' says I. 'Hold up! hold up!' he says, 'you 're wrong, an' ye know it; ye don't hev no mem'ry goin' back so far about phys'cal conditions,' says he. Well, gemmen, sure 'nough, when I kem to think things over, and talk it up with the doctor chap, I 'lowed he was right. Then he let on he was a claim agint, an' I let him try his hand on workin' up a pension for me, for he says I wa'n't to pay no'hun 'less the thing went through. But I hearn tell, down at Erie, that they is a-goin' agin these private claims nowadays at Washin'ton, an' I don't know what my show is. But I ought to hev a pension, an' no mistake, gemmen. They wa'n't no fellers did harder work 'n me in the war, ef I do say it myself."

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

"Well, I wa'n't in no reg'lar battle,—that is, right in one. Thar was a few of us detailed ter tek keer of gov'ment prop'ty near C'lumby, South Car'liny, when Wade Hamptin was a-burnin' things down thar. We was four miles away from the fightin,' an' I was jest a-achin' to git in thar. What I wanted was to git a bead on ol' Wade himself,—an' ef I do say it myself, the ol' man would 'a' hunted his hole, gemmen. When I get a sight on a duck, gemmen, that duck's mine, an' no mistake. An' ef I'd 'a' sighted Wade Hamptin, then good-by Wade! I tol' the cap'n what I wanted, but he said as how I was more use a-takin' keer of the supplies. That cap'n hadn't no enterprise 'bout him. Things would 'a' been different at C'lumby, ef I'd had my way, an' don't ye forgit it! There was heaps o' blood spilt unnecessary by us boys, a-fightin' to save the ol' flag,—an' we 're willin' to do it agin, gemmen, an' no mistake!"

The old woman had been listening eagerly to this narrative, evidently quite proud of her boy's achievements, but not hearing all that had been said. She now broke out, in shrill, high notes,—

"Joe ought ter 'a' had a pension, he had, wi' his chills 'tracted in the war. He wuk'd hard, Joe did, a hul ten months, doin' calvary service, the last year o' the war; an' he kem nigh onter shootin' ol' Wade Hamptin, an' a-makin' a name for himself, an' p'r'aps a good office with a title an' all that; only they kep' him back with the ammernition wagin, 'count o' the kurnil's jealousy,—for Joe is a dead shot, ma'am, if I'm his mother as says it, and keeps the family in ducks half the year 'roun', an' the kurnil know'd Joe was a-bilin' over to git to the front."

"Ah! you were in the cavalry service, then?" I said to our landlord, by way of helping along the conversation.

There was a momentary silence, broken by Simple Simon, who wiped his knife on his tongue, and made a wild attack on the butter dish.

"Pa, he druv a mule team for gov'ment; an' we got a picter in the album, tuk of him when he were just a-goin' inter battle, with a big ammernition wagin on behind. Pa, in the picter, is a-ridin' o' one o' the mules, an' any one'd know him right off."

This sudden revelation of the strength of the veteran's claim to glory and a pension, put a damper upon his reminiscences of the war; and giving the innocent Simon a savage leer, he soon contrived to turn the conversation upon his wonderful exploits in duck-shooting and fishing—industries in the pursuit of which he, with so many of his fellow-farmers on the bottoms, appeared to be more eager than in tilling the soil.

It was quite evident that the breakfast we were eating was a special spread in honor of probably the only guests the quondam tavern had had these many months. Canoeists must not be too particular about the fare set before them; but on this occasion we were able to swallow but a few mouthfuls of the repast and our lunch-basket was drawn on as soon as we were once more afloat. It is a great pity that so many farmers' wives are the wretched cooks they are. With an abundance of good materials already about them, and rare opportunities for readily acquiring more, tens of thousands of rural dames do manage to prepare astonishingly inedible meals,—sour, doughy bread; potatoes which, if boiled, are but half cooked, and if mashed, are floated with abominable butter or pastey flour gravy; salt pork either swimming in a bowl of grease or fried to a leathery chip; tea and coffee extremely weak or strong enough to kill an ox, as chance may dictate, and inevitably adulterated beyond recognition; eggs that are spoiled by being fried to the consistency of rubber, in a pan of fat deep enough to float doughnuts; while the biscuits are yellow and bitter with saleratus. This bill of fare, warranted to destroy the best of appetites, will be recognized by too many of my readers as that to be found at the average American farm-house, although we all doubtless know of some magnificent exceptions, which only prove the rule. We establish public cooking-schools in our cities, and economists like Edward Atkinson and hygienists like the late Dio Lewis assiduously explain to the metropolitan poor their processes of making a tempting meal out of nothing; but our most crying need in this country to-day is a training-school for rural housewives, where they may be taught to evolve a respectable and economical spread out of the great abundance with which they are surrounded. It is no wonder that country boys drift to the cities, where they can obtain properly cooked food and live like rational beings.

The river continues to widen as we approach the junction with the Mississippi,—thirty-nine miles below Erie,—and to assume the characteristics of the great river into which it pours its flood. The islands increase in number and in size, some of them being over a mile in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth; the bottoms frequently resolve themselves into wide morasses, thickly studded with great elms, maples, and cotton-woods, among which the spring flood has wrought direful destruction. The scene becomes peculiarly desolate and mournful, often giving one the impression of being far removed from civilization, threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream. Penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot, however, and smiling prairies are found beyond, stretching to the horizon and cut up into prosperous farms. The river is here from a half to three-quarters of a mile broad, but the shallows and snags are as numerous as ever and navigation is continually attended with some danger of being either grounded or capsized.

Now and then the banks become firmer, with charming vistas of high, wooded hills coming down to the water's edge; broad savannas intervene, decked out with variegated flora, prominent being the elsewhere rare atragene Americana, the spider-wort, the little blue lobelia, and the cup-weed. These savannas are apparently overflowed in times of exceptionally high water; and there are evidences that the stream has occasionally changed its course, through the sunbaked banks of ashy-gray mud, in years long past.

At Cleveland, a staid little village on an open plain, which we reached soon after the dinner-hour, there is an unused mill-dam going to decay. In the centre, the main current has washed out a breadth of three or four rods, through which the pent-up stream rushes with a roar and a hundred whirlpools. It is an ugly crevasse, but a careful examination showed the passage to be feasible, so we retreated an eighth of a mile up-stream, took our bearings, and went through with a speed that nearly took our breath away and appeared to greatly astonish a half-dozen fishermen idly angling from the dilapidated apron on either side. It was like going through Cleveland on the fast mail.

Fourteen miles above the mouth of the Rock, is the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad bridge, with Carbon Cliff on the north and Coloma on the south, each one mile from the river. The day had been dark, with occasional slight showers and a stiff head wind, so that progress had been slow. We began to deem it worth while to inquire about the condition of affairs at the mouth. Under the bridge, sitting on a bowlder at the base of the north abutment, an intelligent-appearing man in a yellow oiled-cloth suit, accompanied by a bright-eyed lad, peacefully fished. Stopping to question them, we found them both well-informed as to the railway time-tables of the vicinity and the topography of the lower river. They told us that the scenery for the next fourteen miles was similar, in its dark desolation, to that which we had passed through during the day; also that owing to the great number of islands and the labyrinth of channels both in the Rock and on the east side of the Mississippi, we should find it practically impossible to know when we had reached the latter; we should doubtless proceed several miles below the mouth of the Rock before we noticed that the current was setting persistently south, and then would have an exceedingly difficult task in retracing our course and pulling up-stream to our destination, Rock Island, which is six miles north of the delta of the Rock. They strongly advised our going into Rock Island by rail. The present landing was the last chance to strike a railway, except at Milan, twelve miles below. It was now so late that we could not hope to reach Milan before dark; there were no stopping-places en route, and Milan was farther from Rock Island than either Carbon Cliff or Coloma, with less frequent railway service.

For these and other reasons, we decided to accept this advice, and to ship from Coloma. Taking a final spurt down to a ferry-landing a quarter of a mile beyond, on the south bank, we beached our canoe at 5.05 P.M., having voyaged two hundred and sixty-seven miles in somewhat less than seven days and a half. Leaving W—— to gossip with the ferryman's wife, who came down to the bank with an armful of smiling twins, to view a craft so strange to her vision, I went up into the country to engage a team to take our boat upon its last portage. After having been gruffly refused by a churlish farmer, who doubtless recognized no difference between a canoeist and a tramp, I struck a bargain with a negro cultivating a cornfield with a span of coal-black mules, and in half an hour he was at the ferry-landing with a wagon. Washing out the canoe and chaining in the oars and paddle, we lifted it into the wagon-box, piled our baggage on top, and set off over the hills and fields to Coloma, W—— and I trudging behind the dray, ankle deep in mud, for the late rains had well moistened the black prairie soil. It was a unique and picturesque procession.

In less than an hour we were in Rock Island, and our canoe was on its way by freight to Portage, preparatory to my tour with our friend the Doctor,—down the Fox River of Green Bay.

THE FOX RIVER (OF GREEN BAY).

THE FOX RIVER (OF GREEN BAY).

My dear W——: It was 2.25 P. M. yesterday when the Doctor and I launched the old canoe upon the tan-colored water of the government canal at Portage, and pointed her nose in the direction of the historic Fox. You will remember that the canal traverses the low sandy plain which separates the Fox from the Wisconsin on a line very nearly parallel to where tradition locates Barth's and Lecuyer's wagon-portage a hundred years ago. It was a profitable business in the olden days, when the Fox-Wisconsin highway was extensively patronized, to thus transport river craft over this mile and a half of bog. The toll[2] collected by these French creoles and their successors down to the days of Paquette added materially to the cost of goods and peltries. In times of exceptionally high water the Wisconsin overflowed into the Fox, which is ordinarily five feet lower than the former, and canoes could readily cross the portage afloat, quite independent of the forwarding agents. In this generation the Wisconsin is kept to her bounds by levees; but the government canal furnishes a free highway. The railroads have spoiled water-navigation, however; and the canal, like the most of the Fox and Wisconsin river-improvement, is fast relapsing into a costly relic. The timbered sides are rotting, the peat and sand are bulging them in, the locks are shaky and worm-eaten, and several moss-covered barges and a stranded old ruin of a steamboat turned out to grass tell a sad story of official abandonment.

The scenic effects from the canal are not enlivening. There is a wide expanse of bog, relieved by some grass-grown railway side-tracks and the forlorn freight-depot of the Wisconsin Central road. A few battered sheds yet remain of old Fort Winnebago on a lonesome hillock near where the canal joins the Fox; while beyond to the north as far as the eye can reach there is a stretch of wild-rice swamp, through which the government dredges have scooped a narrow channel, about as picturesque as a cranberry-marsh drain.

Life at Fort Winnebago during the second quarter of this century must have been lonesome indeed, its nearest neighbors being Forts Crawford and Howard, each nearly two hundred miles away. A mile or two to the southwest is a pretty wooded ridge, girting the Wisconsin River, upon which the city of Portage is now situated. Then it was a forest, and the camping-ground of Winnebagoes, who hung around the post in the half-threatening attitude of beggars who might make trouble if not adequately bribed with gifts. The fort was erected in 1828-29 at the solicitation of John Jacob Astor (the American Fur Company), to protect his trade against encroachments from these Winnebago rascals, who had become quite impudent during the Red Bird disturbance at Prairie du Chien, in 1827. Jefferson Davis was one of the three first-lieutenants in the original garrison, in which Harney, of Mexican war fame, was a captain. Davis was detailed to the charge of a squad sent to cut timbers for the fort in a Wisconsin River pinery just above the portage, and thus became one of the pioneer lumbermen of Wisconsin. It is related, too, that Davis, who was an amateur cabinet-maker, designed some very odd wardrobes and other pieces of furniture for the officers' chambers, which were the wonder and admiration of every occupant for years to come.[3] In 1853, when Secretary of War, the whilom subaltern issued an order for the sale of the fort so intimately connected with his army career, and its crazy buildings henceforth became tenements.

For a dozen miles beyond the Fox River end of the canal the river, as I have before said, is dredged out through the swamp like a big ditch. The artificial banks of sand and peat which line it are generally well grown with mare's-tail, beautiful clumps of wild roses, purple vetch, great beds of sensitive ferns, and masses of Pennsylvania anemone, while the pools are decked with water-anemone. Nature is doing her best to hide the deformities wrought by man. The valley is generally about a mile in width, ridges of wooded knolls hemming in the broad expanse of reeds and rice and willow clumps. Occasionally the engineers have allowed the ditch to swerve in graceful lines and to hug closely the firmer soil in the lower benches of the knolls, where the banks of red and yellow clay attain a height of ten or a dozen feet, crowned with oaks and elms or pleasant glades. A modest farm-house now and then appears upon such a shore, with the front yard running down to the water's edge.

The afternoon shadows are lengthening, and farmers' boys are leading their horses down to drink, after the day's labor in the fields. Black and yellow collies are gathering in the cows,—some of them soberly and quickly corral obedient herds, while others yelp and snap at the heads of the affrighted animals, and in the noise and confusion seem to make but little progress. Collies have human-like infirmities.

We had supper at seven o'clock, under a tree which overhangs a weedy bank, with a high pasture back of us, sloping up to a wooded hill, at the base of which is a cluster of three neatly painted farm-houses, whose dogs bayed at us from the distance, but did not venture to approach. A half-hour later, the sun's setting warned us that quarters for the night must soon be secured. Stopping at the base of a boggy pasture-wood, we ascended through a sterile field, accursed with sheep-sorrel, and through gaps in several crazy fences, to what had seemed to us from the river a comfortable, repose-inviting house, commandingly situated on a hill-top among the trees. Near approach revealed a scene of desolation. The barriers were down, two spare-ribbed horses were nipping a scant supper among the weeds in a dark corner of an otherwise deserted barn-yard, the window-sashes were generally paneless, the porch was in a state of collapse, sand-burrs choked the paths, and to our knock at the kitchen door the only response was a hollow echo. The deserted house looked uncanny in the gloaming, and we retired to our boat wondering what evil spell had been cast over the place, and whether the horses in the barn-yard had been deliberately left behind to die of starvation.

The river now takes upon itself many devious windings in a great widespread over two miles broad. The government engineers have here left it in all its original crookedness, and the twists and turns are as fantastic and complicated as those of the Teutonic pretzel in its native land. As the twilight thickened, great swarms of lake-flies rose from the sedges and beat their way up-stream, the noise of their multitudinous wings being at times like the roar of a neighboring waterfall, as they formed a ceaselessly moving canopy over our heads. It was noticeable that the flies kept very closely to the windings of the river, as if guided only by the glittering flood beneath them. The mass of the procession kept its way up the stream, but upon the outskirts could be seen a few individuals, apparently larger than the average, flying back and forth as if marshaling the host.

Two miles below the deserted house, we stopped opposite another marshy bank, where a rude skiff lay tied to a shaky fence projecting far out into the reeds. Pushing our way in, we beached in the slimy shore-mud and scrambled upon the land, where the tall grass was now as sloppy with dew as though it had been rained upon. It was getting quite dark now, but through a cleft in the hills the moon was seen to be just rising above a cloud-bathed horizon, and a small house, neat-looking, though destitute of paint, was sharply silhouetted against the lightening sky, at the head of a gentle slope. By the time we had waded through a quarter of a mile of thriving timothy we were wet to the skin below the knees and dusted all over with pollen.

Seven children, mostly boys, and gently step-laddered down from fourteen years, greeted us at the summit with a loud "Hello!" in shrill unison. They stood in a huddle by the woodpile, holding down and admonishing a very mild-looking collie, which they evidently imagined was filled with an overweening desire instantly to devour us. "Hello there! who be ye?" shouted the oldest lad and the spokesman of the party. He was a tall, spare boy, and by the light of the rising moon we could see he was sharp-featured, good-natured, and intelligent.

"Well," said the Doctor, bantering, "that's what we'd like to know. You tell us who you are, and we'll tell you who we are. Now that's fair, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir," replied the boy, respectfully, as he touched his rimless straw hat; "our name's Smith; all 'cept that boy there," pointing to a sturdy little twelve-year-old, "an' he's a Bixby, he is."

"The Smith family's a big one, I should say," the Doctor remarked, as he audibly counted the party.

"Oh, this ain't all on 'em, sir; there's two in the house, a-hidin' 'cause o' strangers, besides the baby, which ma and pa has with 'em inter Packwaukee, a-shoppin'. This is Smith's Island, sir. Didn't ye ever hear o' Smith's Island?"

We acknowledged our ignorance, up to this time, of the existence of any such feature in the geography of Wisconsin. But the lad, now joined by the others, who had by this time vanquished their bashfulness and all wanted to talk at once, assured us that we were actually on Smith's Island; that Smith's Island had an area of one hundred acres, was surrounded on the east by the river, and everywhere else by either a bayou or a marsh that had to be crossed with a boat in the spring; that there were three families of Smiths there, and this group represented but one branch of the clan.

"We're all Smiths, sir, but this boy, who's a Bixby; an' he's our cousin and only a-visitin'."

After having gained a thorough knowledge of the topography and population of Smith's Island, we ventured to ask whether it was presumable that the parental Smiths, when they returned home from the village, would be willing to entertain us for the night.

"Guess not, sir," replied the spokesman, the idea appearing to strike him humorously; "there's so many of us now, sir, that we're packed in pretty close, an' the Bixby boy has to sleep atop o' the orgin. But I think Uncle Jim might; he kept a tramp over night once, an' give him his breakfus', too, in the bargain."

The prospect as to Uncle Jim was certainly encouraging, and it was now too late to go further. It seemed necessary to stop on Smith's Island for the night, even if we were restricted to quartering in the corn-crib which the Smith boy kindly put at our disposal in case of Uncle Jim's refusal,—with the additional inducement that he would lend us the collie for company and to "keep off rats," which he intimated were phenomenally numerous on this swamp-girt hill.

The entire troop of urchins accompanied us down to the bank to make fast for the night, and helped us up with our baggage to the corn-crib, where we disturbed a large family of hens which were using the airy structure as a summer dormitory. Then, with the two oldest boys as pilots, we set off along the ridge to find the domicile of Uncle Jim, who had established a reputation for hospitality by having once entertained a way-worn tramp.

The moon had now swung clear of the trees on the edge of the river basin, and gleamed through a great cleft in the blue-black clouds, investing the landscape with a luminous glow. Along the eastern horizon a dark forest-girt ridge hemmed in the reedy widespread, through which the gleaming Fox twisted and doubled upon itself like a silvery serpent in agony. The Indians, who have an eye to the picturesque in Nature, tell us that once a monster snake lay down for the night in the swamp between the portage and the lake of the Winnebagoes. The dew accumulated upon it as it lay, and when the morning came it wriggled and shook the water from its back, and disappeared down the river which it had thus created in its nocturnal bed. I had never fully appreciated the aptness of the legend until last night, when I had that bird's-eye view of the valley of the Fox from the summit of Smith's Island. To our left, the timothy-field sloped gracefully down to the sedgy couch of the serpent; to our right, there were pastures and oak openings, with glimpses of the moonlit bayou below, across which a dark line led to a forest,—the narrow roadway leading from Smith's to the outer world. At the edge of a small wood-lot our guides stopped, telling us to keep on along the path, over two stiles and through a barn-yard gate, till we saw a light; the light would be Uncle Jim's.

A cloud was by this time overcasting the moon, and a distant rumble told us that the night would be stormy. Groping our way through the copse, we passed the barriers, and, according to promise, the blinding light of a kerosene lamp standing on the ledge of an open window burst upon us. Then a door opened, and the form of a tall, stalwart man stood upon the threshold, a striking silhouette. It was Uncle Jim peering into the darkness, for he had heard footsteps in the yard. We were greeted cordially on the porch, and shown into a cosey sitting-room, where Uncle Jim had been reading his weekly paper, and Uncle Jim's wife, smiling sweetly amid her curl-papers, was engaged on a bit of crochet. Charmingly hospitable people they are. They have been married but a year or two, are without children, and have a pleasant cottage furnished simply but in excellent taste. Such delightful little homes are rare in the country, and the Doctor couldn't help telling Uncle Jim so, whereat the latter was very properly pleased. Uncle Jim is a fine-looking, manly fellow, six feet two in his stockings, he told us; and his pretty, blooming wife, though young, has the fine manners of the olden school. We were earnestly invited to stop for the night before we had fairly stated our case, and in five minutes were talking on politics, general news, and agriculture, as though we had always lived on Smith's Island and had just dropped in for an evening's chat. I am sure you would have enjoyed it, W——, it was such a contrast to our night at the Erie tavern,—only a week ago, though it seems a month. One sees and feels so much, canoeing, that the days are like weeks of ordinary travel. Two hundred miles by river are more full of the essence of life than two thousand by rail.

We had an excellent bed and an appetizing breakfast. The flood-gates of heaven had been opened during the night, and Smith's Island shaken to its peaty foundations by great thunder-peals. Uncle Jim was happy, for the pasturage would be improved, and the corn crop would have a "show." Uncle Jim's wife said there would now be milk enough to make butter for market; and the hens would do better, for somehow they never would lay regularly during the drought we had been experiencing. And so we talked on while the "clearing showers" lasted. I told Uncle Jim that I was surprised to see him raising anything at all in what was apparently sand. He acknowledged that the soil was light, and inclined to blow away on the slightest aerial provocation, but he nevertheless managed to get twenty bushels of wheat to the acre, and the lowlands gave him an abundance of hay and pasturage. He was decidedly in favor of mixed crops, himself, and was gradually getting into the stock line, as he wanted a crop that could "walk itself into market." The Doctor inquired about the health of the neighborhood, which he found to be excellent. He is much of a gallant, you know; and Uncle Jim's wife was pleasantly flustered when, in his most winning tones, the disciple of Æsculapius declared that the climate that could produce such splendid complexions as hers—and Uncle Jim's—must indeed be rated as available for a sanitarium.

By a quarter to eight o'clock this morning the storm had ceased, and the eastern sky brightened. Our kind friends bade us a cheery farewell, we retraced our steps to the corn-crib, the Smith boys helped us down with our load, and just as our watches touched eight we shoved off into the stream, and were once more afloat upon the serpentine trail.

These great wild-rice widespreads—sloughs, the natives call them—are doubtless the beds of ancient lakes. In coursing through them, the bayous, the cul-de-sacs, are so frequent, and the stream switches off upon such unexpected tangents, that it is sometimes perplexing to ascertain which body of sluggish water is the main channel. Marquette found this out when he ascended the Fox in 1673. He says, in his relation of the voyage, "The way is so cut up by marshes and little lakes that it is easy to go astray, especially as the river is so covered with wild oats [wild rice] that you can hardly discover the channel; hence, we had good need of our two guides."

Little bog-islands, heavily grown with aspens and willows, occasionally dot the seas of rice. They often fairly hum with the varied notes of the red-winged blackbird, the rusty grackle, and our American robin, while whistling plovers are seen upon the mud-spits, snapping up the choicest of the snails. And such bullfrogs! I have not heard their like since, when a boy, living on the verge of a New England pond, I imagined their hollow rumble of a roundelay to bear the burden of "Paddy, go 'round! Go 'round and 'round!" This in accordance with a local tradition which says that Paddy, coming home one night o'erfull of the "craithur," came to the edge of the pond, which stopped his progress. The friendly frogs, who themselves enjoy a soaking, advised him to go around the obstruction; and as the wild refrain kept on, Paddy did indeed "go 'round, and 'round" till morning and his better-half found him, a foot-sore and a soberer man. They tell us that on the Fox River the frogs say, "Judge Arndt! Arndt! Judge Arndt!" Old Judge Arndt was one of the celebrities in the early day at Green Bay; he was a fur-trader, and accustomed, with his gang of voyageurs, to navigate the Fox and Wisconsin with heavily laden canoes and Mackinaw boats. A Frenchman, he had a gastronomic affection for frogs' legs, and many a branch of the house of Rana was cast into mourning in the neighborhood of his nightly camps. The story goes, therefore, that unto this time whenever a boat is seen upon the river, sentinel frogs give out the signal cry of "Judge Arndt!" by way of deadly warning to their kind. Certain it is that the valley of the upper Fox, by day or by night, is resonant with the bellow of the amphibious bull. It is not always "Judge Arndt!" but occasionally, as if miles and miles away, one hears a sudden twanging note, like that of the finger-snapped bass string of a violin; whereas the customary refrain may be likened to the deep reverberations of the bass-viol. Add the countless chatter and whistle of the birds, the ear-piercing hum of the cicada, and the muffled chimes from scores of sheep and cow bells on the hillside pastures, and we have an orchestral accompaniment upon our voyage that could be fully appreciated only in a Chinese theatre.

In the pockets and the sloughs, we find thousands of yellow and white water-lilies, and sometimes progress is impeded by masses of creeping root-stalks which have been torn from their muddy bed by the upheaval of the ice, and now float about in great rafts, firmly anchored by the few whose extremities are still imbedded in the ooze.

Fishing-boats were also occasionally met with this morning, occupied by Packwaukee people; for in the widespreads just above this village, the pickerel thrives mightily off the swarms of perch who love these reedy seas; and the weighty sturgeon often swallows a hook and gives his captor many a frenzied tug before he consents to enter the "live-box" which floats behind each craft.

My dear W——: Packwaukee is twenty-five miles by river below Portage, and at the head of Buffalo Lake. It is a tumble-down little place, with about one hundred inhabitants, half of whom appeared to be engaged in fishing. A branch of the Wisconsin Central Railway, running south from Stevens Point to Portage, passes through the town, with a spur track running along the north shore of the lake to Montello, seven miles east. Regular trains stop at Packwaukee, while the engine draws a pony train out to Montello to pick up the custom of that thriving village. Packwaukee apparently had great pretensions once, with her battlement-fronts and verandaed inn; but that day has long passed, and a picturesque float-bridge, mossy and decayed, remains the sole point of artistic interest. A dozen boys were angling from its battered hand-rail, as we painfully crept with our craft through a small tunnel where the abutment had been washed out by the stream. We emerged covered with cobwebs and sawdust, to be met by boys eagerly soliciting us to purchase their fish. The Doctor, somewhat annoyed by their pertinacity as he vigorously dusted himself with his handkerchief, declared, in the vernacular of the river, that we were "clean busted;" and I have no doubt the lads believed his mild fib, for we looked just then as though we had seen hard times in our day.

Our general course had hitherto been northward, but was now eastward for a few miles and afterward southeastward as far as Marquette. Buffalo Lake is seven miles long by from a third to three quarters of a mile broad. The banks are for the most part sandy, and from five to fifty feet high. The river here merely fills its bed; being deeper, the wild rice and reeds do not grow upon its skirts. Were there a half-dozen more feet of water, the Fox would be a chain of lakes from Portage to Oshkosh. As it is, we have Buffalo, Puckawa, and Grand Butte des Morts, which are among the prettiest of the inland seas of Wisconsin. The knolls about Buffalo Lake are pleasant, round-topped elevations, for the most part wooded, and between them are little prairies, generally sandy, but occasionally covered with dark loam.

The day had, by noon, developed into one of the hottest of the season. The run down Buffalo Lake was a torrid experience long to be remembered. The air was motionless, the sky without clouds; we had good need of our awning. The Doctor, who is always experimenting, picked up a flat stone on the beach, so warm as to burn his fingers, and tried to fry an egg upon it by simple solar heat, but the venture failed and a burning-glass was needed to complete the operation.

Montello occupies a position at the foot of the lake, commanding the entire sheet of water. The knoll upon which the village is for the most part built is nearly one hundred feet high, and the simple spire of an old white church pitched upon the summit is a landmark readily discernible in Packwaukee, seven miles distant. There is a government lock at Montello, and a small water-power. A levee protects from overflow a portion of the town which is situated somewhat below the lake level. The government pays the lock-keepers thirty dollars per month for about eight months in the year, and house-rent the year round. Tollage is no longer required, and the keepers are obliged by the regulations of the engineering department to open the gates for all comers, even a saw-log. But the services of the keepers are so seldom required in these days that we find they are not to be easily roused from their slumbers, and it is easier and quicker to make the portage at the average up-river lock. Our carry at Montello was two and a half rods, over a sandy bank, where a solitary small boy, who had been catching crayfish with a dip-net, carefully examined our outfit and propounded the inquiry, "Be you fellers on the guv'ment job?"

Below the lock for three or four miles, the river is again a mere canal, but the rigid banks of dredge-trash are for the most part covered with a thrifty vegetation, and have assumed charms of their own. This stage passed, and the river resumes a natural appearance,—a placid stream, with now and then a slough, or perhaps banks of peat and sand, ten feet high and fairly well hung with trees and shrubs.

As we approach the head of Lake Puckawa, the widespreads broaden, with rows of hills two or three miles back, on either side,—the river mowing a narrow swath through the expanse of reeds and flags and rice which unites their bases. Where the widespread becomes a pond, and the lake commences, there is a sandbar, the dregs of the upper channel. A government dredge-machine was at work, cutting out a water-way through the obstruction,—or, rather, had been at work, for it was seven o'clock by this time, the men had finished their supper, and were enjoying themselves upon the neat deck of the boarding-house barge, in a neighboring bayou, smoking their pipes and reading newspapers. It was a comfortable picture.

A stern-wheel freight steamer, big and cumbersome, came slowly into the mouth of the channel as we left it, bound up, for Montello. As we glided along her side, a safe distance from the great wheelbarrow paddle, she loomed above us, dark and awesome, like a whale overlooking a minnow. It was the "T. S. Chittenden," wood-laden. The "Chittenden" and the "Ellen Hardy" are the only boats navigating the upper Fox this season, above Berlin. Their trips are supposed to be semi-weekly, but as a matter of fact they dodge around, all the way from Winneconne to Montello, picking up what freight they can and making a through trip perhaps once a week. It is poor picking, I am told, and the profits but barely pay for maintaining the service.

There now being no place to land, without the great labor of poling the canoe through the dense reed swamp to the sides, we had supper on board,—the Doctor deftly spreading a bit of canvas on the bottom between us, for a cloth, and attractively displaying our lunch to the best advantage. I leisurely paddled meanwhile, occasionally resting to take a mouthful or to sip of the lemonade, in the preparation of which the Doctor is such an adept. And thus we drifted down Lake Puckawa, amid the delightful sunset glow and the long twilight which followed,—the Doctor, cake in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other, becoming quite animated in a detailed description of a patient he had seen in a Vienna hospital, whose food was introduced through a slit in his throat. The Doctor is an enthusiast in his profession, and would stop to advise St. Peter, at the gate, to try his method for treating locksmith-palsy.

We noticed a great number of black terns as we progressed, perched upon snags at the head of the lake. They are fearless birds, and would allow us to drift within paddle's length before they would rise and, slowly wheeling around our heads, settle again upon their roosts, as soon as we had passed on.

Lake Puckawa is eight miles long by perhaps two miles wide, running west and east. Five miles down the eastern shore, the quaint little village of Marquette is situated on a pleasant slope which overlooks the lake from end to end. Marquette is on the site of an Indian fur-trading camp, this lake being for many years a favorite resort of the Winnebagoes. There are about three hundred inhabitants there, and it is something of a mystery as to how they all scratch a living; for the town is dying, if not already dead,—about the only bit of life noticeable there being a rather pretty club-house owned by a party of Chicago gentlemen, who come to Lake Puckawa twice a year to shoot ducks, it being one of the best sporting-grounds in the State. That is to say, they have heretofore come twice a year, but the villagers were bewailing the passage by the legislature, last winter, of a bill prohibiting spring shooting, thus cutting off the business of Marquette by one half. Marquette, like so many other dead river-towns, appears to have been at one time a community of some importance. There are two deserted saw-mills and two or three abandoned warehouses, all boarded up and falling into decay, while nearly every store-building in the place has shutters nailed over the windows, and a once substantial sidewalk has become such a rotten snare that the natives use the grass-grown street for a footpath. The good people are so tenacious of the rights of visiting sportsmen that there is no angling, I was told, except by visitors, and we inquired in vain for fish at the dilapidated little hotel where we slept and breakfasted. At the hostlery we were welcomed with open arms, and the landlady's boy, who officiated as clerk, porter, and chambermaid, assured us that the village schoolmaster had been the only guest for six weeks past.

It is certainly a quiet spot. The Doctor, who knows all about these things, diagnosed the lake and declared it to be a fine field for fly-fishing. He had waxed so enthusiastic over the numbers of nesting ducks which we disturbed as we came down through the reeds, in the early evening, that I had all I could do to keep him from breaking the new game law, although he stoutly declared that revolvers didn't count. The postmaster—a pleasant old gentleman in spectacles, who also keeps the drug store, deals in ammunition, groceries, and shoes, and is an agent for agricultural machinery—got very friendly with the Doctor, and confided to him the fact that if the latter would come next fall to Markesan, ten miles distant, over the sands, and telephone up that he was there, a team would be sent down for him; then, with the postmaster for a guide, fish and fowl would soon be obliged to seek cover. It is needless to add that the Doctor struck a bargain with the postmaster and promised to be on hand without fail. I never saw our good friend so wild with delight, and the postmaster became as happy as if he had just concluded a cash contract for a car-load of ammunition.

The schoolmaster, a very accommodating young man, helped us down to the beach this morning with our load. Anticipating numerous lakes and widespreads, where we might gain advantage of the wind, we had brought a sprit sail along, together with a temporary keel. The sail helped us frequently yesterday, especially in Buffalo Lake, but the wind had died down after we passed Montello. This morning, however, there was a good breeze again, but quartering, and the keel became essential. This we now attached to our craft, and it was nearly seven o'clock before we were off, although we had had breakfast at 5.30.

The "Ellen Hardy" was at the dock, loading with wheat for Princeton. She is a trimmer, faster craft than the "Chittenden." The engineer told us that the present stage of water was but two and a half feet in the upper Fox, this year and last being the driest on record. He informed us that the freight business was "having the spots knocked off it" by the railroads, and there was hardly enough to make it worth while getting up steam.

Three miles down is the mouth of the lake. There being two outlets around a large marsh, we were somewhat confused in trying to find the proper channel. We ascertained, after going a mile and a half out of our way to the south, that the northern extremity of the marsh is the one to steer for. The river continues to wind along between marshy shores, although occasionally hugging a high bank of red clay or skirting a knoll of shifting sand; now and then these knolls rise to the dignity of hills, red with sorrel and sparsely covered with scrubby pines and oaks.

It was noon when we reached the lock above Princeton. The lock-keeper, a remarkably round-shouldered German, is a pleasant, gossipy fellow, fond of his long pipe and his very fat frau. Upon invitation, we made ourselves quite at home in the lock-house, a pleasant little brick structure in a plot of made land, the entire establishment having that rather stiffly neat, ship-shape appearance peculiar to life-saving stations, navy-yards, and military barracks. The good frau steeped for us a pot of tea, and in other ways helped us to grace our dinner, which we spread on a bench under a grape arbor, by the side of the yawning stone basin of the lock.

The "Ellen Hardy," which had left Marquette nearly an hour later than we, came along while we were at dinner, waking the echoes with three prolonged steam groans. We took advantage of the circumstance to lock through in her company. This was our first experience of the sort, so we were naturally rather timid as we brushed her great paddle, going in, and stole along under her overhanging deck, for she quite filled the lock. The captain kindly allowed the liliputian to glide through in advance of his steamer, however, when the gates were once more opened, and we felt, as we shot out, as though we had emerged from under the belly of a monster.

Beaching again, below the lock, we returned to finish our dinner. The keeper asked for a ride to Princeton village, three miles below, and we admitted him to our circle,—pipe, market-basket and all, though it caused the canoe to sink uncomfortably near to the gunwale. Going down, our voluble friend talked very freely about his affairs. He said that his pay of $30 per month ran from about the middle of April to the first of December, and averaged him, the year round, about $20 and house-rent. He had but little to do, and got along very comfortably on the twenty-five acres of marsh-land which the government owned, by raising pigs and cows, a few vegetables, and hay enough for his stock. He admitted that this was "a heap better" than he could do in the fatherland.

"I shoost dell you, mine frient," he said to me, as he grinned and refilled his pipe, "dot Shermany vos a nice guntry, and Bismarck he vos a grade feller, und I vos brout I vos a Sherman; but I dells mine vooman vot I dells you,—I mooch rahder read aboud 'em in mine Sherman newsbaper, dan vot I voot leef dere myself, already. I roon avay vrom dem conscrip' fellers, und I shoost never seed de time vot I voot go back again. In dot ol' guntry, I vos nuttings boot a beasant feller; unt in dis guntry I vos a goov'ment off'cer, vich makes grade diff'rence, already."

He chuckled a good deal to himself when asked what he thought about the Fox-Wisconsin river-improvement, but finally said that government must spend its surplus some way,—if not in this, it would in another,—and he could not object to a scheme which gave him his bread and butter. He said that the improvement operations scattered a good deal of money throughout the valley, for labor and supplies, but expressed his doubts as to the ultimate national value of the work, unless the shifting Wisconsin River, thus far unnavigable for steamers, should be canalled from the portage to its mouth. He is an honest fellow, and appears to utilize his abundance of leisure in reading the newspapers.

At Princeton village,—a thriving country town on a steep bank, with unkempt backyards running down to and defiling the river,—we again came across the "Ellen Hardy." She was unloading her light cargo of wheat as we arrived, and left Princeton an eighth of a mile behind us. We now had a pleasant little race to White River lock, seven miles below. With sail set, and paddles to help, we led her easily as far as the lock. But we thought to gain time by portaging over the dam, and she gained a lead of at least a mile, although we frequently caught sight of her towering white hull across the widespreads, by dint of standing on the thwarts and peering over the tall walls of wild rice which shut us in as closely as though we had been canoeing in a railroad cut.

It had been fair and cloudy by turns to-day, but delightfully cool,—a wonderful improvement on yesterday, when we fairly sweltered, coming down Buffalo Lake. In the middle of the afternoon, below White River, a thunder-storm overtook us in a widespread several miles in extent. Seeking a willow island which abutted on the channel, we made a tent of the sail and stood the brief storm quite comfortably. We then pushed on, and, rubber-coated, weathered the few clearing showers in the boat, for we were anxious to reach Berlin by evening.

At Berlin lock, twelve miles below White River, we portaged the dam, and, getting into a two-mile current, ate our supper on board. The river now begins to have firmer banks, and to approach the ridges upon the southern rim of its basin.

We reached Berlin in the twilight, the landscape of hill and meadow being softened in the golden glow. The better portion of this beautiful little city of forty-five hundred inhabitants is situated on a ridge, closely skirted by the river, with the poorer quarters on the flats spreading away on either side. There are many charming homes and the main business street has an air of active prosperity.

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