Читать книгу Historic Waterways—Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers - Reuben Gold Thwaites - Страница 11

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It was a quarter to twelve, Monday morning, the 23d of May, 1887, when we took seats in our canoe at our own landing-stage on Third Lake, at Madison, spread an awning over two hoops, as on a Chinese house-boat, pushed off, waved farewell to a little group of curious friends, and started on our way to explore the Rock River of Illinois. W—— wielded the paddle astern, while I took the oars amidships. Despite the one hundred pounds of baggage and the warmth emitted by the glowing sun—for the season was unusually advanced—we made excellent speed, as we well had need in order to reach the mouth, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles as the sinuous river runs, in the seven days we had allotted to the task.

It was a delightful run across the southern arm of the lake. There was a light breeze aft, which gave a graceful upward curvature to our low-set awning. The great elms and lindens at charming Lakeside—the home of the Wisconsin Chautauqua—droop over the bowlder-studded banks, their masses of greenery almost sweeping the water. Down in the deep, cool shadows groups of bass and pickerel and perch lazily swish; swarms of "crazy bugs" ceaselessly swirl around and around, with no apparent object in life but this rhythmic motion, by which they wrinkle the mirror-like surface into concentric circles. Through occasional openings in the dense fringe of pendent boughs, glimpses can be had of park-like glades, studded with columnar oaks, and stretching upward to hazel-grown knolls, which rise in irregular succession beyond the bank. From the thickets comes the fussy chatter of thrushes and cat-birds, calling to their young or gossiping with the orioles, the robins, jays, and red-breasted grosbeaks, who warble and twitter and scream and trill from more lofty heights.

A quarter of an hour sent us spinning across the mouth of Turvill's Bay. At Ott's Farm, just beyond, the bank rises with sheer ascent, in layers of crumbly sandstone, a dozen feet above the water's level. Close-cropped woodlawn pastures gently slope upward to storm-wracked orchards, and long, dark windbreaks of funereal spruce. Flocks of sheep, fresh from the shearing, trot along the banks, winding in and out between the trees, keeping us company on our way—their bleating lambs following at a lope—now and then stopping, in their eager, fearful curiosity, to view our craft, and assuming picturesque attitudes, worthy subjects for a painter's art.

A long, hard pull through close-grown patches of reeds and lily-pads, encumbered by thick masses of green scum, brought us to the outlet of the lake and the head of that section of the Catfish River which is the medium through which Third Lake pours its overflow into Second. The four lakes of Madison are connected by the Catfish, the chief Wisconsin tributary of the Rock. Upon the map this relationship reminds one of beads strung upon a thread.

As the result of a protracted drought, the water in the little stream was low, and great clumps of aquatic weeds came very close to the surface, threatening, later in the season, an almost complete stoppage to navigation. But the effect of the current was at once perceptible. It was as if an additional rower had been taken on. The river, the open stream of which is some three rods wide at this point, winds like a serpent between broad marshes, which must at no far distant period in the past have been wholly submerged, thus prolonging the three upper lakes into a continuous sheet of water. From a half-mile to a mile back, on either side, there are low ridges, doubtless the ancient shores of a narrow lake that was probably thirty or forty miles in length. In high water, even now, the marshes are converted into widespreads, where the dense tangle of wild rice, reeds, and rushes does not wholly prevent canoe navigation; while little mud-bottomed lakes, a quarter of a mile or so in diameter, are frequently met with at all stages. In places, the river, during a drought, has a depth of not over eighteen inches. In such stretches, the current moves swiftly over hard bottoms strewn with gravel and the whitened sepulchres of snails and clams. In the widespreads, the progress is sluggish, the vegetable growth so crowding in upon the stream as to leave but a narrow and devious channel, requiring skill to pilot through; for in these labyrinthian turnings one is quite liable, if not closely watching the lazy flood, to push into some vexatious cul-de-sac, many rods in length, and be obliged to retrace, with the danger of mistaking a branch for the main channel.

In the depths of the tall reeds motherly mud-hens are clucking, while their mates squat in the open water, in meditative groups, rising with a prolonged splash and a whirr as the canoe approaches within gunshot. Secluded among the rushes and cat-tails, nestled down in little clumps of stubble, are hundreds of the cup-shaped nests of the red-winged blackbird, or American starling; the females, in modest brown, take a rather pensive view of life, administering to the wants of their young; while the bright-hued, talkative males, perched on swaying stalks, fairly make the air hum with their cheery trills.

Water-lilies abound everywhere. The blossoms of the yellow variety (nuphar advena) are here and there bursting in select groups, but as a rule the buds are still below the surface. In the mud lakes, the bottom is seen through the crystal water to be thickly studded with great rosettes, two and three feet in diameter, of corrugated ovate leaves, of golden russet shade, out of which are shot upward brilliant green stalks, some bearing arrow-shaped leaves, and others crowned with the tight-wrapped buds that will soon open upon the water level into saffron-hued flowers. The plate-like leaves of the white variety (nymphæa tuberosa) already dot the surface, but the buds are not yet visible. Anchored by delicate stems to the creeping root-stalks, buried in the mud below, the leaves, when first emerging, are of a rich golden brown, but they are soon frayed by the waves, and soiled and eaten by myriads of water-bugs, slugs, and spiders, who make their homes on these floating islands. Pluck a leaf, and the many-legged spiders, the roving buccaneers of these miniature seas, stalk off at high speed, while the slugs and leeches, in a spirit of stubborn patriotism, prefer meeting death upon their native heath to politic emigration.

By one o'clock we had reached the railway bridge at the head of Second Lake. Upon the trestlework were perched three boys and a man, fishing. They had that listless air and unkempt appearance which are so characteristic of the little groups of humanity often to be found on a fair day angling from piers, bridges, and railway embankments. Men who imagine the world is allied against them will loll away a dozen hours a day, throughout an entire summer season, sitting on the sun-heated girders of an iron bridge; yet they would strike against any system in the work-a-day world which compelled them to labor more than eight hours for ten hours' pay. In going down a long stretch of water highway, one comes to believe that about one-quarter of the inhabitants, especially of the villages, spend their time chiefly in fishing. On a canoe voyage, the bridge fishermen and the birds are the classes of animated nature most frequently met with, the former presenting perhaps the most unique and varied specimens. There are fishermen and fishermen. I never could fancy Izaak Walton dangling his legs from a railroad bridge, soaking a worm at the end of a length of store twine, vainly hoping, as the hours went listlessly by, that a stray sucker or a diminutive catfish would pull the bob under and score a victory for patience. Now the use of a boat lifts this sort of thing to the dignity of a sport.

Second Lake is about three miles long by a mile in breadth. The shores are here and there marshy; but as a rule they are of good, firm land with occasional rocky bluffs from a dozen to twenty feet high, rising sheer from a narrow beach of gravel. As we crossed over to gain the lower Catfish, a calm prevailed for the most part, and the awning was a decided comfort. Now and then, however, a delightful puff came ruffling the water astern, swelling our canvas roof and noticeably helping us along. Light cloudage, blown swiftly before upper aerial currents, occasionally obscured the sun—black, gray, and white cumuli fantastically shaped and commingled, while through jagged and rapidly shifting gaps was to be seen with vivid effect, the deep blue ether beyond.

The bluffs and glades are well wooded. The former have escarpments of yellow clay and grayish sand and gravel; here and there have been landslides, where great trees have fallen with the débris and maintain but a slender hold amid their new surroundings, leaning far out over the water, easy victims for the next tornado. One monarch of the woods had been thus precipitated into the flood; on one side, its trunk and giant branches were water-soaked and slimy, while those above were dead and whitened by storm. As we approached, scores of turtles, sunning themselves on the unsubmerged portion, suddenly ducked their heads and slid off their perches amid a general splash, to hidden grottos below; while a solitary king-fisher from his vantage height on an upper bough hurriedly rose, and screamed indignance at our rude entry upon his preserve.

A farmer's lad sitting squat upon his haunches on the beach, and another, leaning over a pasture-fence, holding his head between his hands, exhibited lamb-like curiosity at the awning-decked canoe, as it glided past their bank. Through openings in the forest, we caught glimpses of rolling upland pastures, with sod close-cropped and smooth as a well-kept lawn; of gray-blue fields, recently seeded; of farmhouses, spacious barns, tobacco-curing sheds—for this is the heart of the Wisconsin tobacco region—and those inevitable signs of rural prosperity, windmills, spinning around by spurts, obedient to the breath of the intermittent May-day zephyr; while little bays opened up, on the most distant shore, enchanting vistas of blue-misted ridges.

At last, after a dreamy pull of two miles from the lake-head, we rounded a bold headland of some thirty feet in height, and entered Catfish Bay. Ice-pushed bowlders strew the shore, which is here a gentle meadow slope, based by a gravel beach. A herd of cattle are contentedly browsing, their movements attuned to a symphony of cow-bells dangling from the necks of the leaders. The scene is pre-eminently peaceful.

The Catfish connecting Second Lake with First, has two entrances, a small flat willow island dividing them. Through the eastern channel, which is the deepest, the current goes down with a rush, the obstruction offered by numerous bowlders churning it into noisy rapids; but the water tames down within a few rods, and the canoe comes gayly gliding into the united stream, which now has a placid current of two miles per hour—quite fast enough for canoeing purposes. This section of the Catfish is much more picturesque than the preceding; the shores are firmer; the parallel ridges sometimes closely shut it in, and the stream, here four or five rods wide, takes upon itself the characteristics of the conventional river. The weed and vine grown banks are oftentimes twenty feet in height, with as sharp an ascent as can be comfortably climbed; and the swift-rushing water is sometimes fringed with sumachs, elders, and hazel brush, with here and there willows, maples, lindens, and oaks. Occasionally the river apparently ends at the base of a steep, earthy bluff; but when that is reached there is a sudden swerve to the right or left, with another vista of banks—sometimes wood-grown to the water's edge, again with openings revealing purplish-brown fields, neatly harrowed, stretching up to some commanding, forest-crowned hill-top. The blossoms of the wild grape burden the air with sweet scent; on the deep-shaded banks, amid stones and cool mosses, the red and yellow columbine gracefully nods; the mandrake, with its glossy green leaves, grows with tropical luxuriance; more in the open, appears in great profusion, the old maid's nightcap, in purplish roseate hue; the sheep-berry shrub is decked in masses of white blossoms; the hawthorn flower is detected by its sickly-sweet scent, and here and there are luxuriously-flowered locusts, specimens that have escaped from cultivation to take up their homes in this botanical wilderness.

There are charming rustic pictures at every turn—sleek herds of cattle, droves of fat hogs, flocks of sheep that have but recently doffed their winter suits, well-tended fields, trim-looking wire fences, neat farm-houses where rows of milkpans glisten upon sunny drying-benches, farmers and farmers' boys riding aristocratic-looking sulky drags and cultivators—everywhere an air of agricultural luxuriance, rather emphasized by occasional log-houses, which repose as honored relics by the side of their pretentious successors, sharply contrasting the wide differences between pioneer life and that of to-day.

The marshes are few; and they in this dry season are luxuriant with coarse, glossy wild grass—the only hay-crop the farmer will have this year—and dotted with clumps of dead willow-trees, which present a ghostly appearance, waving their white, scarred limbs in the freshening breeze. The most beautiful spot on this section of the Catfish is a point some eight miles above Stoughton. The verdure-clad banks are high and steep. A lanky Norwegian farmer came down an angling path with a pail-yoke over his shoulders to get washing-water for his "woman," and told us that when this country was sparsely settled, a third of a century ago, there was a mill-dam here. That was the day when the possession of water-power meant more than it does in this age of steam and rapid transit—the day when every mill-site was supposed to be a nucleus around which a prosperous village must necessarily grow in due time. Nothing now remains as a relic of this particular fond hope but great hollows in either bank, where the clay for dam-making purposes has been scooped out, and a few rotten piles, having a slender hold upon the bottom, against which drift-wood has lodged, forming a home for turtles and clumps of semi-aquatic grasses. W—— avers, in a spirit of enthusiasm, that the Catfish between Second and First Lakes is quite similar in parts to the immortal Avon, upon which Shakespeare canoed in the long-ago. If she is right, then indeed are the charms of Avon worthy the praise of the Muses. If the Catfish of to-day is ever to go down to posterity on the wings of poesy, however, I would wish that it might be with the more euphonious title of "Yahara,"—the original Winnebago name. The map-maker who first dropped the liquid "Yahara" for the rasping "Catfish" had no soul for music.

Darting under a quaint rustic foot-bridge made of rough poles, which on its high trestles stalks over a wide expanse of reedy bog like a giant "stick-bug," we emerged into First Lake. The eastern shore, which we skirted, is a wide, sandy beach, backed by meadows. The opposite banks, two or three miles away, present more picturesque outlines. A stately wild swan kept us company for over a mile, just out of musket-shot, and finally took advantage of a patch of rushes to stop and hide. A small sandstone quarry on the southeast shore, with a lone worker, attracted our attention. There was not a human habitation in sight, and it seemed odd to see a solitary man engaged in such labor apparently so far removed from the highways of commerce. The quarryman stuck his crowbar in a crack horizontally, to serve as a seat, and filled his pipe as we approached. We hailed him with inquiries, from the stone pier jutting into the lake at the foot of the bluff into which he was burrowing. He replied from his lofty perch, in rich Norsk brogue, that he shipped stone by barge to Stoughton, and good-humoredly added, as he struck a match and lit his bowl of weed, that he thought himself altogether too good company to ever get lonesome. We left the philosopher to enjoy his pipe in peace, and passed on around the headland.

An iron railway bridge, shut in with high sides, and painted a dullish red, spans the Lower Catfish at the outlet of First Lake. A country boy, with face as dirty as it was solemn, stood in artistic rags at the base of an arch, fishing with a bit of hop-twine tied to the end of a lath; from a mass of sedge just behind him a hoarse cry arose at short intervals.

"Hi, Johnny, what's that making the noise?

"Bird!" sententiously responded the stoic youth. He looked as though he had been bored with a silly question, and kept his eyes on his task.

"What kind of a bird, Johnny?"

"D'no!" rather raspishly. He evidently thought he was being guyed.

We ran the nose of the canoe into the reeds. There was a splash, a wild cry of alarm, and up flew a great bittern. Circling about until we had passed on, it then drifted down to its former location near the uninquiring lad—where doubtless it had a nest of young, and had been disturbed in the midst of a lecture on domestic discipline.

Wide marshes again appear on either side of the stream. There are great and small bitterns at every view; plovers daintily picking their way over the open bogs, greedily feeding on countless snails; wild ducks in plenty, patiently waiting in the secluded bayous for the development of their young; yellow-headed troopials flitting freely about, uttering a choking, gulping cry; while the pert little wren, with his smart cock-tail, views the varied scene from his perch on a lofty rush, jealously keeping watch and ward over his ball-like castle, with its secret gate, hung among the reeds below.

But interspersing the marshes there are often stretches of firm bank and delightfully varied glimpses of hillside and wood. Three miles above Stoughton, we stopped for supper at the edge of a glade, near a quaint old bridge. While seated on the smooth sward, beside our little spread, there came a vigorous rustling among the branches of the trees that overhang the country road which winds down the opposite slope to the water's edge to take advantage of the crossing. A gypsy wagon, with a high, rounded, oil-cloth top soon emerged from the forest, and was seen to have been the cause of the disturbance. Halting at one side of the highway, three men and a boy jumped out, unhitched the horses at the pole and the jockeying stock at the tail-board, and led them down to water. Two women meanwhile set about getting supper, and preparations were made for a night camp. We confessed to a touch of sympathy with our new neighbors on the other shore, for we felt as though gypsying ourselves. The hoop awning on the canoe certainly had the general characteristics of a gypsy-wagon top; we knew not and cared not where night might overtake us; we were dependent on the country for our provender; were at the mercy of wind, weather, and the peculiarities of our chosen highway; and had deliberately turned our backs on home for a season of untrammeled communion with nature.

It was during a golden sunset that, pushing on through a great widespread, through which the channel doubles and twists like a scotched snake, we came in sight of the little city of Stoughton. First, the water-works tower rises above the mass of trees which embower the settlement. Then, on nearer approach, through rifts in the woodland we catch glimpses of some of the best outlying residences, most of them pretty, with well-kept grounds. Then come the church-spires, the ice-houses, the barge-dock, and with a spurt we sweep alongside the foundry of Mandt's wagon-works. Depositing our oars, paddle, blankets, and supplies in the office, the canoe was pulled up on the grass and padlocked to a stake. The street lamps were lighting as we registered at the inn.

Stoughton has about two thousand inhabitants. A walk about town in the evening, revealed a number of bright, busy shops, chiefly kept by Norwegians, who predominate in this region. Nearly every street appears to end in one of Mandt's numerous factory yards, and the wagon-making magnate seems to control pretty much the entire river front here.