No. 666.
THE FALLS OF MINNEHAHA.

WHAT NORMAN SAW
IN
THE WEST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

“FOUR DAYS IN JULY,” AND “A WINTER AT WOODLAWN.”

“Much is my life enriched by the images of the great Niagara, of the vast lakes, and of the heavenly sweetness of the prairie scenes.”—Margaret Fuller.

EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS.

New York:

PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER,

SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 200 MULBERRY-STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859,

BY CARLTON & PORTER,

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York.

CONTENTS.

Illustrations.

WHAT NORMAN SAW

IN

THE WEST.

CHAPTER I.
ON THE RAILWAY.

“The black steam-engine! steed of iron power;

The wondrous steed of the Arabian tale,

Launched on its course by pressure of a touch;

Ha! ha! it shouts, as on

It gallops, dragging in its tireless path,

Its load of fire.”

“How still Broadway looks so early in the morning,” said Norman Lester to his mother, as they drove down the street to take the early train.

It was an unusual sight, the long vista of the beautiful street in deep shadow, peaceful and calm as if it knew no trampling footsteps nor jostling vehicles. It was just waking up from its brief hour of repose. Here and there a market cart, laden with vegetables, was jogging leisurely on, then a carriage with travelers and trunks hastened onward. A few waiters were standing at the doors of the hotels to speed the parting guests, and pedestrians not ignorant of sunrise and its demands were walking on the broad pavement. Soon the swelling tide of life would rush through this great channel; the anxious, earnest brow, the sad and troubled countenances; light and trifling, and bright and joyous faces, would all be borne down that mighty stream. Business and pleasure, noise, and hurry, and confusion would come, as the ascending sun chased away the shadows of the great thoroughfare, and with them its brief repose.

Norman’s thoughts went beyond Broadway and its contrast.

No. 666.
NEW YORK CITY

“I have actually set out on my journey to the West to see my uncle, a journey I have been thinking of for two or three years. How I wish you were going with us, Edward,” he said to his tall cousin, whose manliness Norman greatly admired.

“You are to be your mother’s escort to-day, Norman,” replied Edward; “I hope you will take good care of her. You are tall enough to make quite a respectable escort, but I have my doubts as to your care and thoughtfulness. I think you are rather a heedless boy, but I hope you will come back greatly improved.”

“There is no saying,” said Norman, “what this journey may do for me.”

“We shall see; but here we are at the depôt,” was Edward’s reply.

The ferry was crossed, some oranges bought to quiet the noisy demands of the orange woman, seats secured, good-by said to Edward, and Norman and his mother were fairly off for a few days ride on the Erie Railroad to Niagara.

How that terrible, untiring iron horse bore them on; how rapidly was the panorama of wood and plain, of rock, river, and valley, unrolled before them; how he snorted and panted, and shot onward, after a short pause now and then to refresh the mighty giant.

“A little water, and a grasp

Of wood sufficient for its nerves of steel.”

The shifting landscape looked very lovely in the softened lights of that pleasant June day. The tender green of the foliage, orchards in full bloom, neat farm-houses, glimpses of the river Passaic, and their noble views of a beautiful valley, in the midst of which rose the spires of Port Jervis, lying prettily among the hills, were presented to the eye and as rapidly withdrawn. Then the scenery became more wild as the train rushed along the high embankment, following the course of the Delaware, and looking down upon its rapid waters. It is a wild, rugged region; huge trees, great prostrate trunks, scarred and blackened trophies of the progress of the advancing settler wrestling with his gigantic foes; log-cabins surrounded by unsightly clearings marred with frequent stumps; fields of wheat struggling for existence in the scanty soil; fantastical fences formed of twisted, gnarled, antler-like roots. A most picturesque region, which might, however, call forth the comment of the sturdy Sussex farmer: “Picturesque! I don’t know what you call picturesque; but I say, give me a soil that when you turn it up you have something for your pains; the fine soil makes the fine country, madam.”

Norman looked with astonishment on the lofty and massive arches of the bridges over which the railroad crosses the valley, and had a glimpse of the water leaping down the ravine at Cascade Bridge. A number of men were working there on the steep sandy sides of the cliff, that seemed to afford them a most perilous footing.

One noble view he had of the Susquehanna with its islands; and then, as they changed cars at Elmira, the rain obscured the lake and the fine country on their way northward to Niagara.

CHAPTER II.
TWO DAYS AT NIAGARA.

“As if God poured it from his hollow hand,

And had bid

Its flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch his centuries in the eternal rock.”

“No clearing to-day, Norman,” said Mrs. Lester, as they left the Cataract Hotel in the drizzling rain to cross over to Goat Island. They paused upon the bridge, and looked upon the rapids, foaming, and dashing, and roaring beneath.

“I can understand now,” said Norman, “what I have read about morbid impulses, for I feel as if I would like to jump into the rushing water.”

The path down the hill to Juna Island was very muddy and slippery, and they were obliged to walk down very carefully, lest a misstep should plunge them into the mighty current.

Mrs. Lester told Norman of a happy party that once crossed the bridge to this island; of the little girl playfully thrown toward the fall by a young man; of the sudden terror that led her to jump from his arms; of his fearful plunge to save the life he had periled, and of the twain borne over that giddy verge. Those fresh young lives, gone in one moment, with all of earthly hope and aspiration.

It was fearful to think of; but how many are daily and hourly borne, by the mighty tides of worldliness and sin, over a more tremendous precipice; and there are no cries or prayers of pitying love; no man careth for their souls!

Norman was very silent as he looked for the first time on that wondrous fall, the sight of which, he said, took away his strength. He felt awed and solemnized by this mighty display of God’s mighty works.

By the path on Goat Island, not beautiful and attractive as usual, for the trees had not put on their heavy foliage, and the path was wet and muddy, they walked to a little rural building, where, sheltered from the falling rain, they could look down upon the Horse-Shoe Fall. On one point in this magnificent cataract Norman loved to look; it was the angular central point where the stream is greatest in volume, and where its exquisite hue of emerald green continually breaks into snowy whiteness.

“I have heard those falling waters compared to the robes of a goddess continually falling from her shoulders,” said Mrs. Lester; “but the thought is scarcely spiritual enough to satisfy one.”

“It seems too grand to say anything about it,” said Norman; “it makes me so silent.”

“‘Come then, expressive Silence, muse thy praise,’

is a most fitting invocation at this place,” replied his mother.

“I have been looking all round for you,” said a lady, whom they had found the day before to be a most agreeable fellow-traveler, as she alighted from the carriage, “and they told me at the hotel that you had gone to Goat Island, so I came here with the expectation of finding you.”

After looking awhile at the fall, they descended the hill, crossed the Terrapin bridge, and ascending the winding staircase in the stone tower, they came out on the circular balcony above. It was fearful to look from that giddy height down into the foaming depths below, and in the midst of those maddening waters one could scarcely believe that the town had a foundation sufficiently firm to resist their onward course. The columns of spray, driven by the east wind, almost obscured the opposite cliffs.

Mrs. Bushnell wished Mrs. Lester and Norman to accompany her in her drive round Goat Island home; but they preferred another hour spent in sight of the fall. Many carriages drove up while they sat there, and men with cigars in their mouths jumped out, ran down the hill, over the bridge, and up the stairs to the tower, where they took a hurried look at the mighty torrent, and speedily regained their carriages and were off.

“I really think, mother,” said Norman, “that we are enjoying Niagara more than any one. We are having such a long look.”

In the afternoon they accompanied Mrs. Bushnell and her nephew to the British side of the river. They crossed the Suspension Bridge, about two miles below the falls. It is a miracle of art, a beautiful work of man, in harmonious contrast with the stupendous works of God. Norman, who had been studying his guide book, told them that there were more than eighteen million feet of wire, and that the aggregate length of wire was more than four thousand miles.

They rode over the lower carriage way of the bridge, which is a single span, eight hundred feet in length between the massive towers by which it is supported. In crossing they had a fine distant view of the two falls, and of the fearful chasm beneath, with its solemn deep waters, quiet as if exhausted by their recent plunge.

The afternoon was decidedly stormy, the rain fell fast, dimming the glass of the carriage, and driving in upon them, when the window was open. The spray hung before the falls as a dense cloud, obscuring more than half of them from view.

On their return Mr. White, Mrs. Bushnell’s nephew, took Norman by the hand, and walked over the railroad bridge, while the carriage passed beneath. Norman looked with wonder at those mighty cables, twisted with so many wires, and supporting with their interlacing ropes that great structure weighing eight hundred tons. It seemed so solid and substantial, that Norman did not think of any danger in crossing it, air hung as it is over the great abyss.

Another cloudy day, but it was a happy day to Norman and his mother. As they loitered at Point View and on Goat Island, Norman took three or four pencil sketches, to be copied and filled up at his leisure. He gathered some pretty white and blue flowers on Goat Island, and arranged them fancifully in an Indian birch-bark canoe which he had just purchased.

“Mother,” said he, holding it up to her, “this canoe looks just like one of which I have seen a picture. It illustrates an Indian legend of the paradise of flowers. They are represented as still retaining their flowerlike forms, leisurely reclining in canoes, floating gently in the placid streams of the spirit land.”

“How pretty it looks,” said his mother, “with those pendant white blossoms; I shall always associate this flowery canoe and its graceful legend with this turn in the path on Goat Island.”

“Are we not having a delightful afternoon, mother? the air is so pleasant, and there are patches of blue sky, and it is nice not to carry an umbrella,” said Norman.

“We should not have thought of that element of satisfaction, but for the experience of these two days; as it is, we are prepared fully to appreciate it.”

They very much enjoyed their walk up to the “Three Sisters;” the rapids were of the most beautiful green, flecked with white foam, and in the absence of sunlight they could look, without being dazzled, upon the graceful majestic flow of waters. How many longing, lingering looks were given from each spot as, at the approach of evening, they reluctantly retraced their steps.

Norman had amused himself during the day in looking over Indian curiosities, and in addition to a birch-bark canoe worked in porcupine quills, pincushions, and mats worked in beads, had purchased a Derbyshire-spar cup and whistle at the store near the bridge to Goat Island, with the assurance that they were turned at Niagara, out of Table Rock!

A parting glance from Point View the next morning before breakfast, after which they took the cars for Buffalo, where they found Professor L. awaiting them. A long ride on the railroad, near the shore of Lake Erie, (which was not however often visible,) carried them through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and then through Indiana and Illinois. All these states looked very much alike to Norman as he hurried past groves, ravines, towns, and prairies, and after a day and night’s travel arrived at E., a village near Chicago, without any very definite impressions of the shifting scenery that had passed before his vision.

CHAPTER III.
CHILDREN MADE HAPPY.

“We are willing, we are ready;

We would learn, if you would teach,

We have hearts that yearn to duty;

We have minds alive to beauty,

Souls that any height can reach.”

Mary Howitt.

Most grateful was the quiet repose of Mrs. Rivers’s pretty home after the long wearisome ride in the cars, most pleasant was it to be kindly welcomed by old friends in their new homes. The village seemed full of purpose and aspiration, springing up in an oak opening on the shore of Lake Michigan, and clustering round the two literary institutions that have called it into existence. The familiar faces gathered around Mrs. Rivers’s tea-table recalled many dear and cherished associations, and brought back pleasant pictures of the past.

Norman’s pleasures were in the present. He was soon off to the lake with George Rivers, wandering a while on its pebbly shore, and then sitting on the pier fishing. They dropped their lines in the water, and sat waiting for a bite. Long and patiently they sat, the sun burning their faces, but their patience was not rewarded with success, for they got no fish. Norman found more companions in the little Randolphs and Henrys, who were fishing at the same time. They lived a few doors from George Rivers, and they came to see Norman, and invited him to dinner and to tea. He had many pleasant talks, and many games with his new friends, who were very kind to him.

Sunday morning came; the weather doubtful, uncertain, showery. Mrs. Lester heard with great pleasure a lecture from her former pastor, and a sermon from an old friend. The Sunday school was invited to visit the Biblical Institute that afternoon, to see some idols that had just arrived from China, and to hear Profesor L. lecture upon them. The children were on tip-toe with expectation; but the superintendent, after consultation with the teachers, decided that it would not be prudent to go; the clouds were threatening, and the grass was wet with the recent rain. With his pleasant face and his kindly voice, he told the children of this decision, and then asked all who were in favor of going to the Biblical Institute the next afternoon, at four o’clock, to raise their hands. Every hand was raised, but there was a new difficulty. A professor in the Institute said that it would be better to defer the visit till the next Sabbath, as it would interfere with the students’ recitations on Monday afternoon.

“Not the next Sabbath,” said another gentleman; “there will be a general class-meeting here then, which we all wish to attend.”

“All, then,” said the superintendent, “who are in favor of visiting the Institute this day fortnight, will signify it by holding up their hands.”

Not an uplifted hand was seen; the expression of opinion was very decided. The children did not believe in a pleasure so long delayed. The professor, with great good-humor, then said that they were disposed to gratify the children, and that they would so arrange their recitations as to give them a cordial welcome.

“My text is at the Institute,” said Professor L., as he rose to speak to the children, “and my audience here;” but he contrived to talk to them without a text so agreeably, that the children voted that he should be invited to address them the next afternoon, which he partly consented to do.

It was a very pleasant looking Sunday school, teachers and children all in their places, notwithstanding the wet walks and the dark clouds. The children looked bright and happy, interested in their lessons, attentive to their teachers, and they sang sweet hymns with great spirit and earnestness.

Monday was bright and beautiful, and many little hearts beat high with the thoughts of the afternoon’s pleasure. How glad they were that it had not been put off for a fortnight. It was a pretty sight to see the procession of children winding through the grove of grand old trees on the high bank of the lake, whose blue waters sparkled in the sunlight. The white sails of schooners were seen in the distant horizon, and the lake looked so peaceful that it was difficult to imagine it roughened by the tempest, uttering its loud roar as its great waves dashed against the bank, tearing it away, and prostrating the lofty trees that adorned it.

The children walked into the Institute, and entering the room on the right, saw the walls covered with pictures of hideous Chinese idols. One of the great idols they had come to see was a gigantic figure, dressed in flowing robes of white muslin, with a ghastly face, rolling eyes, grinning mouth, and a crown on his head. He was attended by his servant, who had a horrible black face, and long flowing black garments. Such figures as these are carried through the streets in China to receive the worship of the people; and thus religion, which should elevate, only debases them; and fear is the ruling motive instead of love.

Norman thought of that scene in the idol temple in Rangoon: the room lined with images of Boodh, in a sitting posture, with folded hands, bearing lamps to give light to a Christian prayer-meeting; Havelock, with his Bible in his hand, surrounded by a hundred Christian soldiers, praying to the God of heaven, and singing praises to the Lord Christ in this famous idol temple. Well, the day will come when all the idols will be cast to the moles and the bats, and when from every hill-top and valley, from the broad prairie and the green savannah, the incense of praise shall ascend to the one living and true God.

After the children had passed around the rooms, and looked at the idols, they went up stairs and seated themselves in the chapel to hear Professor L. The fresh breeze blew in the window, and the lake spread its broad bosom beneath the eye; stripes of green and blue gave variety to its surface; little sail-boats sailed rapidly by; and a large steamer went proudly on its way. It was pleasant to look out upon this noble view, and listen at the same time to Professor L.’s narration of what he had seen during his three years in China.

He gave an interesting account of Miss Aldersey, a noble English woman, who, while in her pretty English home, in the midst of kind friends, and social joys, and religious privileges, felt her heart so moved by the spiritual destitution of the Chinese, that she left home and friends, and all pleasant, familiar things, and went over the seas to China. Freely she had received; freely she gave fortune, time, and toil to the great work to which she had consecrated her life. She opened a school, and gathered in the poor neglected children. Female children are despised in China, and many of these poor little things, who had no one to love them, found a home beneath Miss Aldersey’s roof. Day after day she sat teaching these ignorant little girls, and telling them of Jesus and the home he has gone to prepare for his people. They listened to the new and wonderful story, and their hearts were opened to receive these heavenly truths.

One of them, after the custom of the country, had been bethrothed when she was four years old, to a boy several years older, and the time approached when she was called upon to be married. Part of the marriage ceremony consists of bowing down before ancestral tablets, containing images of their ancestors, and burning incense to them. This the young Christian Chinese girl refused to do. She loved Jesus, she worshiped God, and she would not bow down before any idol.

In vain her parents expostulated and entreated. In vain they offered her reward, and threatened punishment. She was firm in her refusal to break the law of God. They beat her and tortured her, but her steadfast heart, stayed upon God, knew no fear. Faithful to her Christian profession, this brave girl continued in the path of Christian duty, unmoved by tribulation and wrath and all the devices of wicked men.

The children then sang the noble missionary hymn,

“From Greenland’s icy mountains,

From India’s coral strand,”

and were dismissed for a little recreation in the grove, where there was a swing, and cool shade, and grassy turf. Just before sunset the children were called together, and again in regular order walked homeward, with faces glowing with enjoyment, and minds and hearts filled with happy thoughts and memories.

Wednesday morning Norman went with his mother to the lake, just after breakfast. The waves were gently kissing the shore, and hours passed swiftly away as they listened to the soothing sound and gathered curious pebbles. They found some small fossils, with the remains of shells and animals in them, and Norman was greatly delighted with one that his mother picked up, that looked as if it had on it a single pearl set in gold. They felt sorry to leave the pleasant beach; but the morning had already gone, and it was time to go to Mr. Henry’s to dinner. On their return they found a kind invitation from Mrs. Harris to take tea at the Institute. There were about forty students at the tea-table, and after tea they had prayers. Instead of the reading of the Scripture, verses were repeated, thus enabling all who wished to participate in the devotional exercises; and noble and comforting promises, and precious truths, were uttered in varying tones. That company of young men were girding on their armor, that they might fight as good soldiers under the Captain of their salvation. They were preparing themselves for their life-work; some of them to sow the “precious seed” over the broad prairies of Illinois, by the rocky bluffs and wood-crowned hills of Wisconsin, and the blue waters of Minnesota; while others were looking to the lands of the East—to Bulgaria, and India, and China. It was pleasant to exchange a few brief words with these young men who, by the eye of faith, could see more abundant harvests than those which reward the Western husbandmen. They had asked the Lord of the harvest to send them as reapers into these fields of promise, looking forward to that blessed time when they shall “return with joy bringing their sheaves with them.”

Mrs. Lester afterward looked upon the portrait of the Christian woman to whose liberality this institution owes its existence. That portrait ought to hang on its walls. There is a queenly look about the fine figure, and the way the head is set on the shoulders, and blended goodness and intelligence in the countenance. In the evening of the same day Mrs. Lester was in the room where Mrs. Garrett died, and she thought of the blissful visions that may have floated about that dying pillow glimpses of refreshing and perennial streams to make the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. Her life was not spent in vain on the earth. Regular and consistent in her daily walks of duty and piety, she has, by the judicious bestowment of ample means, prolonged her usefulness on the earth, linked herself to holy activities through coming time, and set in motion trains of influence, the mighty results of which may only be known in the morning of the resurrection. She made to herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when she failed they might receive her into everlasting habitations.

CHAPTER IV.
THE QUEEN CITY OF THE LAKE.

“I saw the domes before me rise,

The lake behind me swell;

I thought upon the bygone days,

When nature wore a different phase,

And man a different skin;

And stretching far, through plain and swamp,

I saw the Indian’s fiery camp,

And heard the buffalo’s marching tramp,

And felt the mammoth’s earthquake stamp,

And all that once had been.

“A sudden change came o’er my dream;

I must have waked and dropp’d my theme.

For ships and cars, in fire and steam,

Begirt the horizon round;

Tall houses rose, with shops in front,

And bricks piled up, as bricks are wont,

In cloud-capp’d turrets frown’d;

And through the living, boiling throng

Thunder’d a thousand carts along,

And railroads howl’d their shrieking song,

Across the groaning ground.”

Norman had many little friends to say good-by to as he left for the cars on Thursday morning, and very many pleasant memories to take with him.

Kind friends were waiting for them at the station at Chicago, and they were soon driving through its busy streets. They approached the river, which has made the town, affording as it does a safe harbor for vessels. This river runs due east and falls into the lakes, receiving, about a mile from its mouth, branches from the north and the south. The river and its branches, lined with substantial warehouses, divide the city into the north, south and west side. On approaching the bridge it suddenly swung round to give passage to a large schooner towed by a little puffing black tug, which gave its shrill whistle as a signal for the drawbridge to open, and then went panting and snorting through.

While waiting for the bridge to resume its place, Emily Percy, a blue-eyed, fair-haired little girl who was seated beside Norman, showed him an old wooden house that formerly belonged to Fort Dearborn, and that, with the light-house, was the only thing left to tell of its existence.

“Norman,” said Mrs. Lester, “this is the fort spoken of in those lines you are so fond of repeating about the Indians:

‘Where, to repel their fierce attack,

Fort Dearborn rear’d across their track

Its log-constructed walls.

For forty years these fronts of wood

The tempest and the foe withstood;

And many a night of fire and flood,

The dauntless garrison made good

Their supper in its halls.’”

“It is difficult to fancy any Indians here, in the heart of this busy city,” said Norman.

“And yet this great city,” said Mrs. Percy “is the growth of twenty-five years. In 1831 there were but four arrivals, two brigs and two schooners, and now there are eight thousand.”

“The lonely garrison that abandoned this fort in 1812,” said Mrs. Lester, “would have been rather astonished, could the vision of this city have risen up: before them.”

“Why did they abandon the fort, mother?” asked Norman.

“They thought it best when they heard of General Hull’s surrender at Detroit. Soon after leaving the fort they were attacked by a large body of Indians, to whom they surrendered, on condition that their lives should be spared. Notwithstanding this promise, the Indians cruelly murdered several of them.”

“You must not forget to tell of Mrs. Heald,” said Mrs. Percy, “for I think we may call her the heroine of Chicago.”

“I leave that to you,” replied Mrs. Lester.

“An Indian,” said Mrs. Percy, “approached her with uplifted tomahawk, when, with great presence of mind, she looked him full in the face, and smilingly said, ‘Surely you would not kill a squaw!’ This Indian warrior was disarmed by this appeal, and the lady’s life was saved.”

The schooner towed by the potent little tug soon passed through, but they were detained by a sloop that made its way very slowly, and Norman had time to look at the vessels in the river, many of them loaded with grain, twenty-five millions of bushels being annually received at this grain port. He also watched with great interest the working of a dredging machine used to take mud out of the river and thus deepen its channel.

A great number of carriages and carts awaited the return of the moving bridge, and many, pedestrians were ready to leap upon it as it approached. The bridges are a daily school of patience for the citizens of Chicago.

The few days at Mrs. Percy’s Norman enjoyed very much. He took long walks with Emily about the north side of the city, which is pleasantly shaded with trees and adorned with many fine residences. They drove out too with Mrs. Percy on Michigan Avenue, a noble street, with rows of fine houses built of beautiful cream-colored stone, and pretty cottages embowered in shrubbery, fronting on the lake. The railway is laid through the water, at a short distance from the shore, and the interval affords a fine safe place for rowing, sheltered as it is from the sudden storms of the lake. There were a number of pretty row boats rapidly darting to and fro, and young people enjoying the air and exercise on the quiet waters.

They returned by Wabash Avenue, adorned with its noble churches. They alighted, and went in to look at the new Methodist church, which was nearly finished. Norman thought it very beautiful. This, and the handsome Presbyterian church at the next corner, are built of the cream-colored stone which gives such a cheerful light aspect to the edifices in Chicago. The Second Presbyterian church is the most antique-looking structure in the city. It is built of a whitish stone, spotted with black, giving it somewhat the aspect of the white marble of St. Paul’s begrimed with the smoke and dust of London. This stone was found on the prairies; the black is a sort of bitumen that exudes from it, and as the quarry is exhausted, this church will be unique as well as antique in its appearance.

Norman was amused at the inequality of the sidewalks, sometimes rising above the carriage way, sometimes depressed far below, so that the pedestrian is obliged continually to go up and down steps, or inclined planes, and to mind his ways if he wishes to avoid a fall. The new stores open finely on the elevated sidewalks, and Norman was astonished to see the splendid rows of stores with elaborate iron fronts. The older houses and stores must be entered by descending steps to reach their level. Mrs. Percy told Norman the reason of this, that the city was built on a flat prairie, so low that the water would not run off, and the streets could not be drained; and so this enterprising people are lifting up the whole city six or seven feet, and there must be inequality of surface while this transition process is going on. Norman saw a frame house, mounted on rollers, leisurely making its way through the streets.

Charlie Percy, who was several years older than Norman had a chemical cabinet, and the boys had a very animated evening, trying a number of experiments, making colored fires, and making fire jump about the surface of the water.

“Here is an invitation for you, children,” said Mr. Percy, “which I have no doubt you will be very glad to accept. Mr. and Mrs. Bowers called to invite us to accompany them to Green Park, where they are to have a pic-nic.”

“How pleasant that will be,” exclaimed Emily; “I am sure you will like to go, Norman.”

The children were ready immediately after dinner, when Mr. Bowers’s carriage drove up for them, and at the station they found quite a party of children, baskets in hand, with their mothers and fathers, bound for the pic-nic. They were a joyous family party, Mr. Bowers’s sisters and their families. Norman looked from the cars upon the stately buildings of Michigan Avenue, and there was not time to look at much more, for a few minutes brought them to Green Park, and the party were soon out of the cars, and on a bank overlooking the lake. It is a pretty place, grassy turf, graveled walks, grateful shade, and rustic summer houses; better than all, the pleasant beach with its rounded pebbles, and the constant dash of its gentle waves. The children had merry games of tag and puss-in-the-corner, then they wandered along the beach, and then they came with sharpened appetites to inquire when the baskets were to be opened. “You may go and bring them now,” was the welcome response.

“Are we not to sit round the table in the summer-house?” asked one of the little girls.

“No,” replied her mamma, “it is cooler here.”

Willing feet ran to the rustic arbor, and willing hands brought the baskets from the rustic table. They seated themselves on the grass and ate the biscuits and sardines and sandwiches, and the gingerbread and cake. A little girl whom they did not know was playing near her father and mother, who were seated on a bench at a little distance. One of the children, with thoughtful kindness, asked her mother’s permission to take some biscuits and cake to the little stranger, and joyfully she ran off to offer of their abundance to the little one.

After they had done full justice to the contents of the baskets, and picked up pebbles on the beach, they sat in the large summer house and sang hymns, sweet familiar hymns, sung by sweet childish voices, sobering and sanctifying the pleasures of that happy Saturday afternoon.

At the station they found a merry party of school-girls who had walked out in the morning to gather flowers on the prairie. They were in high glee; their large straw hats were wreathed with oak leaves, and their hands were filled with great bunches of flowers,

“The golden and the flame-like flower.”

Norman said good-by to Emily Percy at her door, for he and his mother were to spend the Sabbath with Mrs. Bowers, and a pleasant Sabbath it was. The conversation, in harmony with the day, on the piazza, after breakfast, beneath the shade of lofty spreading trees; the sermons and services of morning, afternoon, and evening, different in tone and character, but all profitable and pleasing; the visit to the large and interesting Sunday school, in which Mrs. Bowers taught a class, made the Sabbath a delightful one.

Monday morning Mrs. Percy took Mrs. Lester and Norman and Emily to her husband’s grain warehouse, the top of which they reached after ascending many flights of steps. The roof is of canvas, covered with tar, upon which, while it is warm, pebbles are thrown, making a durable and fire proof roof. The city lay beneath them; they could mark its great extent, trace the course of its dividing rivers, with their sails, and steamers, and propellers; see trains of cars arriving and departing; count the spires which

“With silent fingers point to heaven,”

and around all see the great lake and the encircling prairie.

The warehouse was filled with dust, as the machinery was in motion. Norman watched the elevators lifting up the grain from the rail-car on one side to the fifth story of the warehouse, where it is weighed and poured into great bins, whence it is discharged into vessels on the other side. The elevator is a series of buckets on an endless band. Thousands of bushels, from the wide prairies of Illinois, are thus elevated, weighed, and transferred from car to boat, to be sent to the Eastern states or to Europe.

The saddest sight Norman saw in this city was the great number of saloons, as they call the shops where liquor is sold, where drunkards are made, and where many an unwary victim is lured to destruction. In almost every block, they tempt the thoughtless; music sounds her welcome; vice puts on her most attractive mien; and young men forget a father’s counsel, a mother’s prayers; and for the momentary gratification of their appetites they offer up reputation, character, health, life, and their eternal all; a costly sacrifice! Everything lost, and nothing gained but degradation, misery, and death.

CHAPTER V.
ON THE ROCK RIVER.

“These are the gardens of the desert; these,

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,

For which the speech of England has no name,

The prairies.... Lo! they stretch

In airy undulations far away,

As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,

Stood still, with all his rounded billows, fix’d

And motionless forever.”—Bryant.

A railway ride over the beautiful prairies took Norman and his mother to their place of destination. How soft and gentle were those prairie swells, looking like English park scenery, relieved as is the vast expanse of meadow by scattered groves of trees. The fine unbroken horizon line tells you that you do not see a greater extent of country, only because your eye has no greater capabilities; that onward, and all around, the vast prairie lies in its verdure and beauty; that there, as here, the flowers are springing; that you may travel north, south, east, and west, hundreds of miles, and still that undulating prairie, in its “encircling vastness,” will lie around you like the sea.

At the station Norman found his uncle looking out anxiously for him, and he was soon pressed tenderly in his arms.

“Well, my boy,” said his uncle, “I feared we should be disappointed again to-day. How glad I am to see you once more, though you have so grown I would not have known you.”

“How is Aunt Ellen?” asked Norman.

“Very well, she is waiting anxiously for you at home; she has been counting the days since you wrote you were coming.”

“How well I remember,” said Norman, “when I was a little boy, how she let me whittle in her room, and how she brought me bread and butter with white sugar on it.”

“That bread and butter and sugar made a deep impression on his mind,” said Mrs. Lester; “he has always connected the thought of it with his Aunt Ellen.”

“And there is your Aunt Ellen at the gate looking for you,” said his uncle.

Norman loved his uncle and aunt very much, and was very glad to be with them once more. He loved to sit by his uncle’s side and read to him, and tell him about his school, and about his cottage home, and about his little cousins, Bessie and Edith, with whom he spent so many pleasant summer days, rambling about the woods and among the rocks.

His uncle was an invalid, obliged continually to recline on his couch, but he was always cheerful, always happy. A sister said of him, that if you put him on the top of a rock he would be happy; and the secret of this was, that his heart was filled with love to God, and that he had constant communion with his blessed Saviour. The peace of God lay upon his countenance; he had no troubled or vexing thoughts.

He loved to read and hear about the progress of Christ’s kingdom, and about what good men are doing to bring about the fulfillment of that prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Norman was very busy for several days, copying his sketches of Niagara, and doing them in pastil, and his uncle took great interest in the progress of his work.

One day they went with a clergyman, Aunt Ellen’s brother, to a seminary, built on a commanding eminence above the town. After seeing the scholars do their sums very rapidly on the black-board, they went to the upper story of the building, and looked upon an extensive view. To the north the rapid river, with its high banks and wooded islands; to the east, the prairie, stretching out far in the distance. The spires and buildings of the town toward the south, with the fine arches of the railing embankments, while the river, whose falls filled the air with sound, was spanned with the noble arches of the railroad bridge, and the broken ones of several ruined bridges, swept away by the recent floods.

After leaving the seminary they wandered in the oak grove that adorns the bluff upon which it stands, and looked down on the ravine which bounds the grounds to the north.

“Now, mother,” said Norman, one morning after breakfast, “for a walk on the prairies.”

“I am ready,” replied Mrs. Lester; “it is a cool, gray morning; just the day for such a ramble.”

On and on they wandered; Norman running to and fro, as the brilliant tint of some flower caught his eye, made his mother the bearer of all his floral treasures. A fine bouquet he had after a while, yellow lupins, the blue spiderwort, the purple phlox, an orange flower very much like the wallflower, and the painted cup, made classic by Bryant’s verse:

“Scarlet tufts

Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire;

The wanderers of the prairies know them well,

And call that brilliant flower, the Painted Cup.”

They first walked toward the south, where they could have glimpses of the river; but at length they directed their course to the east, to an octagon house, that stood like a light-house on a hill. Crossing the railroad, they paused a while to see the gravel-train get its load of sand from the banks.

“There,” said Norman, as the locomotive gave a snort or two, as if in impatience at the pause; “there stands the grand old fellow to be looked at, as Mr. Beecher says.”

A far-reaching view of the undulating prairie, heightened at intervals by flashes of the river gliding among the fertile meadows, repaid them for the ascent to the octagon house.

On their return they stood beneath a railroad bridge, and saw two long freight trains pass over it. They passed a rural town that had recently sprung up in an “oak opening,” and arrived at home with flowers and pleasant remembrances of their four-mile walk on the prairies.

Norman’s quiet pleasures by his uncle’s side, his reading and sketching, soon gave place to more active out-of-door amusements. He formed a friendship with two boys who lived in the neighborhood, who were so well-trained, that his uncle readily consented to his intimacy with them.

“Even a child is known by his doings;” and it is well when a boy has already formed a character which inspires confidence, and allows parents and friends safely to trust in him. Such a lad will probably retain in manhood the respect and confidence he has won in boyhood.

Norman went every evening with Alfred and Herbert Walduf to bathe in the Rock river, and sometimes he went with them to fish, or walked with them in the woods.

These boys were regular attendants at the Sunday school of which Mr. Laurence, Aunt Ellen’s brother, was superintendent, and they asked Norman to go with them to school. How earnestly the children listened when their superintendent told them of the sad fate of four of their number who had recently joined with them in their hymns of praise. They had removed a short time before with their parents to a town not far distant, where their father had received a call to preach. A letter had been received from their mother, describing the situation of their new home, by the side of a little stream, and saying that she thought she had found a pleasant resting-place.

Father, mother, and eight children were all gathered together one peaceful Sabbath; the two elder sons having come home from their places of business to spend a few days with their family. Kind and affectionate words were spoken—a thankful retrospect of the past, and hopeful glancings to the future.

The next day the little stream began to rise and swell, and the children greatly enjoyed the transformation of their quiet brook into the rushing torrent. Enjoyment, however, gave place to alarm as the waters rose higher and higher, till they reached the house.

Some men from the village came down and advised them to seek a more secure shelter. On measuring the waters, however, they found that they had fallen four inches; and the father, thinking that the worst was over, concluded that they had better remain in the house. The men, gathering up some clothes that had been left out to dry, handed them to the inmates of the house, and left them.

There were anxious hearts in that lonely dwelling that night, as they listened to the rushing waters without. The baby wakened, and the elder brother, to amuse and quiet the little thing, gave it his watch to play with. Suddenly there was a crash, and the house was loosened from its foundations. There was a cry heard from the wife and mother, and then all other sounds were lost in the roar of the waters. Stunned, half unconscious, the father felt himself borne onward by the rushing flood. As the stream carried him past an overhanging tree, he caught hold of its branches, and there he hung till the morning light brought help and rescue. He was a childless man; the loving faces of wife and children he was to see no more till the morning of the resurrection. Four of the bodies were found the next morning beneath the ruins of the house. The infant’s hand clasped the watch, still ticking, while its own pulse was stopped forever. The waters of the stream, swelled by the great freshet, had been obstructed by a culvert on the railway till it gave way, and the accumulated mass of waters had swept on with resistless impetuosity, working ruin and death.

And then Mr. Laurence enforced the lesson so often taught, so soon forgotten, of so living that when the cry is heard, “Behold the bridegroom cometh!” whether at midnight or in the morning, we may go forth with joy to meet him.

CHAPTER VI.
INDIAN STORIES.

Home of the Indian’s wild-born race,

The stalwart and the brave;

Alike their camp and hunting-place,

Their battle-field and grave;

Where late gigantic warriors stood,

As thick as pine-trees in the wood,

Or snipes on Jersey shore;

“Tecumseh,” “Beaver,” and “Split Log,”

And “Keokuk,” and “Horned Frog,”

And “Blackhawk,” “Wolf,” and “Yelping Dog,”

And “Possum Tail,” and “Pollywog,”

And many hundred more.—F. G. H.

Again in the cars for a journey to St. Anthony’s Falls, and again the fertile rolling prairie met the eye on every side. The view was somewhat marred by the high board fences of the railroad, that in some places hid those broad flowery fields. Some curious mounds, round, smooth, and green, extended like a chain from east to west, and looked as if they were artificial formations, lying as they do on the bosom of the prairie; perhaps the burial-place of a departed race.

Soon the high lands on the Mississippi were seen. A portly gentleman of Galena, just returning from a convention at Springfield, pointed them out to Mrs. Lester, and said, “Ma’am, there is no such river in the world; you never saw such scenery; you would not look at the Hudson after it.”

“That would be unfortunate,” replied Mrs. Lester, “as my home is on the Hudson. Is the scenery finer than the Highlands and the Catskills?”

“Well, ma’am, I can’t exactly say as to that; I have not been below Albany.”

“Ah, then, you have not seen our beautiful river, as it cannot boast of much grandeur above Albany.”

Galena is a curious town, built on the side of a very steep hill; the houses rising one above another, and in a picturesque, romantic region. The road lay for some time along the bank of the Fever River, and Norman looked in vain for the lead mines, for which this part of the country is so famous. A very fine specimen of the lead ore was afterward given him.

“Ah! look, mother!” he exclaimed, as the descending sun that had been partially vailed, shone through a rift in the clouds, and was brightly mirrored in the placid waters of the river. Low wooded banks and islands were also mirrored there as well as the shining orb and the large dark masses of clouds. It was the great sight of the afternoon.

At Dunleith, on the line between Illinois and Wisconsin, the terminus of the Illinois Central road, they went on board the Grey Eagle, the best boat on the Upper Mississippi.

A sunset on the Missi-sepe, the Great River! It was radiant and golden, but without any pomp of crimson clouds, of long-trailing glory.

Norman had a fine view of Dubuque, built on a natural terrace on the opposite shore, and creeping up four of five ravines between the great bluffs which rise directly behind the town. After tea, as the boat was not to leave till morning, he watched the lights gleaming out from the city below, and the scattered dwellings above, and then went to bed in his state-room.

His mother had not met the friends whom she had expected to join at Dunleith for this excursion, and she felt somewhat disappointed. The morning came in clouds and drizzling rain. The hills were vailed; but as the boat went very near the western shore, the passengers could admire the wealth of foliage, and the rich greens of those primeval forests. A road ran along the river bank, and some men were quarrying stone; near this was a deserted log-house.

On passing a very high red bluff, that stood in the forest, like an Egyptian idol, so curiously was it fashioned, Mrs. Lester ran to the east side of the boat to call Norman to look at it. He came, but after a hasty glance returned to his play, which for the time wholly absorbed him. He was engaged in some merry games with Helen and Frank Lisle, and he had no thought for anything else. Mrs. Lisle found that Norman was the son of a minister who had been an intimate friend of her sister’s. “My sister has very frequently spoken to me of him,” she said; “I almost think I had known him. My sister named her eldest son after your father, Norman, and I have been strangely reminded of Lester at your age all the morning.”

Norman remained a while to look at a large raft which his mother had called him to see. There were twenty men upon it; some of them with red shirts, and another wrapping a white blanket around him. There was a shed where one man was cooking the dinner, and a board table in front for their meals. A gentleman said that a raft of that size was worth about seven thousand dollars. There were a number of rafts floating by this western shore. One misses the white sails of the Hudson on the Mississippi, where rafts, and steamboats, and an occasional sail-boat, are the only craft on its waters.

There were ravines running up among the hills, and near the shore were layers of white stone piled regularly as if laid in mortar. Castellated bluffs peeped out from the encircling verdure, and low islands, covered with willows, were emerging from the recent floods. From behind one of these the steamer Northern Light appeared, her bright golden star on a back ground of green.

After dinner the aspect of things brightened. The clouds rolled away, and the clear blue sky appeared in its soft beauty. The eastern now became the most interesting side; noble bluffs were seen far above the lofty oaks and maples, like some ancient towers, the strongholds of the former lords of the soil. The town of Guttenbay is on a table land at the foot of one of these bluffs, and beyond it a range of rounded hills, softly rising above wooded islands. “O look!” said Helen Lisle, “at that beautiful rainbow in the spray.” It was no fleeting vision, but all the afternoon the radiant bow, with its hues of blended brightness, afforded them a beautiful object for contemplation.

“See those trees,” cried Norman; “they look as if they were running a race down hill.”

In crossing from the east to the west side they passed an island shaped like a bowl, the center filled with water, and a broad green brim. M’Gregor’s landing is a small busy town of one long street, there being no place for another in the narrow ravine. The street was filled with wagons, and many passengers landed to go out on the rich prairies of Iowa, to which this ravine leads.

There is a noble view of the broad river and its wooded islands, in crossing to Prairie du Chien on the east side. Norman was amused at seeing three dogs on this prairie, the first he had seen on the shores of the river. The town derives its name from a family of Fox Indians, who formerly lived there, and were known by the name of Dogs.

The fort, though now deserted, looked very finely with its white walls, and its pleasant site, commanding the far reaches of the Mississippi, and the prairie opening into the interior.

No. 666.
PRAIRIE DU CHIEN.

“Keokuk used to live here, Norman; do you remember the story you were reading about him?”

“O yes, mother, he was such a brave man. He was chief of the Sacs and Foxes, and yet he was such a firm friend to the whites that he exerted all his influence to prevent his tribe from going to war with them. At one time when the nation had determined upon a war with the United States, he told them to burn their wigwams, kill their squaws, and then to go into the enemy’s country to conquer or to die. This speech convinced them of the folly of engaging in a war that could only terminate in their ruin, and they followed his peaceful counsels.”

“And then,” asked Mrs. Lester, “how did he show his magnanimity when the people were wearied with his goodness, as the Athenians of old were at hearing Aristides called the Just?”

“O yes, that was at Prairie du Chien too. They chose a young man for chief instead of the noble chief who so long had led them. He quietly took the lower place, and introduced his youthful successor to the United States agent, asking him to treat him as kindly as he had treated Keokuk. This noble conduct showed the tribe their folly, and Keokuk was soon restored to his place as their chief.”

“Poor Red Bird,” said Mrs. Lester, “this spot was a fatal one to him. He was a real Indian hero; tall, lithe, and beautiful, graceful in movement, skilled in feats of agility, daring and brave.”

“Why was this spot fatal to him?” asked Helen.

“He was a great friend to the whites,” replied Mrs. Lester, and dealt kindly and truly with them. An Indian had been killed by a white man, and his tribe demanded scalps to atone for this murder. Red Bird was sent to obtain the scalp of the white man, but he returned, saying he could find none.

Then came the cruel taunts of the revengeful savages; “Red Bird was no brave;” “he feared the pale-faces;” “he cared not to avenge the blood of one of their tribe.” “Red Bird must go again,” and this time not alone, but accompanied by cruel Indians, to watch his movements. Poor Red Bird had never met the pale-faces but with truth and kindness, and now a hundred voices clamored for their destruction; and these voices overpowered the still small voice within him.

Red Bird and his two companions entered a cabin, a little below Prairie du Chien, at noon-day. It was a peaceful family group, fearing no evil. The woman was washing near the window that looked toward the river; her husband was seated by the cradle of his sleeping child, while an old soldier sat near the door. The Indians asked for something to eat, and as the woman gave them some bread and milk, she saw an expression in their faces that led her to fly from the cabin to call for help. No help could reach the ill-fated occupants of the cabin. The tomahawk of the Indians rapidly descended; Red Bird scalped the husband and father, the second Indian the soldier, while the fair hair of the infant was dangling at the belt of the third savage, as he left the cabin.

“And what became of Red Bird?” asked Helen.

“He was taken by the United States officers, and brought to trial. Red Bird, sad and stately, drew himself up to his full height, and said that he had always been a friend of the white man, that he had never before injured them, and that he had been forced to this act of retaliation by the taunts of his tribe; that he thought they ought not to condemn him for a single offense.”

No. 666.
INDIANS KILLING A WHITE FAMILY.

“He was put in irons, an indignity that so wrought upon his lofty spirit, that he pined to death.”

“Look at that log-cabin on the bank,” said Norman; “perhaps that is the one Keokuk slept in one night.”

“Why did he go there?” asked Helen.

“He came in and asked for a night’s lodging. The settler’s family, who had seen many Indians about in the afternoon, were afraid; but the noble countenance of their guest reassured them, and they gave him permission to stay. In the morning he told them that his tribe were returning up the river, after having received their money from the United States, and that as some of them had drunk the firewater, he feared they might alarm the pale-faces in the cabin, and therefore he had come to project them.”

Painted Rock, so called because there are Indian paintings upon it, was on the opposite side of the river, in deep shadow, while the green hill sloping toward the south, lay in broad sunshine.

Dwellings nestled in a pretty ravine were frowned upon by four lofty cliffs, whose rugged rocks resembled fortifications. One rock looked precisely like the fragment of a massive wall. Just beyond, a valley, branching in three directions, ran up among the hills. Over one of these, to the south, the dark shadow of the bluff was thrown, while the soft rounded hills to the north were covered with scattered trees, resembling orchards on the hillside, giving a cultivated look to the scene.

No docks are needed, as the steamer, that only draws about eighteen inches of water, runs up anywhere close to the shore. As it was approaching the bank they saw a log-cabin, in the door of which stood a man, and a little child in red frock and white pantalets, making a pretty picture.

On the jutting point where the boat touched was a white house, and a young girl, with an earthen pitcher, was walking down the stone steps leading to the water.

A great yellow Egyptian-looking cliff threw a shadow over this peaceful scene.

“There are the nine passengers who are to land at this place,” exclaimed Norman, as a man walked up the road followed by eight sheep. “He has been surrounded by that family ever since we left Dunleith.”

“He looks very well satisfied now to have them all safely landed,” said Helen Lisle; “how pleased his children will be at the grand arrival.”

The bluffs were now magnificent. The limestone strata extended in straight lines, looking like streets; then a bold red bluff towered up like a great cathedral; then a building resembling the New York Free Academy, while lofty masses of rock, crowned and encircled with verdure, continually remind one of the feudal castles of the Rhine. It was with reluctance they obeyed the summons to tea, which withdrew them from the ruddy cliffs of Wisconsin; but on returning to the deck they saw them still, glowing in the light of the setting sun:

“Each rosy peak, each flinting spire,

Was bathed in floods of living fire;

Their rocky summits, split and rent,

Form’d turret, dome, or battlement;

Or seem’d fantastically set,

With cupola or minaret.”

There is the mouth of the Upper Iowa River, on the boundary line of Iowa and Minnesota. “Good-by, Iowa,” said Norman, taking off his hat and waving it to the receding state.

“Crossing the river again,” said Mrs. Lester. “We will soon be at the mouth of the Bad Axe River, but the light is fading so rapidly that we will not be able to see the spot of the decisive conflict between the Indian and white man.”

“I never heard of that battle mother, will you tell me something about it?”

“It was at the close of the Black Hawk war, in 1832. The Indians were entirely defeated by the United States troops at this place. A number of squaws were slain in the wild confusion of battle, not being distinguished from the Indians in the long grass into which they had fled for refuge. One poor woman, as she received her mortal wound, clasped her child close to her bosom, and fell over upon it, thus pinioning it to the ground. The poor little thing was found the next day under the lifeless body of its mother. Its arm was broken, and the child was so starved that, even during the painful operation of setting the broken bone, it eagerly devoured some meat given to it by the compassionate soldier who had rescued it from the arms now powerless for its protection. The love of another mother bore her safely over the deep waters. She placed her papoose in her blanket, and holding it between her teeth, she swam across the broad river, and reached the opposite shore in safety.”

CHAPTER VII.
SECOND DAY UPON THE MISSISSIPPI.

“It seems to float ever, forever,

Upon that many winding river,

Between mountains, woods, abysses,

A paradise of wildernesses.”

“It must have been a proud moment for De Soto when he first looked upon the lower waters of this magnificent river,” said Mrs. Lester, as she sat with Norman on the guards of the boat the next morning; “what a scene it must have been; the canoes of the Indians floating on the waters, while on the banks hundreds of the red men, with white feathers waving o’er their brows, were gazing with wonder at their new visitors.

“And when he and his followers had crossed the bank, and the Indians knelt to the white chief, whom they thought was one of the children of the sun, to ask him for life for the dying, he told them to pray to God, who alone could help them.

“Soon in this dreary western wilderness the princely De Soto breathed his last. His people, fearing to let the Indians know of his death, wrapped up his body, and buried it beneath the waters of the great river he had discovered; while, for the first time, a Christian requiem, softly chanted in the darkness, mingled with the music of its winds and waves.”[^[1]]

[1]. De Soto never saw the Upper Mississippi. He ascended the Lower Mississippi as far as the Missouri. He died and was buried somewhere near the mouth of the Arkansas River.—Ed.

“And so,” said Norman, “the mighty river is a memorial of him. How much I would like to have seen birch-canoes floating on the river. And I do believe there is one made fast to the shore just by that ‘dug-out.’”

“What an ugly word ‘dug-out’ is; so different from the birch canoe,” said Mrs. Lester.

“But, mother, it just tells what it is; a trunk of a tree, hollowed or dug out in the shape of a boat. But see how pretty that bark canoe is! Don’t you remember we were reading about it in Hiawatha; how he girdled the birch-tree just above its roots, and just below its lower branches, then cut it from top to bottom, and stripped it, unbroken, from the tree with a wooden wedge?”

“Well, what did he do then?”

“He made a framework of cedar-boughs, like two bended bows, and then he sewed the bark together with the roots of the larch-tree; bound it to the framework, and stopped up all the seams and crevices with resin from the fir-tree. And then he embroidered it with porcupine quills.”

“You remember pretty well how the canoe was made, Norman. I wish you could recall some of those lines about the birch canoe you were so fond of repeating.”

“I think I can, mother,” said Norman; “at any rate I will repeat what I remember:”

“Thus the birch canoe was builded

In the valley, by the river,

In the bosom of the forest;

And the forest’s life was in it,

All its mystery, and its magic,