Pardonably proud of it, too. He said--'You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can givethe Hudson points. You'll have the Queen's Bluff--seven hundredfeet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres;and Trempeleau Island, which isn't like any other island in America,I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides,and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes;if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture thatwill stay with you. And above Winona you'll have lovely prairies;and then come the Thousand Islands, too beautiful for anything;green? why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick;it's like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking-glass--when the water 's still; and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides ofthe river--ragged, rugged, dark-complected--just the frame that's wanted;you always want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice pointsof a delicate picture and make them stand out.'
The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two--but not very powerful ones.
After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery,and described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islandsto St. Paul; naming its names with such facility, tripping alonghis theme with such nimble and confident ease, slamming in athree-ton word, here and there, with such a complacent air of 'tisn't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and letting offfine surprises of lurid eloquence at such judicious intervals,that I presently began to suspect--But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him--'Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at the feetof cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the blue depthsof heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have known no other contactsave that of angels' wings.
'And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendousaspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration,about twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high,with romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perchedfar among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy heights--sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon, town of early days,now desolate and utterly deserted.
'And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly--noble shaft of sixhundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our attention isattracted by a most striking promontory rising over five hundred feet--the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape--thickly-wooded surfacegirding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, cause the spectatorto wonder at nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb viewsof the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyondfor miles are brought within its focus. What grander river scenerycan be conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape,from the uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys below?
The primeval wildness and awful loneliness of these sublime creationsof nature and nature's God, excite feelings of unbounded admiration,and the recollection of which can never be effaced from the memory,as we view them in any direction.
'Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's Head, carved bynature's hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream;and then anon the river widens, and a most charming and magnificentview of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our vision;rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base,level prairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful Wabasha,City of the Healing Waters, puissant foe of Bright's disease,and that grandest conception of nature's works, incomparable Lake Pepin--these constitute a picture whereon the tourist's eye may gazeuncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and unappeasable.
'And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes,the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden's Rock--which latter,romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and oft-timesas the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddlerfancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona,darling of Indian song and story.
'Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jadedsummer tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive andpreponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix;and anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul,giant young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride inthe van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization,carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise,sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking scalpof sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the school-house--ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair;ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever----'
'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?'
'I have formerly served in that capacity.'
My suspicion was confirmed.
'Do you still travel with it?'
'No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping now to work upthe materials for a Tourist's Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul PacketCompany are going to issue this summer for the benefit of travelers who goby that line.'
'When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you spoke ofthe long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song and story.
Is she the maiden of the rock?--and are the two connected by legend?'
'Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most celebrated,as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of the Mississippi.'
We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversationalvein and back into his lecture-gait without an effort,and rolled on as follows--'A little distance above Lake City is a famous point knownas Maiden's Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but isfull of romantic interest from the event which gave it its name,Not many years ago this locality was a favorite resort for the SiouxIndians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had there,and large numbers of them were always to be found in this locality.
Among the families which used to resort here, was one belongingto the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na (first-born) was the nameof a maiden who had plighted her troth to a lover belongingto the same band. But her stern parents had promised her handto another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him.
The day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief.
She appeared to accede to the proposal and accompany them tothe rock, for the purpose of gathering flowers for the feast.
On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran to its summit and standing onits edge upbraided her parents who were below, for their cruelty,and then singing a death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice anddashed them in pieces on the rock below.'
'Dashed who in pieces--her parents?'
'Yes.'
'Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say.
And moreover, there is a startling kind of dramatic surpriseabout it which I was not looking for. It is a distinctimprovement upon the threadbare form of Indian legend.
There are fifty Lover's Leaps along the Mississippi from whosesummit disappointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the onlyjump in the lot hat turned out in the right and satisfactory way.
What became of Winona?'
'She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herselftogether and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot;and 'tis said she sought and married her true love, and wanderedwith him to some distant clime, where she lived happy ever after,her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the romantic incidentwhich had so early deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother'slove and a father's protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended,upon the cold charity of a censorious world.'
I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the scenery,for it assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabledme to imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night.
As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indiantales and traditions. But I reminded him that people usually merelymention this fact--doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water--and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impression left,was that these tales were full of incident and imagination--a pleasantimpression which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told.
I showed him a lot of this sort of literature which I had been collecting,and he confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish;and I ventured to add that the legends which he had himself told uswere of this character, with the single exception of the admirablestory of Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I wouldhunt up Mr. Schoolcraft's book, published near fifty years ago,and now doubtless out of print, I would find some Indian inventionsin it that were very far from being barren of incident and imagination;that the tales in Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came fromSchoolcraft's book; and that there were others in the same bookwhich Mr. Longfellow could have turned into verse with good effect.
For instance, there was the legend of 'The Undying Head.'
He could not tell it, for many of the details had grown dimin his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and enlargemy respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale,and most of the others in the book, were current among the Indiansalong this part of the Mississippi when he first came here;and that the contributors to Schoolcraft's book had got them directlyfrom Indian lips, and had written them down with strict exactness,and without embellishments of their own.
I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are severallegends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of them--'TheUndying Head,' and 'Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of the Seasons.'
The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth reading in the original form,if only that one may see how effective a genuine poem can be withoutthe helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm--PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN.
An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the sideof a frozen stream. It was the close of winter, and his firewas almost out, He appeared very old and very desolate.
His locks were white with age, and he trembled in every joint.
Day after day passed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the soundof the tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen snow.
One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approachedand entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth,his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips.
He walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was boundwith a wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet,and he carried a bunch of flowers in his hand.
'Ah, my son,' said the old man, 'I am happy to see you.
Come in. Come and tell me of your adventures, and what strangelands you have been to see. Let us pass the night together.
I will tell you of my prowess and exploits, and what I can perform.
You shall do the same, and we will amuse ourselves.'
He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe,and having filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixtureof certain leaves, handed it to his guest. When this ceremonywas concluded they began to speak.
'I blow my breath,' said the old man, 'and the stream stands still.
The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.'
'I breathe,' said the young man, 'and flowers spring up over the plain.'
'I shake my locks,' retorted the old man, 'and snow covers the land.
The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them away.
The birds get up from the water, and fly to a distant land.
The animals hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes ashard as flint.'
'I shake my ringlets,' rejoined the young man, 'and warm showersof soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their headsout of the earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight.
My voice recalls the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams.
Music fills the groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices.'
At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth cameover the place. The tongue of the old man became silent.
The robin and bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge.
The stream began to murmur by the door, and the fragrance of growingherbs and flowers came softly on the vernal breeze.
Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his entertainer.
When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of Peboan.
[Winter.]> Streams began to flow from his eyes. As the sun increased,he grew less and less in stature, and anon had melted completely away.
Nothing remained on the place of his lodge-fire but the miskodeed,[The trailing arbutus.]> a small white flower, with a pink border, which isone of the earliest species of northern plants.
'The Undying Head' is a rather long tale, but it makes up in weird conceits,fairy-tale prodigies, variety of incident, and energy of movement,for what it lacks in brevity.
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