St. Paul daily globe., 1895-06-02
DALLES OF THE ST. CROIx.
Imocene Pope.

Where the brown waters of the st.
Croix river swirl and dash along the
boundary of Wisconsin and Minnesota,
nature has thrown up a region of
wildly romantic beauty. Rocks, varied
and brilliant in coloring, form steep
cliffs and abrupt precipices, on the top
and sides of which tall, majestic pines
stand like faithful sentinels guarding
the walls Of a grim fortress.
The most picturesque portion of the
dalles is at the little town of Taylor's
Falls, in Minnesota, where the river
suddenly changes its direction; in the
angle thus formed masses of rock of
trappean formation, brown, green,
gray and red, time-scarred, broken and
scanned, are thrown up in dire con-
fusion, showing that at some remote
period this section must have been the
scene of a great upheayal.
The action of water, also, is appar-
ent in the in-hollowed sides of the up
right rocks, and in the dry wells.
These wells, which are very numerous,
are smooth circular cavities in the
solid rock, often ten or fifteen feet
deep, and sometimes even more.
Some of them are dry, as the name
greater or less quantities.
We entered the dalles by smooth
ledge of. rock, so narrow that single
misstep would plunge one into
brush-grown, high-walled gorge on one
side, or into a dry we'll on the other,
containing water, and so deep, Billy,
our little guide, assured us, that NO
body amt never touched bottom" As
we had no desire to start upon a voy-
age of discovery. we clambered, rather
than climbed, till we reached rallied
stairway leading down into a dark
gorge.
In it's dampness and shade many va
rieties of ferns grew luXuriantly; moss
es and lichens made green and yellow
patches on the walls of trap rock that
shut us in and through the slender
needles of the pines towering above us
the wind sang a low threnetic refrain.
That the scenery is suggestive of the
Internal regions is shown by the names
given to many places in the dalles.
Come this way to the Devils Gel
lar our little guide said, and we
followed him up the ravine, over rough,
wet stones and around immense rocks
that rose to bar our way; beyond
these we squeezed through a small
opening in the craggy side of the cliff,
and found ourselves in deep circular
room about ten feet in diameter.
The open top was far above our
heads; some moist soil covered the
floor and in the zigzagging crevices
of the smooth water-worn sides a va
riety of dwarf fern had taken root and
4Ox5 p,.1 he
dim light shining down into the cavern.
Creeping out, we continued our eX-
ploration of the glen. Near the path
we'll that had an open semi-circular
wall rising twenty feet above us at
tracted our attention. 1t was filled
with water on which f1oated sticks
and leaves; it looked shallow, and,
taking up a long pole that lay near, we
thrust it down into the depths; and
depths they were indeed, for, to our
surprise, we could not touch the bot
tom.
While we were examining the well we
heard Billy's shrill voice calling:
This 'ere's the Devils Kitchen !"
We looked for him in vain: he was
not in sight. Before us the rocks rose
in an apparently impossible wall. We
found a narrow aperture, however,
through which we crowded for nearly
a rod till we came to a large open
space whittier Billy had preceded us.
He had climbed up the rough side
of the wall until he found a smooth
surface coverd with rude autographs,
and was industriously cutting his {" nj
tials'' there, his ambition being to have
them higher than those of any one who
-had preceded him.
The Devils Kitchen is twenty-five
feet long and nearly square; the walls
around it rise irregularly from fifteen
to twenty feet. The dark slaty gray
that is their predominatingc color blends
into green, brown and yellow, while
great patches of red add a suggestive
sinister glow. Like all the rocks found
in damp shaded places the natural
tints of these are often hidden beneath
lunches of clinging ferns and motley
colored> >mosses and lichens.
A scattering growth of grass car
peted the floor; and a slender maple,
that had found a place for its roots
in the scant soil, grew straight toward