Year: 1859

known reserve of those poetical birds in the
presence of strangers but he found the
deer he was after, and, what was better,
found the lake to be one of an interesting
group that lay hid in the groves behind it,
belonging, as we afterwards learned, to the
Leaf river waters.


The Fourth of july! Thank God for a
" Fourth that one can celebrate with
silence-the religious silence of these deep
solitudes yelling up from these vast voids
like prayer for a place where one can
hear his own heart beat above the rant of
the city's hot and dusty day, and preach his
own oratiOn from the sacred text of history
without comment or Interpolation TO be
away out here, outside the smell and crash
of your dirty gunpowder, beyond the re-
hottest possibility of getting drunk, or the
physical necessity of being SO, to undergo
the laryngial and thoracic infictions of the
days traditional ritual, is relief so mex
pressible that an 3ronaut, sitting in his
balloon, in the serene heights of the upper
air, at "a picnic of cheese and crackers, and
watching the thunder clouds splitting their
sulphur at you, could not feel more proudly
above you and disdainful of you, than do
now.


A brisk morning ride of eight or ten
miles ahead Of the train, over naked rolling
prairie, prepared my frie nd M. and myself,
for delightful surprise, when, as we turned
the summit of ridge, the picturesque val
ley of the Otter Tail, with its green gulfs of
wood, flashed along ahead of us, winding
down from the north east between banks of
considerable height, just here on the edge of
the billy ranges through which it breaks,
it passage. have called this river the Ot-
ter Tail, out of Difference to an absurd usage
of the early voyaguers; but in the inspira>
ton of this moment, we spontaneously
adopted the nomenclature of DR.. OWEN,
N1CoLLEr, and othere, and with something
of the feeling of Moses when he caught a
glimpse of the Jordan from the peaks of
Pisgah, we involuntarily lifted the remains of
our felt hats, and saluted the Red River of
the North, with a hurra which condensed
in three cheers the enthusiasm of twenty
anniversaries of National Independence.


An hours lounge upon its banks, when
M. must needs sketch


" The cleaning rivers crescent curve"
where itswaters broken and lashed by rapids,
widened and parted to embrace wooded
island that sat with fine effect of color
against the picturesque bend of the massive
banks beyond, while went to sleep over a
pocket edition of BRYANT, and the horses
picked up scanty foddering from the thin
grass upon the sandy edge of the bluffs and
then few minutes ride took US across the
stream, over solid bridge of logs, to the
nascent city of Dayton, and so by The length
of that bridge behind us, we were upon a
new continent-the plateau of the Red Riv-
er-as distinct division of the earth's sur
face, in its whole confguration, as if an
ocean rolled between US and the opposite
shore.


Dayton, or Wassiota, as it's proprietor
calls it, is situated about four miles below
the mouth of the Pelican, on the western
bank of the Upper Red or Otter Tail river
at the great angle where it changes its
southern for westerly direction. The riv-
er is about forty yards wide here, and runs
with a rapid current. broken by rocky
shoals, between tortuous bluff banks, not
less than one hundred feet high at the most
elevated points. The rapids here are
continuation of the Pelican and other
rapids which mark the descent of the stream
from the plauteau of the Mississippi basin
to that of the Red River. The river follows
the edge of the hilly ranges, and retains its
precipitous banks to the point Of its defec-
ton westward, when it takes the character
istics of the Red River basin-the steep,
irregular shores sinking to level bank, as
smooth as the rim of bowl. As, accord
ing to all analogies, the main river carries
its name to its source, it is difficult to see
any just reason why the name of Red River
should be cut off by the sharp point of its
angle at Breckenridge. To retain, there.
fore, all the convenience of different name
for this portion of the Red River, and yet
preserve its photographed unity, l would
suggest the designation of Upper Red River
for the part of the stream above Brecken-
ridge, and Lower Red River for the rest.


The train had arrived and encamped on
the opposite bank to spend the rest of the
Fourth-the boys were already smoking and
sleeping out their siesta under the carts,
when NJ. and j., feeling the pangs of hunger,
entered the one unfinished log house which
represented the architectural pride and pro-
gress Of the City of Dayton, alias Wassiota,
and demanded something to eat. The log
house, though not old, was venerable enough
to embody the two eras of the city's growth :
the diminutive log shanty, at the rear end,
which had satisfied the primary wants of
shelter from the cold and rain, with just
room enough within its mud-chinked walls
for bunk and cooking-stove and the
more pretentious modern addition, with its
longer spaces, intended to fulfil the needs of
domestic comfort and social decency, and
which, when the chinks are plastered and the
floor is laid, will make a stately dwelling for
these parts.