A Pacific Coast Vacation 1901

A Pacific Coast Vacation

CHAPTER I

AUF WIEDERSEHEN

Off to see the land of icebergs and glaciers; the land I have often visited in my imagination. It seems but yesterday that the first geography was put into my hands. O, that dear old geography, the silent companion of my childhood days.

The first page to which I opened pictured an iceberg, with a polar bear walking right up the perpendicular side, and another bold fellow sitting on top as serenely as Patience on a monument.

“What was an iceberg? What were the bears doing on the ice and what did they eat? Was that the sun shining over yonder? Why didn’t it melt the ice and drop the bears into the sea? No, that was not the sun, it was the

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 aurora borealis. Aurora? Who was she and why did she live in that cold, cold country, the home of Hoder, the gray old god of winter?”

The phenomenon of the aurora was explained to us, but to our childish imagination Aurora ever remained a maiden whose wonderful hair of rainbow tints lit up the northern sky.

We talked of Aurora, we dreamed of Aurora, and now we are off to see the charming ice maiden of our childhood fancy.

Off to Alaska. For years we have dreamed of it; for days and weeks we have breakfasted on Rocky Mountain flora, lunched on icebergs and glaciers and dined on totem poles and Indian chiefs.

Much of the charm of travel in any country comes of the glamour with which fable and legend have enshrouded its historic places.

America is rapidly developing a legendary era. Travel up and down the shores of the historic Hudson and note her fabled places.

The “Headless Hessian” still chases timid “Ichabods” through “Sleepy Hollow.” “Rip Van Winkle,” the happy-go-lucky fellow, still stalks the Catskills, gun in hand. The death light of “Jack Welsh” may be seen on a summer’s

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 night off the coast of Pond Cove. “Mother Crew’s” evil spirit haunts Plymouth, while “Skipper Ireson” floats off Marble Head in his ill-fated smack.

With a cloud for a blanket the “Indian Witch” of the Catskills sits on her mountain peak sending forth fair weather and foul at her pleasure, while the pygmies distil their magic liquor in the valley below.

“Atlantis” lies fathoms deep in the blue waters of the Atlantic, and the “Flying Dutchman” haunts the South Seas.

We have our Siegfried and our Thor, whom men call Washington and Franklin. Our “Hymer” splits rocks and levels mountains with his devil’s eye, though we call him dynamite.

Israel Putnam and Daniel Boone may yet live in history as the Theseus and Perseus of our heroic age.

Certainly our country has her myths and her folk lore.

In time America, too, will have her saga book.

Yonder, Black Hawk, chief of the Sac, Fox, and Winnebago Indians, made his last stand, was defeated by General Scott, captured and

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 carried to Washington and other cities of the East, where he recognized the power of the nation to which he had come in contact. Returning to his people, he advised them that resistance was useless. The Indians then abandoned the disputed lands and retired into Iowa.

Just north of Chicago we passed field after field yellow with the bloom of mustard. Calling the porter I asked him what was being grown yonder. He looked puzzled for a moment, then his face lighted up with the inspiration of a happy thought as he replied:

“That, Madam, is dandelion.”

“O, thank you; I suppose that they are being grown for the Chicago market?” said I, knowing that dandelion greens with the buds in blossom and full bloom are considered a delicacy in the city.

“No, Madam,” answered my porter wise, “I don’t think them fields is being cultivated at all.”

I forebore to point out to him the well kept fence and the marks of the plow along it, but brought my field glasses into play and discovered that the disputed fields had been sown to oats, but the oats were being smothered out by the mustard.

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Wisconsin is a beautiful state. Had the French government cultivated the rich lands of the Mississippi valley and developed its mineral resources as urged by Joliet, Wisconsin might still be a French territory. But all his plans for colonization were rejected by the government he served. A map of this country over which Joliet traveled may be seen in the Archives de la Marine, Paris, France, to-day.

The soil is light and farming in Wisconsin is along different lines from that of her sister state, Illinois. In every direction great dairy barns dot the landscape. Corn is grown almost entirely for fodder. The seasons here are too short to mature it properly. In planting corn for fodder it is sown much as are wheat and oats.

The principal crops of this great state are flax, oats, hops, and I might add ice. Large ice houses are seen on every side. Much of the country is yet wild. Acres of virgin prairie just now aglow with wild flowers, take me back to my childhood, when we spent whole days on the prairie, “Where the great warm heart of God beat down in the sunshine and up from the sod;” where Marguerites and black-eyed Susans nodded in the golden sunshine, and the

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 thistle for very joy tossed off her purple bonnet.

Here and there in northern Illinois and Wisconsin kettle holes mark the track of the glaciers that once flowed down from the great névé fields of Manitoba and the Hudson lake district.

In traveling across Wisconsin one is reminded of the time when witches, devils, magicians, and manitous held sway over the Indian mind.

Milwaukee is a name of Indian origin,—Mahn-a-wau-kie, anglicized into Milwaukee—means in the language of the Winnebagoes, rich, beautiful land.

According to an Indian legend the name comes from mahn-wau, a root of wonderful medicinal properties. The healing power of this root, found only in this locality, was so great that the Chippewas on Lake Superior would give a beaver skin for a finger length piece.

The market place now stands on the site of a forest-clad hill, which had been consecrated to the Great Manitou. Here tomahawks were belted and knives were sheathed. Here the tribes of all the surrounding country met to hold the peace dance which preceded the religious festival. At the close of the religious services

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 each Indian carried away with him from the holy hill a memento to worship as an amulet.

It was the greatest wish, the most passionate desire of every Indian to be buried at the foot of this hill on the bank of the Mahn-a-wau-kie.

Recent investigation has shown that Wisconsin was the dwelling place of strange tribes long before the advent of the Indian.

The Dells of the Wisconsin river was a favorite resort of the Indian manitous. Yonder is a chasm fifty feet wide, across which Black Hawk leaped when fleeing from the whites. He surely had the aid of the nether world.

In this beautiful region, hemmed in by rugged bowlder cliffs, lies a veritable Sleepy Hollow. In a dense wood back of the cliff stands the mythical “lost cabin.” Many have lost their way searching for it. The strange thing about it is that they who have once found it are never able to find it again. Weird stories are told about it. Its logs are old and strange, different from the wood of the dark old forest in which it stands. There are stories afloat that it is haunted by its former inhabitants, who move it about from place to place.

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At the foot of this rugged cliff lies Devil’s lake. At the head of this fathomless body of water is a mound built in the form of an eagle with wings outspread. Here, no doubt, lies buried a great chief. Nothing is left in Wisconsin to-day of the Indian but footprints,—mounds, graves, legends and myths.

At Devil’s Lake lived a manitou of wonderful power. This lake fills the crater of an extinct volcano. Now this manitou, so the tale runs, piled up those heavy blocks of stone, which form the Devil’s Doorway. He also set up Black Monument and Pedestaled Bowlder for thrones where he might sit and view the landscape o’er when on his visits to the earth. These visits have ceased, since the white man possesses the country. One day this wonderful manitou aimed a dart at a bad Indian and missing him, cleft a huge rock in twain, which is now known as Cleft Rock. At night, long ago, he might have been seen sitting on one of his thrones or peeping out of the Devil’s Doorway watching the dance of the frost fairies or gazing at the aurora flaming through the night.

Every night at midnight Gitche Manitou appears in the middle of the lake.

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In days gone by a strange, wild creature, known as the Red Dwarf, roamed the region of the great lakes, haunting alike the lives of red man and white.

The snake god, the stone god, the witch of pictured rocks, were-wolves and wizards held sway in that charméd region where San Souci, Jean Beaugrand’s famous horse, despite his hundred years, leaped wall of fort and stockade at pleasure.