burst for want of water, the boat would blow up, and we should all be killed by the explosion."

This definition at once gave us a personal interest in the work of the man at the wheel; we all felt that our lives depended upon this man's devotion to his duty. Had he struck a piece of "easy water" at that time, and centred his wheel, there is no doubt that we would have scurried for home before the inevitable explosion should occur. That was my first lesson in piloting. Perhaps this childish concern that the man "drawing water for the boilers" should faithfully perform his duty, was but a prefigurement of the interest with which the writer, and hundreds of others, in later years, have watched the pilot work his boat through a tangled piece of river, knowing that the safety of all depended upon the knowledge and faithfulness of the "man at the wheel."

The steamboats plying on the St. Joe were crude little affairs, and there were but four or five of them, all alike. I remember the name of but one, the "Algoma"; the others are quite forgotten. Doubtless they were commonplace, and did not appeal to the poetic side of the boy. But "Algoma"! The word has a rhythmical measure, and conjures up visions of wigwams, council fires, dusky maidens, and painted braves. An Indian name would stick when all the saints in the calendar were forgotten. The "Algoma" and her consorts have gone the way of all steamboats. The railroad came and killed their business, just as a few years later, it did on the Great River.

A few years later I saw the Mississippi River for the first time, at Rock Island, Illinois; and through the kindness of another well-posted bystander to whom the then twelve-year-old boy appealed, I received my first impressions of a stern-wheel boat. There were two steamboats lying at the levee—the "Minnesota Belle", a side-wheeler, upon which we had taken passage, while just above lay the "Luella", a stern-wheeler. I knew about the former variety from observation on the St. Joe, but I had never seen even a picture of one of the latter sort, so it was a novelty. I wasn't certain that it was a steamboat at all, and after referring the matter to my stranger friend, I learned definitely that it wasn't. The "Luella's" wheel was slowly turning over as she lay at the levee, and as I did not comprehend the mechanical details of that kind of craft I began asking questions. My mentor assured me that the "Luella" was not a steamboat at all, but a water power sawmill. The big wheel then moving was driven by the current, and it in turn operated the sawmill machinery on the inside of the boat. As I could not figure any other use for a wheel out in the open, at the end of the boat, instead of on the side where it ought to be, and as I had no reason to doubt the statement of my informant, I readily accepted the sawmill explanation, and hastened to confide my newly-acquired knowledge to my brother and other members of the family. A few hours later both boats pulled out for St. Paul. After she had rounded the first point, ahead of us, we saw nothing more of the "Luella" until we met her coming down the river on her return trip. She was a heavily-powered boat, and showed her heels to the larger and slower "Minnesota Belle". The sight of the "Luella" kicking her way upstream at the rate of two miles to our one, not only dissipated the sawmill impression, but taught me not to accept at face value all information communicated by glib-tongued and plausible strangers.

That steamboat trip from Rock Island to Prescott was one long holiday excursion for us two small and lively boys from Michigan. There was so much to see and in so many different directions at once, that it was impossible to grasp it all, although we scampered over the deck to get differing view points. We met dozens of boats, going back to St. Louis or Galena after further loads of immigrants and freight; and there were other boats which came up behind us, gaining slowly but surely, and finally passing the deeply-laden "Belle". There were landings to be made, and freight and passengers to be disembarked. There were strange Indians to be seen—we were familiar enough with Michigan tribesmen, having been born within a mile or two of old Pokagon's tribal village. There were boys with fish for sale, fish larger than any inhabiting the waters of Michigan streams, sturgeons only excepted, and this promised well for the fun in store when we should reach our journey's end.

Finally, on a bright June day in the year 1854, the writer, then a boy of twelve, with his brother, three years younger, were fully transplanted from their Michigan birthplace to the row of stores and warehouses which fronted on the "levee" at Prescott, Wisconsin, where the waters of St. Croix River and Lake join the Mississippi. The town was then a typical frontier settlement. Two hundred white people were planted among five hundred Chippewa Indians; with as many more Sioux, of the Red Wing band, across the river in Minnesota, a few miles lower down the river. The not infrequent outbreaks of the hereditary enmity existing between these ancient foes, would expend itself on the streets of the town in war whoops, gunpowder, and scalping knives, enlivening the experience of the average citizen as he dodged behind the nearest cover to avoid stray bullets; while the city marshal was given an opportunity to earn his salary, by driving out both bands of hostiles at the point of his revolver.

In that early day when my acquaintance with the Mississippi began, Indians were numerous. Their dugouts lay at the levee by the dozen, the hunters retailing the ducks and geese, or venison and bear meat, which had fallen to their guns, while the squaws peddled catfish and pickerel that had been ensnared on the hooks and lines of the women and children of the party.

Situated as Prescott was at the junction of the St. Croix with the Mississippi, its citizens were favored with visits both from the Chippewa, who hunted and fished along the former stream and its tributaries in Wisconsin, and the Sioux, who made the bottom lands on the Minnesota side of the river, between Hastings and Red Wing, their home and hunting ground. This was the boundary line which had existed for a hundred years or more; although the Sioux (or Dakota) laid claim to many thousand square miles of hunting grounds in Wisconsin, for which they actually received a million and a half dollars when they quit-claimed it to the United States. Their claim to any lands on the east side of the river had been disputed by the Chippewa from time out of mind; and these rival claims had occasionally been, as we have seen, referred to the only court of arbitration which the Indians recognized—that of the tomahawk and scalping knife.

As a boy I have spent many an hour searching in the sands at the foot of the bluffs below Prescott, for arrowheads, rusted remnants of knives and hatchets, and for the well-preserved brass nails with which the stocks and butts of old-time trade muskets were plentifully ornamented. Just how many years ago that battle had been fought, does not appear to be a matter of historical record. That it was fiercely contested, is abundantly proven by the great amount of wreckage of the fight which the white lads of Prescott recovered to be sold to tourists on the steamboats which touched at our levee. The Indians themselves had a tradition that it was a bloody fight. Taking the word of a Chippewa narrator, one was easily convinced that hundreds of Sioux bit the sand on that eventful day. If the narrator happened to belong across the river, one felt assured, after listening to his version, that the Chippewa met their Marathon on this battle plain. In any case the treasure trove indicated a very pretty fight, whichever