Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/472

 446 FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. [1861,

bluff here, called Barn Bluff, or the Grange, or Kedwing Bluff, some four hundred and fifty feet high, and half a mile long, a bit of the main bluff or bank standing alone. The top, as you know, rises to the general level of the surround ing country, the river having eaten out so much. Yet the valley just above and below this (we are at the head of Lake Pepin) must be three or four miles wide.

I am not even so well informed as to the pro gress of the war as you suppose. I have seen but one Eastern paper (that, by the way, was the &quot; Tribune &quot;) for five weeks. I have not taken much pains to get them ; but, necessarily, I have not seen any paper at all for more than a week at a time. The people of Minnesota have seemed to me more cold, to feel less im plicated in this war than the people of Massa chusetts. It is apparent that Massachusetts, for one State at least, is doing much more than her share in carrying it on. However, I have dealt partly with those of Southern birth, and have seen but little way beneath the surface. I was glad to be told yesterday that there was a good deal of weeping here at Kedwing the other day, when the volunteers stationed at Fort Snelling followed the regulars to the seat of the war. They do not weep when their children go up the river to occupy the deserted forts, though they may have to fight the Indians there.