Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/299

Rh picturesque; yet the river here is very broad, and probably from that cause the fall and the hills appear more inconsiderable. The shore is bordered by a rich luxuriance of trees and shrubs, springing up wildly from among pieces of rock and the craggy tufa-walls with their ruin-like forms, which however have nothing grand about them. River, falls, country, views, everything here has more breadth than grandeur.

It was Father Hennepin, the French Jesuit, who first came to these falls, brought hither captive by the Indians. The Indians called the falls, “Irrara,” or the laughing water; he christened them St. Anthony's. I prefer the first name, as being characteristic of the fall, which has rather a cheerful than a dangerous appearance, and the roar of which has nothing terrific in it. The Mississippi is a river of a joyful temperament. I have a painting of its springs, a present from Mr. Schoolcraft, the little lake, Itaska, in the northern part of Minnesota. The little lake looks like a serene heavenly mirror set in a frame of primeval forest. Northern firs and pines, maples and elms, and other beautiful American trees surround the waters of this lake like a leafy tabernacle above the cradle of the infant river. Afar up in the distant background lies that elevated range of country, called by the French, “Hauteur des terres,” resembling a lofty plateau, covered with dense forest, scattered over with blocks of granite, and interspersed with a hundred springs: five of these throw themselves from different heights into the little lake.

When the infant Mississippi springs forth from the bosom of Itaska it is a rapid and clear little stream, sixteen feet broad, and four inches deep. Leaping forward over stocks and stones, it expands itself ninety miles below its spring into Lake Pemideji; a lake, the waters of which are clear as crystal, and which is free from islands. Here it is met by the river La Place, from Assawa Lake. Forty-five miles lower down it pours