Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/68



of these lakes, I do not know; they were certainly all alike, pellucid and bright, and the shores of each were often a mosaic of the most brilliant pebbles. They find an outlet in the calmest and clearest of creeks, which wanders about the prairie between its level banks, and at last surprises itself by plunging over a precipice sixty feet high. There is a kind of Jack Horner exultation in its merriment as it touches bottom, as if such an act of bravery was unprecedented in the annals of streams.

The Falls of Minnehaha is an ideal to the lovers of the romantic, who find an indefinable charm in the light, musical plashing of its waters. And in spite of what philologists, superfluously learned in the Sioux language, may say in regard to the popular misinterpretation, it will still continue to be a favorite goal of bridal parties, and of enthusiastic ladies of a poetic temperament. A favorite goal, I might say, to any one who could enjoy the dolce far niente of a summer afternoon, and recklessly dream it out to the accompaniment of such a light, fantastic measure. One is inclined to laugh, too, when one thinks how the contagion of its merriment and fantasy has led civilized humanity. A year before a romaniic couple, from New England, came and stood beneath the spray while the marriage ceremony was being performed. During the previous winter a merry party, from St. Paul, had burning pine-knots placed on the rocks behind the frozen cascade, which shone out into the stilly chill of the winter night with a weirdly magnificent brilliancy. So potent is the influence of the place, that one hears innumerable anecdotes of hilarious merriment, into which the visitors are betrayed. Indeed, Minnehaha seemed a sort of sfirituelle embodiment of the pagan myth of Silenus marching at the head of his troup of merry-makers, and infecting them all with his own caprices.

I remember the visit to old Fort Snelling with a peculiar interest. It is about a two-hours' drive from Minneapolis, past the Falls co: Minnehaha, and about six miles beyond them. There was a mild, decaying, disused air about even the exterior; and when we entered the quadrangle, the one solitary sentinel paced his dreary rounds with an air of melancholy resignation that quite went to my heart. A frontier fort, hemmed in on every side by a peaceable and thrifty community, had need to look dejected. It seemed like a great chief-mourner, who had come by mistake to the rejoicings of a baptismal service, and found the dignity of its funereal trappir gs quite lost amid its gayer surroundings; and so it had turned introspective, and quietly lived upon its own memories. The nine square miles which it once held as a military reserve, had dwindled down to a few hundred acres, and cities and towns had sprung up within its former limits. There was little to interest one now in the interior of the fort; and soon I found my way through a passage cut through the buildings on one side of the quadrangle, and thence up two or three short flights of stairs to an observatory, overhanging the river.

From here one sees mountain - tops, rivers, and prairies. The sombre outline of bluffs on the east cut the edge of the shining, blue sky into grotesque shapes; the Mississippi, stretching in a nearly direct line north and south, throbs beneath your feet; toward the west the Minnesota extends its sinuous length over the level plain, and the prairie itself, in great green reaches, meets and mingles with the pale sky at the farwestern horizon. A couple of brighteyed children, daughters of an officer at the fort, had converted the observatory into a play-room, and a gigantic doll had her face turned toward the proper angle, and was mildly contemplating the scene. A hospital of maimed and wounded in