Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/35

 some eighty or ninety cords of wood at one landing, disturbing a bat, which flies aboard of us. A willow-tree is shown floating horizontally across the river. Occasionally there are low islands. Macgregor, a new town opposite. Prairie du Chien is the smartest town on the river; it exports the most wheat of any town between St. Paul and St. Louis. There is wheat in sacks, great heaps of them, at Prairie du Chien,—covered at night, and all on the ground.

At Prairie du Chien is Pulsatilla Nuttalliana, out of flower, very large; Viola pedata also; possibly a white variety of the same, without marks on the petal. Hoary puccoon or alkanet (Lithospermum canescens), yellow-flowered, the root used by the Indians to dye red,—common from Chicago and even before. The redwing blackbird is the prevailing bird till the Mississippi River; on the river, pigeons, kingfishers, crows, jays, etc., with swallows (the white-bellied).

May 25. We got to Prairie du Chien last evening, and to Brownsville about six this morning. White pines began half a dozen miles above La Crosse,—a few; birches not