Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/36

 common. The cliffs here are high and interrupted, or in promontories.

We reached Fountain City about noon. The bluffs grow farther apart, and the rain channels more numerous than yesterday; sometimes there are two or three miles from bluff to bluff. We take a wood-boat along with us. Oaks,—commonly open,—on both sides the river. We see Indians encamped below Wabasha, with Dakota-shaped wigwams; also a loon on a lake, and fish leaping.

Every town has a wharf, with one storage building or several on it, and as many hotels,—this is everything, except commission merchants. &quot;Storage,&quot; &quot;Forwarding,&quot; or &quot;Commission,&quot; one or all these words are on the most prominent new buildings close to the waterside. Perhaps there will be a heap of sacks filled with wheat on the natural jetty or levee close by; or about Dubuque and Dunleith a blue stack of pig-lead, which is in no danger of being washed away. We see where they have dug for lead in the sides of the bluffs for many miles above Galena.