Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/51

 afternoon, June 23. I read it, and one from my sister Sophia (and Horace Mann his four), near the top of a remarkable isolated bluff here, called the Barn Bluff, or the Grange, or Red Wing Bluff, some four hundred and fifty feet high and half a mile long,—a bit of the main bluff or river-bank standing alone. The top of these bluffs, as you know, rises to the general level of the surrounding 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.

Resuming now the notes made at Fort Snelling and vicinity, Thoreau says:

I overlook the broad valley of the St. Peter's River, bounded, as I look, on the south by a long range of low hills. The water in both rivers is quite high. The Fort is built of limestone (tawny or butterish), ten feet high, at the angle of the two rivers. The government buildings are handsome, for there was a mill here before the settlement. I found a bank-swallow's large eggs, four in