Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/63

 so common that I forgot to mention them. The sound of the boat rumbling over one was the ordinary music. However, as long as the boiler did not burst, we knew that no serious accident was likely to happen.

Yet it was a singularly navigable river; more so than the Mississippi above the Falls of St. Anthony; and this is owing to its very crookedness. Ditch it straight, and it would not only be very swift, but would soon run out. It was from ten to fifteen rods wide near the mouth, and from eight to ten or twelve at Redwood. Though the current was swift, I did not see a &quot;rip&quot; on it, and only three or four rocks. For three months in the year I am told it can be navigated by small steamers about twice as far as we went, or to its source in Big Stone Lake. A former Indian agent told me that at high water it was thought that such a steamer might pass into the Red River (of the North). The last of the little settlements on the river was New Ulm, about a hundred miles this side of Redwood. It consists wholly of Germans. We left them a hundred barrels of salt, which will be worth something more when the