We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father Marquette’s camping-places; and after some hours of progress through varied and beautiful scenery, reached La Crosse.  Here is a town of twelve or thirteen thousand population, with electric lighted streets, and with blocks of buildings which are stately enough, and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any city.  It is a choice town, and we made satisfactory use of the hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though the weather was rainier than necessary.

Chapter 59 Legends and Scenery

We added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among others an old gentleman who had come to this north-western region with the early settlers, and was familiar with every part of it.  Pardonably proud of it, too.  He said—­

’You’ll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson points.  You’ll have the Queen’s Bluff—­seven hundred feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau Island, which isn’t like any other island in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you.  And above Winona you’ll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand Islands, too beautiful for anything; green? why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick; it’s like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking-glass—­when the water ’s still; and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides of the river—­ragged, rugged, dark-complected—­just the frame that’s wanted; you always want a strong frame, you know, to throw up the nice points of a delicate picture and make them stand out.’

The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two—­but not very powerful ones.

After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islands to St. Paul; naming its names with such facility, tripping along his theme with such nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton word, here and there, with such a complacent air of ’t isn’t-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-want-to, and letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such judicious intervals, that I presently began to suspect—­

But no matter what I began to suspect.  Hear him—­

’Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the blue depths of heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have known no other contact save that of angels’ wings.

’And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendous aspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration, about twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perched far among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy heights—­sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount Vernon, town of early days, now desolate and utterly deserted.