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The little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her blind black pony.
A wonderful stretch of undulating wood-clad country lay spread out before him. It was a waste of virgin territory chequered with woodland bluffs, with here and there the rigid Indian teepee poles supporting their rawhide dwellings, peeping out from all sorts of natural shelters. "Dora? Why, Dora's over with Nita Allenwood. That child spends most of her time there now."
If you will look at the map, you will see, dotted along the bottoms and the bluffs beside the great Mississippi, the string of villages, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher, Fort Chartres, St. Philip, and Cahokia. Some few miles from Cahokia, on the western bank of the Father of Waters, was the little French village of St. Louis, in the Spanish territory of Louisiana.
The twilight still glimmered faintly; the sky was thick with stars of a brightness never seen in more humid air; the Milky Way was like a fair white cloud; the fantastic bluffs looked stranger than ever against the pale green west; and the splendid comet was plunging straight down into; the Turtle's mouth.
The teepees are pitched quite near the shore, and the many bluffs that rise behind them seem to be their perpetual guards. The present chief is about thirty-five years old as yet he has done not much to give him a reputation above the Dahcotahs about him. But his father was a man whose life and character were such as to influence his people to a great degree.
Prairie freighting and Missouri river navigation, were of importance before the construction of the Union Pacific railway, and the activity of the city in securing the freighting interest gave her an initial start over the other cities of the state. Council Bluffs was the legal, but Omaha the practical, eastern terminus of that great undertaking, work on which began at Omaha in December, 1863.
Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunny little room, looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of the blond pastures between, scanning the Æneid aloud and committing long passages to memory. Sometimes in the evening Mrs. Harling called to me as I passed her gate, and asked me to come in and let her play for me.
At the foot of one of the bluffs which bordered with its granite bands the highest plateau of the mountain, the forest rolled victoriously down to the banks of the river. Now came patches of forest, like solid battalions of infantry; sometimes solitary trees appeared, as if distributed by chance upon the grassy slopes, or scaling the summit of the steepest rocks like a body of bold sharpshooters.
Seeing he was not to be moved, Prescott asked: "How do you strike the south trail?" "Go straight through the town. It forks in about three miles, and you can take either branch. They're both pretty bad, but the west one's the shorter and the worse." "What's between the forks?" "A big patch of broken country sandhills and bluffs. About eight miles on, the other trail runs in again."
Then came the last wave of a white scarf, faintly in the distance, and at length the dark outline of the fort was all that remained to their regretful gaze. Quickly that, too, disappeared behind the green hill, which, with its bold front, forces the river to take a wide turn. The Ohio, winding in its course between high, wooded bluffs, rolled on and on into the wilderness.
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