Chapter V: Grand Detour Folks

We tramped back to the bridge in high spirits next morning, over the flower-strewn prairie. The section-man's wife was on hand, with her entire step-laddered brood of six, to see us off. As we carried down our traps to the beach and repacked, she kept up a continuous strain of talk, giving us a most edifying review of her life, and especially the particulars of how she and her "man" had first romantically met, while he was a gravel-train hand on a far western railroad, and she the cook in a portable construction-barracks.

Stillman's Creek opens into the Rock from the east, through a pleasant glade, a few rods below the bridge. We took a pull up this historic tributary for a half-mile or more. It is a muddy stream, some two and a half rods wide, cutting down for a half-dozen feet through the black soil. The shores are generally well fringed with heavy timber, especially upon the northern bank, while the land to the south and southwest stretches upward, in gentle slopes, to a picturesque rolling prairie, abounding in wooded knolls. It was in the large grove on the north bank, near its junction with the Rock, that Black Hawk, in the month of May, 1832, parleyed with the Pottawattomies. It was here that on the 14th of that month he learned of the treachery of Stillman's militiamen, and at once made that famous sally with his little band of forty braves which resulted in the rout of the cowardly whites, who fled pell-mell over the prairie toward Dixon, asserting that Black Hawk and two thousand blood-thirsty warriors were sweeping northern Illinois with the besom of destruction. The country round about appears to have undergone no appreciable change in the half-century intervening between that event and to-day. The topographical descriptions given in contemporaneous accounts of Stillman's flight will hold good now, and we were readily able to pick out the points of interest on the old battlefield.

Returning to the Rock, we made excellent progress. The atmosphere was bracing; and there being a favoring northwest breeze, our awning was stretched over a hoop for a sail. The banks were now steep inclines of white sand and gravel. It was like going through a railroad cut. But in ascending the sides, as we did occasionally, to secure supplies from farm-houses or refill our canteen with fresh water, there were found broad expanses of rolling prairie. The farm establishments increase in number and prosperity. Windmills may be counted by the scores, the cultivation of enormous cornfields is everywhere in progress, and cattle are more numerous than ever.

Three or four miles above Oregon the banks rise to the dignity of hills, which come sweeping down "with verdure clad" to the very water's edge, and present an inspiring picture, quite resembling some of the most charming stretches of the Hudson. At the entrance to this lovely vista we encountered a logy little pleasure-steamer anchored in the midst of the stream, which is here nearly half of a mile wide, for the river now perceptibly broadens. The captain, a ponderous old sea-dog, wearing a cowboy's hat and having the face of an operatic pirate, with a huge pipe between his black teeth, sat lounging on the bulwark, watching the force of the current, into which he would listlessly expectorate. He was at first inclined to be surly, as we hauled alongside and checked our course; but gradually softened down as we drew him out in conversation, and confided to us that he had in earlier days "sailed the salt water," a circumstance of which he seemed very proud. He also gave us some "pointers on the lay o' the land," as he called them, for our future guidance down the river,--one of which was that there were "dandy sceneries" below Oregon, in comparison with which we had thus far seen nothing worthy of note. As for himself, he said that his place on the neighboring shore was connected by telephone with Oregon, and his steamer frequently transported pleasure parties to points of interest above the dam.

Ganymede Spring is on the southeast bank, at the base of a lofty sandstone bluff, a mile or so above Oregon. From the top of the bluff, which is ascended by a succession of steep flights of scaffolding stairs, a magnificent bird's-eye view is attainable of one of the finest river and forest landscapes in the Mississippi basin. The grounds along the riverside at the base are laid out in graceful carriage drives; and over the head of a neatly hewn basin, into which gushes the copious spring, is a marble slab thus inscribed:

_______________________________________________ | | | GANYMEDE'S SPRINGS, | | | | named by | | | | MARGERET FULLER (Countess D. Ossoli,) | | | | who named this bluff | | | | EAGLE'S NEST, | | | | & beneath the cedars on its crest wrote | | | | "Ganymede to his Eagle," | | | | July 4, 1843. | |_____________________________________________|

Oregon was reached just before noon. A walk through the business quarter revealed a thrifty, but oldish-looking town of about two thousand inhabitants. The portage on the east side, around a flouring-mill dam, involved a hard pull up the gravelly bank thirty feet high, and a haul of two blocks' length along a dusty street.

There was a fine stretch of eroded palisades in front of the island on which we lunched. The color effect was admirable,--patches of gray, brown, white, and old gold, much corroded with iron. Vines of many varieties dangle from earth-filled crevices, and swallows by the hundreds occupy the dimples neatly hollowed by the action of the water in some ancient period when the stream was far broader and deeper than now.

But at times, even in our day, the Rock is a raging torrent. The condition of the trees along the river banks and on the thickly-strewn island pastures, shows that not many months before it must have been on a wild rampage, for the great trunks are barked by the ice to the height of fifteen feet above the present water-level. Everywhere, on banks and islands, are the evidences of disastrous floods, and the ponderous ice-breakers above the bridges give one an awesome notion of the condition of affairs at such a time. Farmers assured us that in the spring of 1887 the water was at the highest stage ever recorded in the history of the valley. Many of the railway bridges barely escaped destruction, while the numerous river ferries and the low country bridges in the bayous were destroyed by scores. The banks were overflowed for miles together, and back in the country for long distances, causing the hasty removal of families and live-stock from the bottoms; while ice jams, forming at the heads of the islands, would break, and the shattered floes go sweeping down with terrific force, crushing the largest trees like reeds, tearing away fences and buildings, covering islands and meadows with deep deposits of sand and mud, blazing their way through the forested banks, and creating sad havoc on every hand. We were amply convinced, by the thousands of broken trees which littered our route, the snags, the mud-baked islands, the frequent stretches of sadly demoralized bank that had not yet had time to reweave its charitable mantle of verdure, that the Rock, on such a spring "tear," must indeed be a picture of chaos broken loose. This explained why these hundreds of beautiful and spacious islands--many of them with charming combinations of forest and hillock and meadow, and occasionally enclosing pretty ponds blushing with water-lilies--are none of them inhabited, but devoted to the pasture of cattle, who swim or ford the intervening channels, according to the stage of the flood; also why the picturesque bottoms on the main shore are chiefly occupied by the poorest class of farmers, who eke out their meagre incomes with the spoils of the gun and line.

It was a quarter of five when we beached at the upper ferry-landing at Grand Detour. It is a little, tumble-down village of one or two small country stores, a church, and a dozen modest cottages; there is also, on the river front, a short row of deserted shops, their paintless battlement-fronts in a sadly collapsed condition, while hard by are the ruins of two or three dismantled mills. The settlement is on a bit of prairie at the base of the preliminary flourish of the "big bend" of the Rock,--hence the name, Grand Detour, a reminiscence of the early French explorers. The foot of the peninsula is but half a mile across, while the distance around by river to the lower ferry, on the other side of the village is four miles. Having learned that the bottoms below here were, for a long distance, peculiarly gloomy and but sparsely inhabited, we thought it best to pass the night at Grand Detour. Bespeaking accommodations at the tavern and post-office combined, we rowed around the bend to the lower landing, through some lovely stretches of river scenery, in which bold palisades and delightful little meadows predominated.

The walk back to the village was through a fine park of elms. The stage was just in from Dixon, with the mail. There was an eager little knot of villagers in the cheerful sitting-room of our homelike inn, watching the stout landlady as she distributed it in a checker-board rank of glass-faced boxes fenced off in front of a sunny window. It did not appear that many of those who overlooked the distribution of the mail had been favored by their correspondents. They were chiefly concerned in seeing who did get letters and papers, and in "passin' the time o' day," as gossiping is called in rural communities. Seated in a darkened corner, waiting patiently for supper, the announcement of which was an hour or more in coming, we were much amused at the mirror of local events which was unconsciously held up for us by these loungers of both sexes and all ages, who fairly filled the room, and oftentimes waxed hot in controversy.

The central theme of conversation was the preparations under way for Decoration Day, which was soon to arrive. Grand Detour was to be favored with a speaker from Dixon,--"a reg'lar major from the war, gents, an' none o' yer m'lish fellers!" an enthusiastic old man with a crutch persisted in announcing. There were to be services at the church, and some exercises at the cemetery, where lie buried the half-dozen honored dead, Grand Detour's sacrifice upon the altar of the Union. The burning question seemed to be whether the village preacher would consent to offer prayer upon the occasion, if the church choir insisted on being accompanied on the brand-new cabinet organ which the congregation had voted to purchase, but to which the pastor and one of the leading deacons were said to be bitterly opposed, as smacking of worldliness and antichrist. Only the evening before, this deacon, armed with a sledgehammer and rope, had been seen to go to the sanctuary in company with his "hired man," and enter through one of the windows, which they pried up for the purpose. A good gossip, who lived hard by, closely watched such extraordinary proceedings. There was a great noise within, then some planks were pitched out of the window, soon followed by the deacon and his man. The window was shut down, the planks thrown atop of the horse-shed roof, and the men disappeared. Investigation in the morning by the witness revealed the fact that the choir-seats and the organ-platform had been torn down and removed. Here was a pretty how d' do! The wiry, raspy little woman, with her gray finger-curls and withered, simpering smile, had, with great forbearance, kept her choice bit of news to herself till "post-office time." Sitting in a big rocking-chair close to the delivery window, knitting vigorously on an elongated stocking, she demurely asserted that she "never wanted to say nothin' 'gin' nobody, or to hurt nobody's feelin's," and then detailed the entire circumstance to the patrons of the office as they came in. The excitement created by the story, which doubtless lost nothing in the telling, was at fever-heat. We were sorely tempted to remain over till Decoration Day,--when, it was freely predicted, there "would be some folks as'd wish they'd never been born,"--and see the outcome of this tempest in a teapot. But our programme, unfortunately, would not admit of such a diversion.

Others came and went, but the gossipy little body with the gray curls rocked on, holding converse with both post-mistress and public, keeping a keen eye on the character of the mail matter obtained by the villagers and neighboring farmers, and freely commenting on it all; so that new-comers were kept quite well-informed as to the correspondence of those who had just departed.

A sad-eyed little woman in rusty black modestly slipped in, and was handed out a much-creased and begrimed envelope, which she nervously clutched. She was hurrying silently away, when the gossip sharply exclaimed, "Good lands, Cynthi' Prescott! some folks don't know a body when they meet. 'Spose ye've been hearin' from Jim at last. I'd been thinkin' 't was about time ye got a letter from his hand, ef he war ever goin' t' write at all. Tell ye, Cynthi' Prescott, ye're too indulgent on that man o' yourn! Ef I--"

But Cynthia Prescott, turning her black, deep-sunken eyes to her inquisitor, with a piteous, tearful look, as though stung to the quick, sidled out backward through the wire-screen door, which sprung closed with a vicious bang, and I saw her hurrying down the village street firmly grasping at her bosom what the mail had brought her,--probably a brutal demand for more money, from a worthless husband, who was wrecking his life-craft on some far-away shore.

"Goodness me! but the Gilberts is a-puttin' on style!" ejaculated the village censor, as a rather smart young horseman went out with a bunch of letters, and a little packet tied up in red twine. "That there was vis'tin' keerds from the printer's shop in Dixon, an' cost a dollar; can't fool me! There's some folks as hev to be leavin' keerds on folks's centre-tables when they goes makin' calls, for fear folks will be a-forgettin' their names. When I go a-callin', I go a-visitin' and take my work along an' stop an' hev a social cup o' tea; an' they ain't a-goin' to forgit for awhile, that I dropped in on 'em, neither. This way they hev down in Dixon, what I hear of, of ringin' at a bell and settin' down with yer bonnet on and sayin', 'How d' do,' an' a 'Pretty well, I thank yer,' and jumpin' up as if the fire bell was ringin' and goin' on through the whole n'ighberhood as ef ye're on springs, an' then a-trancin' back home and braggin' how many calls ye've made,--I ain't got no use for that; it'll do for Dixon folks, what catch the style from Chicargy, an' they git 't from Paris each year, I'm told, but I ain't no use for 't. Mebbe ol' man Gilbert is made o' money,--his women folks act so, with all this a-apein' the Clays, who's been gettin' visitin' keerds all the way from Chicargy, which they ordered of a book agint last fall, with gilt letters an' roses an' sich like in the corners. An' 'twas Clay's brother-in-law as tol' me he never did see such carryin's-on over at the old house, with letter-writin' paper sopped in cologne, an' lace curtains in the bed-room winders. An' ye can't tell me but the Gilberts, too, is a-goin' to the dogs, with their paper patterns from Dixon, and dress samples from a big shop in Chicargy, which I seen from the picture on the envelope was as big as all Grand Detour, an' both ferry-landin's thrown in. Grand Detour fashi'ns ain't good 'nough for some folks, I reckon."

And thus the busy-tongued woman discoursed in a vinegary tone upon the characteristics of Grand Detour folks, as illustrated by the nature of the evening mail, frequently interspersing her remarks with a hearty disclaimer of anything malicious in her temperament. At last, however, the supper-bell rang; the doughty postmistress, who had been remarkably discreet throughout all this village tirade, having darted in and out between the kitchen and the office, attending to her dual duties, locked the postal gate with a snap, and asked her now solitary patron, "Anything I can do for you, Maria?" The gossip gathered up her knitting, hastily averred that she had merely dropped in for her weekly paper, but now remembered that this was not the day for it, and ambled off, to reload with venom for the next day's mail.

After supper we walked about the peaceful, pretty, grass-grown village. Shearing was in progress at the barn of the inn, and the streets were filled with bleating sheep and nodding billy-goats. The place presented many evidences of former prosperity, and we were told that a dozen years before it had boasted of a plough factory, two or three flouring-mills, and a good water-power. But the railroad that it was expected would come to Grand Detour had touched Dixon instead, with the result that the village industries had been removed to Dixon, the dam had fallen in, and now there were less than three hundred inhabitants between the two ferries.

When one of the store-keepers told me he had practically no country trade, but that his customers were the villagers alone, I was led to inquire what supported these three hundred people, who had no industries among them, no river traffic, owing to customary low water in summer, and who seemed to live on each other. Many of the villagers, I found, are laborers who work upon the neighboring farms and maintain their families here; a few are farmers, the corners of whose places run down to the village; others there are who either own or rent or "share" farms in the vicinity, going out to their work each day, much of their live stock and crops being housed at their village homes; there are half a dozen retired farmers, who have either sold out their places or have tenants upon them, and live in the village for sociability's sake, or to allow their children the benefit of the excellent local school. Mingled with these people are a shoemaker, a tailor, a storekeeper, who live upon the necessities of their neighbors. Two fishermen spend the summer here, in a tent, selling their daily catch to the villagers and neighboring farmers and occasionally shipping by the daily mail-stage to Dixon, fourteen miles away. The preacher and his family are modestly supported; a young physician wins a scanty subsistence; and for considerably over half the year the schoolmaster shares with them what honors and sorrows attach to these positions of rural eminence. Our pleasant-spoken host was the driver of the Dixon stage, as well as star-route mail contractor, adding the conduct of a farm to his other duties. With his wife as postmistress, and a pretty, buxom daughter, who waited on our table and was worth her weight in gold, Grand Detour folks said that he was bound to be a millionnaire yet.

As Grand Detour lives, so live thousands of just such little rural villages all over the country. Viewed from the railway track or river channel, they appear to have been once larger than they are to-day. The sight of the unpainted houses, the ruined factory, the empty stores, the grass and weeds in the street, the lack-lustre eyes of the idlers, may induce one to imagine that here is the home of hopeless poverty and despair. But although the railroad which they expected never came; or the railroad which did come went on and scheduled the place as a flag station; still, there is a certain inherent vitality here, an undefined something that holds these people together, a certain degree of hopefulness which cannot rise to the point of ambition, a serene satisfaction with the things that are. Grand Detour folks, and folks like them, are as blissfully content as the denizens of Chicago.