k us and Captain Harris tied up
to the bank and announced the voyage ended for want of fuel and that
early in the morning he would return. Millions of mosquitoes invaded the
boat. Sleep was impossible. A smudge was kept up in the cabin which gave
little relief and in the morning all were anxious to return. I stationed
myself on the upper deck of the boat with watch and compass open before
me and tried to map the very irregular course of the river. It was
approximately correct and was turned over to a map publisher in New York
or Philadelphia and published in my Year Book.

Some time during this summer, I had occasion to visit the Falls of St.
Anthony, a village of a few houses on the east side of the Mississippi
River, ten miles Northwest of St. Paul. I crossed the river to the west
side in a birch bark canoe, navigated by Tapper, the ferryman for many
years after, until the suspension bridge was built. Examining the Falls,
I went down to an old saw mill built by and for the soldiers at Fort
Snelling and measured the retrocession of the fall by the fresh break of
the rock from the water race way and found it had gone back one hundred
and three feet which seemed very extraordinary until examination
disclosed the soft sandstone underlying the limestone top of the falls.

Events and persons personally known to me or told me by my friend, Gen.
Henry Hastings Sibley, who was a resident of Minnesota, years before it
was a territory. He was the "Great Trader" of the Indians, a partner of
the American Fur Co., and adopted into the Sioux Tribe or nation, the
language of which spoke as well or better than the Indians. He told me
that Little Crow, the chief of the Kaposia Band of Sioux, located on the
west side of the Mississippi river, six miles below St. Paul, was a man
of unusual ability and discernment, who had chivalric ideas of his duty
and that of others. As an instance he told me the following story. A
medium of the tribe had a dream or vision and announced that he would
guide and direct two young members of the tribe, who were desirous of
winning the right to wear an eagle's feather, as the sign to all that
they had killed and scalped an enemy, to the place where this would be
consummated. He conditioned that if they would agree to obey him
implicitly, they would succeed and return safely home to their village
with their trophies. Little Crow's eldest son, a friend of the whites,
much beloved by all, and another young man