not of the most
picturesque appearance) across the Kishwaukie, the most graceful
of streams, and on whose bosom rested many full-blown
water-lilies,--twice as large as any of ours. I was told that, _en
revanche_, they were scentless, but I still regret that I could not
get at one of them to try. Query, did the lilied fragrance which,
in the miraculous times, accompanied visions of saints and angels,
proceed from water or garden lilies?

Kishwaukie is, according to tradition, the scene of a famous battle,
and its many grassy mounds contain the bones of the valiant. On these
waved thickly the mysterious purple flower, of which I have spoken
before. I think it springs from the blood of the Indians, as the
hyacinth did from that of Apollo's darling.

The ladies of our host's family at Oregon, when they first went,
there, after all the pains and plagues of building and settling, found
their first pastime in opening one of these mounds, in which they
found, I think, three of the departed, seated, in the Indian fashion.

One of these same ladies, as she was making bread one winter morning,
saw from the window a deer directly before the house. She ran out,
with her hands covered with dough, calling the others, and they caught
him bodily before he had time to escape.

Here (at Kiskwaukie) we received a visit from a ragged and barefooted,
but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer,
the walking Will's coffee-house, of the place. He told us many
charming snake-stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen
young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the approach of a visitor.

This night we reached Belvidere, a flourishing town in Boon County,
where was the tomb, now despoiled, of Big Thunder. In this later day
we felt happy to find a really good hotel.

From this place, by two days of very leisurely and devious journeying,
we reached Chicago, and thus ended a journey, which one at least of
the party might have wished unending.

I have not been particularly anxious to give the geography of the
scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me no route, nor series of stations,
but a garden interspersed with cottages, groves, and flowery lawns,
through which a stately river ran. I had no guide-book, kept no diary,
do not know how many miles we travelled each day, nor how many in all.
What I got from the journey was the poetic impression of the country
at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate.

The na