Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
own field I had much to communicate--the lore of woods and streams,
the ways of the red men, the moods and legends of the Great River,
matters which seemed of little value to me, but which this stranger
from an older civilization was as solicitous to hear about as I was
to listen to the stories of his larger life. While I deemed myself
fortunate indeed in making the acquaintance of this cosmopolitan man
of the world, I was pleased to know that there were some things that
I knew better than my more widely-travelled employer. One of these
things, insignificant in itself, was the fact that the pilot could
catch ten trout to the captain's one, after giving him all possible
advantages of first chances at good "holes", and likely riffles, and
the first chance in wading ahead down the stream. This was for a
long time one of the mysteries to the captain--why a trout would not
bite at one man's hook just as readily as at another's, when they
were exactly alike as to lures, whether natural or artificial. The
fact remains that there is a difference in the manner in which you
approach them with the temptation; until you get the "hang of the
thing" you will not catch the trout that the more astute disciple of
the good Walton catches out of the same stream, in the same hour.
Thrown together as we both were on board the boat and on these
excursions, the relation of employer and servant was soon forgotten,
and the closer and more intimate relation of friend to friend was
established, a relation which lasted as long as Captain Eden remained
in America. Two months were passed in idling along the St. Croix, in
hunting, fishing, exploring, studying the beautiful, if not grand,
rock formations of the Dalles, and in visiting the Indians in their
haunts around Wood Lake and the upper St. Croix. Then Captain Eden
turned the prow of his little steamboat toward home, descending the
river to Prairie du Chien, ascending the Wisconsin, portaging through
the canal to the Fox, and thence steaming down to Oshkosh. Disposing
of his steamboat there, he entered the office of the _Northwestern_
newspaper, first as a reporter and later as an editorial writer. Not
many suburban newspapers fifty years ago could boast of an Oxonian
among their editorial writers. But very few people outside of his
immediate friends ever knew that the quiet man who represented the
_Northwestern_ was either an Oxonian or the son of an English baronet.
In the autumn of 1863 the men of the North were gathering themselves
together for the mightiest struggle of modern times--the battle
summer of 1864. In Wisconsin, the Thirty-seventh Regiment of
Infantry was in process of enrollment, and the whilom Englishman
was one of those engaged in recruiting for this regiment, putting
his money as well as his time into the work. Captain Eden was so
successful in enlisting men for the service, that when the regiment
was organized he was commissioned as major. In the strenuous days
immediately following the battle of Cold Harbor the writer again met
his old employer. The difference in rank between the enlisted man
and the commissioned officer was no bar to the recognition of the
former friendship existing between the steamboat captain and his
pilot--friendship broadened and strengthened by companionship in
woods and along streams by mutual interest and respect.
Major Robert C. Eden, or "Bob" Eden, as he was called at the front,
was a model officer. His family had for generations been furnishing
officers for the British army, and the fighting blood ran in his
veins. His regiment was in the hottest of the fight at the Petersburg
mine disaster, and he was at the head of his men. Through all the
long siege following the first repulse, from June, 1864, until April,
1865, constantly under fire, he proved the metal that was in his
composition. When he left England to seek his fortune, he was engaged
to a Scotch lassie from one of the old families of the borderland.
After a summer's experience of Yankee warfare, pitted against the
"Johnnies" under Lee, Longstreet, Gordon, and Wise--men of equal
courage, tenacity, and fighting ability--"Bob" concluded that another
summer of the same sort as the last might prove too much for him,
and that he might lose the number of his mess, as hundreds of his
comrades had in the summer just closed. If he hoped or wished to
leave a widow when he was called, he had better clinch the contract
at once. And so he did.
His fiancée, who also came of fighting stock, promptly responded to
the challenge and came overseas to meet her hero. They were married
across a stump in the rear of Fort Haskell (Fort Hell, the boys
called it, as opposed to Fort Damnation, immediately opposite, in
the Confederate line of works). Chaplain Hawes read the full Church
of England service for the occasion, the regiment formed in hollow
square about them, and the brigade band played the wedding march,
while an occasional shell from the Confederate works sang overhead.
Major-General O. B. Wilcox, commanding the division, gave away the
bride, and all went merry despite the warlike surroundings.
After the war, Major Eden returned to Oshkosh and resumed his
editorial labors, in which he persisted for several years. Finally
the home hunger came upon him, or perhaps more strongly upon his
wife. The wild Western society of the swiftest town of its size in
the state was not so much to her liking as that of the slower but
more refined surroundings of the land of her birth. Severing all
ties, business and otherwise, they returned to England. Once there
the influence of English kin and early associations was too strong
to permit of his return to Yankee land, and Major "Bob" assumed the
canonical robes which had so long awaited his broad shoulders.
"And now, instead of mounting barbéd steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries",
he ministers at the altar of the Prince of Peace, the calling toward
which his early education tended. His excursion into the wilds of
the Northwest, his steamboat trip up the Great River, his experience
as the editor of a frontier newspaper, and his service in an alien
army--all must have had an influence in broadening his view and
enriching his preaching.
One incident which occurred in our rambles was somewhat amusing. We
had tied up in the mouth of the Kinnickinnic River, and had walked
up the stream some eight or ten miles to the little village of River
Falls, where I was very well acquainted, and where the trout fishing
was excellent. It had been Eden's request that I should introduce
him simply as Captain Eden, without going into any particulars of
parentage, education, or nationality. As he wore a suit of Scotch
tweeds somewhat the worse for wear from numerous excursions after
deer, prairie chickens, and trout, there was nothing suggestive of
the Oxonian about him. In River Falls lived the only really educated
man of that locality--a graduate from Yale, both in law and divinity.
We called upon him and while discussing the country, its beauty, its
game, and its fishing, Captain Eden was toying with a book of Greek
tragedies, that lay open on the table. His apparent interest in the
strange characters in which the book was printed tempted the scholar
to remark, possibly with a slightly ironical inflection:
"I presume you read Greek on the river, Captain?"
"Oh, yes", was Captain Eden's response, "I am very fond of the Greek
tragedies, and I have read a good deal to keep in practice. I like
this passage that you were reading when we came in."
Taking the book, Captain Eden read in a beautifully modulated voice,
and with probably a perfect accent, the passage which the scholar
had marked, and which he had been reading when we called. I say,
"probably perfect accent". I had never seen a printed page of Greek
before, much less had I ever heard it read as fluently as I could
read English. The _amende_ which the scholar instantly made, and
the praises which he bestowed on the marine prodigy who captained a
little steamboat on the river, wore rough clothes, and read Greek
like a native, convinced me that his ministerial preparation had been
laid upon solid foundations, and that his accent was above criticism,
out in that country at least.
It was during this visit to River Falls that Captain Eden made the
acquaintance of Ellsworth Burnett, another nobleman, born among the
hills of Vermont, at whose farm we were guests while loading our
baskets with trout from the south fork of the Kinnickinnic, which
flowed through his farm and past his door. The friendship thus begun
undoubtedly led to Eden's going into the army, for Burnett was
largely instrumental in raising one of the companies of the regiment
in which Major Eden was commissioned, himself going out as a captain,
and returning at the close of the war as major.
Chapter XXVI
_In War Time_
In the early spring of 1861 the "Fanny Harris" was chartered by the
United States government to go to Fort Ridgeley, up the Minnesota
River, and bring down the battery of light artillery stationed at
that post, known as the Sherman Battery, Major T. W. Sherman having
been in command long enough to have conferred his name upon the
organization, and by that it was known at the time of which I write.
It is three hundred miles from St. Paul to Fort Ridgeley by the
river; as a crow flies, the distance is about half of that. A little
more than one year after our visit there was business at and near the
fort for many crows--the gruesome occupation of picking the bones of
a thousand white people (men, women, and children) murdered by the
crafty Sioux, who saw in the withdrawal of the troops an opportunity
to avenge all their wrongs, real or imaginary, and to regain the
lands which had been sold under treaty, or which had been stolen from
them by the fast encroaching white population of the state.
The Minnesota River is the worst twisted water course in the West.
No other affluent of the Mississippi can show as many bends to the
mile throughout its course. It is a series of curves from start to
finish, the river squirming its way through an alluvial prairie from
Beaver Falls, the head of navigation, to Mendota at its mouth. Up
this crooked stream it was the problem to force the largest boat that
had ever navigated it, and a stern-wheeler at that. At the time the
trip was made, there was a nineteen-foot rise in the river, resulting
from the melting of the snow after an exceptionally hard winter. This
precluded any danger of touching bottom anywhere, but it added ten
fold to the difficulties of navigating a two hundred-foot steamboat
around the short bends for the reason that the water did not follow
the regular channel, but cut right across bends and points, so that
most of the time the current was setting squarely across the river,
catching the steamer broadside on, and driving her into the woods,
and when there holding her as in a vise. Being a stern-wheeler it was
impossible, by going ahead on one wheel and backing on the other, as
would have been done by a side-wheeler, to keep her head clear of the
bank. All this work had to be done by the men at the wheel, and they
very soon found their work cut out for them, in handling the boat
by the steering wheel and rudders alone. We had a Minnesota River
pilot on board to assist our men in steering; it was an impossibility
to lose one's self, so that his services were confined almost
exclusively to steering, and not to piloting, in its true sense. We
also had an army officer from Fort Snelling on board, to see that all
possible speed was made. His orders were to "push her through" at
whatever cost, regardless of damage.