Old Rail Fence Corners | Page 9

black and
white coat. She was very gentle. She was supposed to have come from
cattle brought to Hudson Bay by the Hudson Bay traders.
In 1843 we visited the Falls of St. Anthony. There was only a little mill
there, with a hut for the soldier who guarded it. The Falls were
wonderful. I thought I had never seen anything more beautiful. The
spray caught the sun and the prismatic colors added to the scene. The
roaring could be heard a long way off.
We raised a short eared corn, that was very good and grew abundantly.
I have never seen any like it since. Our flour was sent to us from way
down the Mississippi. When we got it, it had been wet and was so
mouldy that we had to chop it out with an ax. It took so much saleratus
to make anything of it. We learned to like wild rice. It grew in the
shallow lakes. An Indian would take a canoe and pass along through
the rice when it was ripe shaking it into the boat until he had a boat
full--then, take it to the shore to dry.

I was out to dinner with Mr. Scofield and his wife who came in '49. It
was dark and stormy. Mrs. Scofield was first taken home and then Mr.
Scofield started for our home. We soon found we were lost and drove
aimlessly around for some time. We came to a rail fence. I said
"Perhaps I can find the way". I examined this fence carefully and saw
that one of the posts was broken, then said to Mr. Scofield, "I know just
where we are now. I noticed this broken post when I was going to
meeting Sunday." I soon piloted the expedition home.
In '43 when I was Mrs. Hopkins I was standing with Mrs. Riggs and
Mrs. Huggins on the steps of the St. Louis house. The Gideon Ponds
were then living in vacant rooms that anyone could occupy in this old
hotel. Little three year old Edward Pond was standing with us. He and
the little Riggs boy had new straw hats that we had bought of the sutler
at the Fort. The wind blew his hat off suddenly. We did not see where it
went but we did hear him cry. We could not find it in the tall grass. Mrs.
Riggs took her little boy and stood him in the same place and we all
watched. When the wind blew his hat off we went where it had blown
and sure enough, there lay the other little hat too. The Indians standing
around laughed long and loud at this strategy.
Captain Stephen Hanks--1844, Ninety-four years old.
Captain Hanks, now in his ninety-fifth year, hale, hearty, a great joker
and droll storyteller, as an own cousin of Abraham Lincoln should be,
says: In the spring of 1840, when a youth, I came north from Albany,
Illinois, with some cattle buyers and a drove of eighty cattle, for the
lumberjacks in the woods north of St. Croix Falls. We came up the east
bank of the river following roads already made. In the thick woods near
the Chippewa Falls, I found an elk's antlers that were the finest I ever
saw. I was six feet, and holding them up, they were just my height. The
spread was about the same. Of course, we camped out nights and I
never enjoyed meals more than those on that trip. The game was so
delicious.
In our drove of cattle was a cow with a young calf. When we came to a
wide river, we swam all the cattle across, but that little calf would not
go. We tried every way that we knew of to make it, then thought we

would let it come over when it was ready. We rested there two days.
The mother acted wild and we tied her up. The morning we were going
to start, just as it was getting light, she broke away and swam the river.
The calf ran to meet her but the mother just stood in the water and
mooed. All at once, the calf took to the water and swam with the
mother to the other side where it made a hearty breakfast after its two
days fast. I thought I had never seen any animal quite so human as that
cow mother.
When we got to St. Croix Falls, I thought it was a metropolis, for it was
quite a little town. I was back and forth across the river on the
Minnesota side too. In 1843, I helped cut the logs, saw them, and later
raft them down the river to St. Louis. This was the first raft of logs to
go down