SOURCE OP ST. Peter's river. 287 



that evening to a place below the St. Croix river; this 

 stream enters the Mississippi on its left bank ; at its mouth 

 it is about one hundred yards wide, but immediately above it 

 expands to a breadth of from three-fourths to two miles, and 

 forms what is called St. Croix Lake. Pike, in his journal, 

 describes the Mississippi, for a considerable distance below 

 the St. Croix, as of a reddish appearance in shoal water, 

 but black as ink in deep.* The red colour is owing to the 

 sand seen at the bottom, which is of that complexion ; the 

 dark colour is no more than what is common to deep wa- 

 ter that is moderately limpid. 



On the 2d of July we passed what is termed the nar- 

 rowest place on the Mississippi below the Falls of St. An- 

 thony ; the river is here clear of islands, and not more than 

 one hundred or one hundred and twenty yards broad. 

 Piket states that his men rowed across in forty strokes of 

 the oar, but Major Long found in 1817, that his "boat 

 crossed it, from a dead start, in sixteen strokes."^ A great 

 change in the scenery of the river is perceptible ; instead of 

 running between two parallel walls of considerable altitude, 

 the river there passes through a rolling prairie country, 

 where the eye is greeted with the view of extensive undu- 

 lated plains, instead of being astonished by the sight of a 

 wild and gigantic scenery. At the St. Croix the bluffs sel- 

 dom rise to two hundred feet above the water level. The 

 valley, through which the river runs, is more uniform in 

 its breadth, but the river is crooked and its channel im- 

 peded by sandbars, the current rapid so that the progress 

 of the boat was slow. The party landed, for a few minutes, 

 to examine a stone which is held in high veneration by 



• Pike, ut supra, p. 24. f Idem, ibid, 



^ Major Long's MS. 1817, folio 12. 



