56 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



ton, Canoe, Castalia, Festina, Fort Atkinson, Hes- 

 per, Plymouth Rock, and Washington Prairie. Its 

 principal streams are the Upper Iowa River, the 

 Turkey River, and Canoe Creek. By leaving the 

 train at Fort Atkinson and walking a few miles 

 northwest, along the valley of the Turkey, we 

 might have reached Spillville, a small Bohemian 

 settlement on the banks of the river. It was in 

 this village, one is told, that Dvorak composed the 

 larger part of his "New World Symphony," as 

 well as a quartet and a quintet for strings, all em- 

 bodying his theories of the true materials for Am- 

 erican music. In our supposedly prosaic state, the 

 mingling elements of this story are surely worth 

 a passing attention — a Bohemian composer, 

 working with enthusiasm in a Bohemian settle- 

 ment on a river named for the most stately of 

 American game birds, in a county named for an 

 Indian chief; his composition based on melodies 

 of African Americans, and boldly called the ''New 

 World Symphony." 



From Clear Lake to McGrregor some eighty or 

 ninety species of plants in bloom were noted. 

 Goldenrods and asters, as befits the season, are 

 among the most conspicuous. Greene enumerates 

 twenty kinds of goklenrod and thirty-eight kinds 

 of aster found in the state. The goldenrods seem 

 to vary more in form of inflorescence than in col- 

 oring; the asters are of all shades of white, violet. 



