132 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



begun to live, in a complete sense, in our own 

 Iowa. What do we know of this very town, except 

 that its domestic architecture seems to show 

 strong early southern influence, that it was once 

 the capital — and perhaps that it contains a con- 

 siderable Bohemian element? Many of us are 

 hazy as to the date when Des Moines was made 

 the capital, and the date when the University was 

 founded is less certain than that of Queen Anne's 

 accession. 



The woods environing the town, even in their 

 present wintry state, we can admire ; standing on 

 the river bluffs certain straight stretches and cer- 

 tain curves of the stream are before our eyes, but 

 what of the source, the upper course, and the fur- 

 ther pathway to the Mississippi? By the chance 

 of residence, one may be familiar with the stone 

 quarries, the bayous haunted by migratory ducks 

 in March or April, the wigwams and blanketed 

 forms, in Tama County. Another has heard that 

 the scenery along the river near Iowa Falls is of 

 unusual beauty for our prairie state. But how 

 many could draw a fairly correct line for the 

 course of the Iowa from source to mouth; how 

 many know that the steamer ^^Kipple" puffed up 

 stream clear to this town, back somewhere in the 

 forties! Some of those old maps of territorial 

 days, from 1839 to 1845 — those of Colton, 

 Plumbe, Jesse Wilhams, Newhall, Nicollet and 



