NOVEMBER 133 



Barrows — might prove as interesting- as maps of 

 Elizabethan Tjoii(U)ii or ancient Rome. 



For the rivers of Iowa some fearless soul should 

 make a poetic catalogue, for us the citizens of 

 Iowa, as Spenser made one of British rivers for 

 the British. He writes '' of 



The chaulky Kenet; and the Thetis gray; 



The morish Cole ; and the soft-sliding Breane ; 



The wanton Lee, that oft doth loose his way ; 

 And the still Darent, in whose waters cleane 

 Ten thousand fishes play and deck his pleasant stream. 



And of the Severn, Tamar, Plim, Stoure, Wyli- 

 bourne, and nearly forty more of the streams of 

 England, Scotland, and Ireland. 



Is there no poetry in the names, associations 

 and individual character (or is it that we have not 

 the ''seeing eye," the venturous pride?) of the 

 Yellow, Turkey, Maquoketa, Wapsipinicon, Ce- 

 dar, Des Moines, Little Sioux, Rock, Fox, Char- 

 iton, Nodaway, Nishnabatona, Floyd, Willow, and 

 Blue Earth! Even for the creeks might not there 

 be some picturesque contrasts in a comparison of 

 the Bear, Timber, Lime, Village, and Broken Ket- 

 tle! Unhappy the prairie boy wdio does not know 

 some stream to mingle in his earUest memories of 

 birds, flowers, fields, and w^oods. For one, the ex- 

 periences of the long hilly descent to the valley of 



24 Fairy Qucou TV, 11. 



