496 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



ITINERARY FOR 1835. 



In the spring of 1835 I ascended the Mississippi to the Fall of Saint Anthony, saw 

 the Mississippi Sioux, the Ojibbeways, and Saukies, and descended the Mississippi to 

 Saint Louis, nine hundred miles, in a bark canoe, with one man, Corporal Allen, 

 steering with my own paddle. 



Mr. Catliu, with his wife, sailed down the Mississippi from Alton, 

 111., on a steamboat, in the fall of 1834, and spent the winter about 

 New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico painting portraits and Indians. 

 He returned to Saint Louis in the spring of 1835, and with his wife, 

 whom he left at Prairie du Chien, went up the Mississippi in the sum- 

 mer in a steamboat to the Falls of Saint Anthony. He there procured 

 a canoe, and with a companion, Corporal Allen, a soldier of the Regu- 

 lar Army, who accompanied him as far as Prairie du Chien, he drifted 

 down to Saint Louis again, a distance of nine hundred miles. He 

 stopped at various points and visited the Indians and stations of 

 interest, which he painted and describes. Of this journey he writes : 



[Letter from Fort Snelling, Fall of Saint Anthony, 1835.] 



Having recruited my health during the last winter in recreation and amusements 

 on the coast of Florida, like a bird of passage I started, at the rallying notes of the 

 swan and the wild goose, for the cool and freshness of the North, but the gifted pas- 

 sengers soon left me behind. I found them here, their nests built, their eggs hatched, 

 their offspring fledged and figuring in the world, before I arrived. 



THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 



The majestic river, from the Balize to the Fall of Saint Anthony, I have just passed 

 over, with a high-wrought mind filled with amazement and wonder, like other trav- 

 elers who occasionally leave the stale and profitless routine of the fashionable tour 

 to gaze with admiration upon the wild and native grandeur and majesty of this great 

 western world. The Upper Mississippi, like the Upper Missouri, must be approached 

 to be appreciated; for all that can be seen on the Mississippi below Saint Louis, or 

 for several hundred miles above it, gives no hint or clue to the magnificence of the 

 scenes which are continually opening to the view of the traveler, and riveting him 

 to the deck of the steamer, through sunshine, lightning, or rain, from the mouth of 

 the Ouisconsin to the Fall of Saint Anthony. 



The traveler in ascending the river will see but little of picturesque beauty in the 

 landscape until he reaches Rock Island ; and from that point he will find it growing 

 gradually more interesting until he reaches Prairie du Chien ; and from that place 

 until he arrives at Lake Pepin every reach and turn in the river presents to his eye a 

 more immense and magnificent scene of grandeur and beauty. From day to day the 

 eye is riveted in listless, tireless admiration, upon the thousand bluffs which tower in 

 majesty above the river on either side, and alternate as the river bends into countless 

 fascinating forms. 



THE COUNTRY ADJACENT TO THE RIVER. 



The whole face of the country is covered with a luxuriant growth of grass, whether 

 there is timber or not ; and the magnificent bluffs, studding the sides of the river and 

 rising in the forms of immense cones, domes, and ramparts, give peculiar pleasure, 

 from the deep and soft green in which they are clad up their broad sides, and to their 



