THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 509 



of all, one half of our men are dying with the small-pox. If you will give us guns 

 and ammunition, and pork and flour and feed, and take care of our squaws and chil- 

 dren, we will fight you ; nevertheless we will try to fight if you want us to, as it is." 

 There is to appearance (and there is no doubt of the truth of it), the most humble 

 poverty and absolute necessity for peace among these people at present that can pos- 

 sibly be imagined. And, amidst their poverty and wretchedness, the only war that 

 suggests itself to the eye of the traveler through their country, is the war of sympa- 

 thy and pity, which wages in the breast of a feeling, thinking man. — Pages 160, 161, 

 vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years. 



GREEN BAY. 



Mr. Oatlin continues : 



From Mackinaw I proceeded to Green Bay, which is a flourishing beginning of a 

 town, in the heart of a rich country, and the headquarters of land speculators. 



From thence I embarked in a large bark canoe, with five French voyageurs at the 

 oars, where happened to be grouped and messed together five "jolly companions " of 

 us, bound for Fort Winnebago and the Mississippi. All our stores and culinary arti- 

 cles were catered for by, and bill rendered to, mine host, Mr. C. Jennings (quondam 

 of the City Hotel, in New York), who was one of our party, and whom we soon elected 

 "major" of the expedition, and shortly after promoted to "colonel," from the philo- 

 sophical dignity and patience with which he met the difficulties and exposure which 

 we had to eucounter, as well as for his extraordinary skill and taste displayed in the 

 culinary art. Mr. Irving, a relative of W. Irving, esq., and Mr. Robert Serrill Wood, 

 an Englishman (both travelers of European realms, with fund inexhaustible for amuse- 

 ment and entertainment), Lieutenant Reed of the Army, and myself forming the rest 

 of the party. The many amusing little incidents which enlivened our transit up the 

 sinuous windings of the Fox River, amid its rapids, its banks of loveliest prairies and 

 " oak openings," and its boundless shores of wild rice, with the thrilling notes of Mr. 

 Wood's guitar and " chansons pour rire" from our tawny boatmen, &c, were too good 

 to be thrown away, and have been registered perhaps for a future occasion. Suffice 

 it for the present that our fragile bark brought us in good time to Fort Winnebago, 

 with impressions engraven on our hearts which can never be erased of this sweet and 

 beautiful little river, and of the fun and fellowship which kept us awake during the 

 nights almost as well as during the days. At this post, after remaining a day, our 

 other companions took a different route, leaving Mr. Wood and myself to cater anew 

 and to buy a light bark canoe for our voyage down the Ouisconsin to Prairie du Chien, 

 in which we embarked next day, with paddles in hand and hearts as light as the 

 zephyrs amid which we propelled our little canoe. Three days' paddling, embracing 

 two nights' encampment, brought us to the end of our voyage. We entered the mighty 

 Mississippi, and mutually acknowledged ourselves paid for our labors by the inimita- 

 ble scenes of beauty and romance through which we had passed, and on which our 

 untiring eyes had been riveted during the whole way. 



The Ouisconsin, which the French most appropriately denominate "La belle rivi- 

 ere," may certainly vie with any other on the continent, or in the world, for its beau- 

 tifully skirted banks and prairie bluffs. It may justly be said to be equal to the Mis- 

 sissippi about the Prairie du Chien in point of sweetness and beauty, but not on so 

 grand a scale. 



My excellent and esteemed fellow traveler, like a true Englishman, has untiringly 

 stuck by me through all difficulties passing the countries above mentioned, and also 

 the Upper Mississippi, the Saint Peter's, and the overland route to our present en- 

 campment on this splendid plateau of the Western World.— Pages 163, 164, vol. 2, 

 Catlin's Eight Years. 



(See No. 336 and No. 337 herein for description of "Coteau des 

 Prairies.") 



