Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
July 19, 1820: Past Pokegama Lake
Editor's Note:
On this day Schoolcraft and his party emerged from the forest onto a high plateau, where tall prairie grasses and bison replaced lofty pines and wolves.
Location: northwest of Pokegama Lake, Minn.
View Schoolcraft's complete description in his 1821 Narrative
[Schoolcraft:] The night was so cold that water froze upon the bottoms of our canoes, and they were encrusted with a scale of ice of the thickness of a knife blade. The thermometer stood at 36° at sun-rise...
Four miles above the termination of the ninth Rapid, we landed at the foot of the falls of Peckagama, where the river has a descent of twenty feet in three hundred yards. This forms an interruption to the navigation, and there is a portage around the falls of two hundred and seventy-five yards. The Mississippi, at this fall is compressed to a eighty feet in width, and precipitated over a rugged bed of sand stone, highly inclined towards the northeast...
After passing the falls of Peckagama, a striking change is witnessed in the character of the country. We appear to have attained the summit level of waters. The forests of maple, elm, and oak, cease, and the river winds in the most devious manner though an extensive prairie, covered with tall grass, wild rice, and rushes. This prairie has a mean width of three miles, and is bounded by ridges of dry sand, of moderate elevation, and covered sparingly with yellow pine. Sometimes the river washes close against one of these sand ridges, -- then turns into the centre of the prairie, or crosses to the opposite side; the but nothing can equal its sinuosities, -- we move towards all points of the compass in the same hour, -- and we appear to be winding about in an endless labyrinth, without approaching nearer to the object in view. In one instance, we rowed nine miles by the windings of the stream, and advanced but one mile in a direct line.
While sitting in our canoes, in the centre of this prairie, the rank growth of grass, rushes, &c. completely hid the adjoining forests from view, and it appeared as if we were lost in a boundless field of waving grass. Nothing was to be seen but the sky above, and the lofty fields of nodding grass, oats, and reeds upon each side of the stream. The monotony of the view can only be conceived by those who have been at sea, -- and we turned away with the same kind of interest to admire the birds, and water fowl, who have chosen this region, for their abode.
We encamped upon the prairie, six miles above Chevereuil river, at a late hour, having ascended sixty miles... At the place of our encampment we found a very delicious species of red raspberry, growing upon a small bush of the size of a strawberry vine. Here also, as night approached, we first noticed the fire-fly, which has not before been seen upon the Mississippi.
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