Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/81

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ous ravines, and exhibiting other signs of being the commencement of a very hilly and broken inland country." He could not for a long time, nor till he got to Black River, see both sides at once, on account of islands. "The bluffs are intersected by numerous ravines, which divide them into knobs and peaks, towering four hundred or five hundred feet above the level of the river." On the third day, Long came to some Indians who had collected nearly half a bushel of turtles eggs; and the next day to the Bluff Island. "It is remarkable for being the third island of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to this place, that has a rocky foundation similar to that of the neighboring bluffs, and is nearly the same altitude." He found the French name "Le montaigne qui trempe de l'eau." Near by he ascends Kettle Hill, with piles of stone on it. He first tells the story of the Lover's Leap, from his Indians, and afterward of the woman and child who went over the Falls of St. Anthony. He calls the bluff at what was afterward Fort Snelling one hundred and twenty feet high. This fort was begun in 1820. Near the St. Croix

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