•^ o. .v^^ v-^' .-b^^. v^6=mz POTTAWATOMIE INDIAN REMAINS FROM WILLIAMS BAY (These remains are almost certainly those of one of the squaws of Big Foot, chief of the Lake Geneva Pottawatomie, as the site and the accompanying articles all conform to the evidences of witnesses of the original above-ground "burial" in i8j6. The articles comprise ear decorations, pendent bells, finger rings, pierced silver disks originally sewed to the outer garments, and eight hundred beads. The two upper strings of beads are "trade" beads of blue glass, the two strings of smaller beads are of similar origin, white and brown. The lower string consists of a few pieces of pierced shell beads, wampum variety. The three lower articles, left to right: piece of deer- skin moccasin; two pieces of black broadcloth.) THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA surrounding earth by Mrs. Hollister. From their location with the remains these had evidently formed a necklace, a beaded girdle, and the usual elaborate bead decoration of the finer styles of moccasins. The skull, the beads, other ornaments, portions of the broadcloth wrappings and of a skin moccasin are shown in an accompanying illustration. With the remains were also found several leg bones of fowls, perhaps of prairie chickens, which may have been part of the food placed with the remains. The skeletons of two small children were found in the same grave, and with these the bones of a small dog, possibly a pet killed and buried with them to be their companion in the spirit world. Many other interments were in this neighborhood, which was a favorite burying ground of the Indian residents. These dotted the "oak openings" where are now the lawns and slopes of Williams Bay, from Geneva Street south to the woods of Conference Point. Less pre- tentious in character, these were generally ordinary graves, a low mound raised above each. In the eighties the writer was present at explorations of these graves, which disclosed chiefly a few simple flint implements of domestic use, skin scrapers for "fleshing" hides before smoke tanning, and the like, indicating the resting-place of other squaws, whose characteristic domestic labors their rela- tives evidently considered would continue beside the Happy Hunting Grounds. The purchase by the United States government of the lands of the Pottawatomies living west of Lake Michigan was efi^ected at a council, the last and greatest Indian gathering ever held at Chicago, in September of 1833. [2>3\ THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Contemporary estimates of the number of Indians present range from five to eight thousand. It was said that every warrior of the tribes concerned in the proposed negotiations attended the grand powwow, bringing his squaws, papooses, ponies, and dogs with him. These all encamped throughout the woodlands and prairies surrounding the mushroom village of Chicago, with its hundred-odd frame, clapboard, and log houses, and its single business street, now South Water Street. Mr. M. M. Quaife has described the scenes attendant upon the great purchase by saying: The thousands of savages congregated to barter away their birth- right presented an extraordinary spectacle. Those who possessed the means generally attired themselves in fantastic fashion and gaudy colors. All of the men, except the very poorest, wore breechclouts and blankets. Most of them added to these articles leggings of various colors and degrees of ornamentation; while those who were able disported themselves in loosely flowing jackets, rich sashes, and gaudy shawl or handkerchief turbans. The squaws wore blue or printed cotton cloths and the richer ones had embroidered petticoats and shawls. The various articles of clothing of both men and women were covered with gewgaws of silver and brass, glass beads and mirrors, such as had from time immemorial been supplied to the Indians by the traders. The women wore ornaments in their ears and occasionally in their noses, while the faces of both sexes were bedaubed with paint, blue, black, white and vermillion, applied according to more or less fanciful designs.^ Plank huts and a large open shed had been erected on the north side of the river to serve as accommodations for the negotiators. The commissioners representing the United States were Governor George B. Porter of Michigan, Thomas J. V. Owen, Indian agent at Chicago, ' M. M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, chap. xv. [34] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and William Weatherford. On the afternoon of Septem- ber 21, the council fire was kindled, and the commissioners and interpreters faced the twenty or thirty chieftains representing the assembled tribesmen. After several days of discussion, argument, and persuasion, the chiefs one after another ''submitted to the inevitable," as Mr. Quaife says, and the terms of the treaty were concluded and accepted. The final terms stipulated that the Pottawatomies and allied tribes should cede their lands, supposed to contain about 5,000,000 acres, and within three years' time should remove to a reservation of corresponding area in the West. The United States agreed to transport them thither and pay the cost of their support for one year after their arrival, and nearly $1,000,000 was to be expended in various ways for their benefit. They were to receive for twenty years an annuity of $16,000, and mills, blacksmith shops, physicians, the promotion of education, the domestic arts, and other contributions of civilization were to be provided. Influential chiefs and those who had proved themselves the friends of the whites were rewarded with annuities, compensation for previous services or for losses suffered during the Indian wars; and what seem today peculiarly large sums and grants were awarded to many whites and half-breeds on various claims against the Pottawatomies for losses, debts, and the like. Eighty thousand dollars' worth of goods were distributed among the gathered Indians, and $50,000 in silver coin as their first payment of their annuities. Much of this quickly passed into the hands of the waiting traders and others who had assembled to traffic with [35I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA the suddenly enriched red men, but it was estimated that 130,000 were carried away on their return to their homes. Fortunately the lake vessels laden with whiskey which traders had ordered for the occasion were so retarded by several days of strong south winds that they did not reach the harbor in time for the disposal of their ruin-laden cargoes. The final scene of the great council was a tremendous "war dance" in which not less than eight hundred warriors participated. From the council house on the north shore of the river they paraded, naked save for a strip about the loins, bodies and faces painted in brilliant colors, their hair decorated with hawk and eagle feathers. Led by savage "musicians" beating on hollow vessels, and all yeUing at the tops of their voices, they paraded both sides of the river for the benefit of the spectators, both red and white, and formed a last spectacle of primitive life and savagery which had perhaps never been surpassed in the tragic drama of the history of the red man in America. The Pottawatomies of the Lake Geneva settlements were among the last to be removed in accordance with the terms of the treaty. In the fall of 1836 they were taken in wagons to the reservation of 5,000,000 acres near Lawrence, Kansas, from which place some went on to a preferred residence in the Indian Territory. At the time it was said that their willingness to leave for the offered western home was due in large measure to a recent severe epidemic of whooping cough, which proved fatal to many of their number, adults and children alike, and which their superstitious natures readily attributed to the work [36] I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA of evil spirits. But the wide and almost treeless plains of Kansas proved little to the liking of those who had known the wooded hills, abundant game, and fish-filled waters of Lake Geneva, and in later years more than one little group straggled over the long trail back to the remembered home of their youth, some continuing on northward to the then still untouched woods and waters of northern Wisconsin, there to pass their remaining days. The hour of their departure from the Lake has been described by the few early settlers, who looked on while the chief visited for the last time the resting-place of his wives beside Williams Bay. Turning away with tears in eyes little accustomed to express any tenderness, he commended the spot to Israel Williams, the first white resident in the neighborhood, whose name has been perpetuated in that of the beautiful bay and its little village, and with whom Big Foot had established relations of friendliness. From here "Maunk-suck" returned to his lodge at Fontana, where he stood with an arm about his "council pole," emblem of his primitive and now passing rule of all he surveyed. Here he looked long and for the last time out over the waters of the Lake, finally turning away to go to the nearby log cabin of James Van Slyke, the first white settler in the township, with whose wife, widely known as a dauntless and resourceful type of frontierswoman, he was on friendly terms. The Van Slyke claim covered a large part of what is now the site of the village of Fontana. Bidding this white woman friend of himself and his people an impressive farewell, the next day he led his followers on their long journey toward the setting sun. [37] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA While the Indian settlements around the Lake, thus terminated, numbered at the time of the arrival of the white men only about five hundred individuals of both sexes and all ages, in the three villages, there is ample evidence that the whole surrounding country had been for unknown centuries a favorite residence and a famous hunting ground. In addition to the early mounds described, the great numbers of arrow and spearheads that have been found everywhere around the Lake and that may still be found by diligent searchers of the soil, tell their own story. The number of such finds is far beyond the impression of the average man. It is no exaggeration to say that in the Lake neighborhood, since the coming of the white man, with his clearing of the ground and his upturning of the soil for agricultural, building, and other purposes, these flint objects, the great majority of them arrowheads, have been found in a total of thousands. One man, a Mr. Lambert Lindquist, a workingman residing at Williams Bay, has made a specialty of searching for these for several years, with the result that he has found several hundred in all, including many remarkable and beautiful specimens. On a single area within the limits of the village of Williams Bay of less than an acre in size, he has picked up more than two hundred. Some of the finest of his specimens are shown in an accompanying illustration. In preparation of the grounds of an estate on the north shore of^the Lake, near The Narrows, for the erection of a residence, the workmen who cleared the ground before starting the excavation filled two pint measures with the arrowheads they picked up. It may almost be said that even today a careful [38] H •- •-S E < > :z w o tu < o o s ^ » "H '5 « M j_, ^ E O j3 cAi -S r'" "" o I H O Pi fa C/3 Q < 5: O Pi Pi < < S z " H JJ o H 13 2 2 s t E THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA searching of any considerable area of ground in the neighborhood of the Lake where the surface soil has been broken up or overturned, as by plowing or the washing of waves and streams, is likely to be rewarded by the finding of these relics of past inhabitants. The would-be arrow-finder, however, must bear in mind the conditions of successful search, as stated by John Burroughs in his essay on "The Art of Seeing Things." "If we think arrowheads," he wrote, "as Thoreau did, we shall pick up arrowheads in every field." The equipment for the hunt is chiefly mental, and consists in knowing thoroughly the objects one is looking for and their every possible aspect, whether fully uncovered or half-hidden, and not least of all, the places where they are likeliest to be found. The great numbers in which these Indian arrowpoints have thus been found are significant both as to the length of time when the country was inhabited by the red men, and the immense abundance of game of all sorts through- out the centuries of such occupation. The primitive Indian's arrow differed from the white man's bullet in that the red man always recovered his projectile if possible, in case of a missed shot or the like, as it had cost him much time and labor in its manufacture. Arrows were thus used over and over again, and every arrowpoint found, if not broken and so perhaps discarded, represents a shaft lost by its owner, in the earth, in the snow, in underbrush, or other circumstance of the chase. It represents also the many shots for which it had been used before being thus lost by hunter or warrior. The fact, therefore, that in many places these implements have been found, on disturbing the original surface soil, [39] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA as abundantly as if they had been scattered over the area scanned, points to unguessed ages during which these were the principal weapons of the inhabitants, and indicates the vast numbers in which the swarming animal life of the forest offered everywhere the objects of the hunter's aim. Everyone, perhaps, with any knowledge of American history, has some degree of interest in such arrowheads. Certainly no one can be interested in the past of the Lake Geneva country without feeling the fascination of these rehcs of its antiquity. It may be of value, therefore, to add a word as to their production, if only by way of answer to the question of modern men or women as they handle one of these fragments of thin, pointed stones and exclaim: "How in the world did they ever make such things ?" As a matter of fact, though the process of manufacture is practically a '*lost art" today, it is not hard to understand, or even to acquire by a little pains and practice. The author knows a Kansas City business man whose hobby has lain in such lines, and who has taught himself to make just such stone arrowpoints, even to specimens that might make not only a Pottawatomie, but even Longfellow's poetically described "Arrow-Maker," envious indeed. The first step was the selection of a stone of a suitable kind and of considerable size. This was buried in wet earth and a fire built over it, with the result that all cracks or checks were shown, defects indicated, and its breaking up into proper fragments facilitated. From the stone thus treated flakes were then knocked off by using other stones as hammers, until the original block had been converted into as many likely pieces as possible. [40] I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The arrowhead-maker next covered each hand with a rawhide protector or pad, and holding a flint in this skin pad over his left palm, pressed the point of a bone or deer's horn tool hard against the edge of the chip so as to flake off one tiny piece after another, continuing the process until the completed arrowhead was shaped to his liking. The delicate parts of the process were the forma- tion of the cutting-edges and especially the tapering point, where care was required to avoid breaking the slender stone. There is a large variety in the finished products of this labor, some points being thick and clumsy and others skilfully executed until little thicker than cardboard and almost transparent. Varying sizes and shapes were made, according to the kind and size of game for which they were intended, whether for large animals like the buffalo, bear, elk, or deer, or for small animals and birds. Spearheads, up to a foot or more in length, were common, as were similar flints designed for use as daggers, as knives for hunting or domestic use, and the like. Mr. George Bird Grinnell, in his Story of the Indian, in describing the occasional perfection of these productions, mentions hav- ing seen a perfect dagger, eight inches in length, chipped in this way from a piece of a glass bottle. The common flint stones of the Middle West furnished the material for the great majority of these points as most often seen. Other favorite materials were the milky chalcedony of the Rocky Mountains, or, finest of all, the wonderful black glasslike obsidian, as from the cliff known as the "Mountain of Glass" in the Yellowstone Park. These stones for this purpose were objects of trade and barter between the various Indian tribes. Not a few points for [41] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA spears and arrows, made of the last-mentioned distantly procured material have been found near Lake Geneva. The writer found one such, its edges as sharp as ever, along the well-known shore path which was originally the old Indian trail along the north shore of the Lake; and a broad and sharp spearhead of the same agatelike substance has been found in a plowed field near Lake Como. In the early days of the fur trade, arrowheads of iron were largely sold by the trading posts, some of which were stamped with the maker's or the trader's name. These were eagerly bought by the Indians before their use of guns superseded the bow, as in lightness, uniformity, and sharpness they were greatly superior to the stone article, and being cheap they obviated the time and labor required for the slow production of the native handmade head. The writer has seen these, found in South Dakota, stamped "P. Choteau," the name of one of the famous early French traders of St. Louis, but as a rule these iron points are rarely found, as when lost they were soon des- troyed by rust. The shafts to which arrowheads were fastened were commonly made of year-old growths of the dogwood or the wild cherry, selected as being slender, straight, strong, and heavy. The wood was chosen, cut, dried, seasoned, and straightened with much care, scraped as smooth as possible, and the stone point fastened in a notch by means of fine sinew, put on wet and allowed to dry, as it would, extremely tight. By some tribes they were further fastened by glue made from the hoofs of animals. The bow of the American Indian, as everywhere that it formed the universal weapon of Stone Age hunting or [42] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA warfare, was essentially a short-range arm. At its best and in the hands of the most skilled archers capable of a flight of 300 or 400 yards, and occasionally shot with an accuracy that could hit a half-dollar at 100 feet or more, it yet demanded a short range and the utmost possible power that could be given to it to force its rough stone arrowpoint through the tough hide of any of the larger animals. The ofttold tales of the western Indians shooting their arrows entirely through the bodies of buffalo describe feats only possible when the mounted hunter forced his horse close beside the hunted animal. Thus it was that the Indian's hunting-methods and his success therein consisted largely in lying in ambush beside the game trail or stalking noiselessly and undetected into the closest possible proximity of his intended quarry, and these were the circumstances that forced him to develop and to practice continually that alertness, skill, and stealth in woodcraft for which he was famous. Other stone implements not infrequently found in the Lake Geneva neighborhood are stones roughly arrow- shaped but blunter at the point, which were attached to short wood or deer-antler handles and used by the squaws in scraping the flesh from the skins which it was their endless task to prepare for preservation and use. Others are stone axes or hammers, mauls, and the like, made of softer stones ground to a semi-edge and grooved for a wooden handle fastened with rawhide. Still others are larger stones, conveniently hollowed by Nature or man, and used as mortars for grinding corn and the like. In recent years these have been found on the Hutchinson estate on the north shore of the Lake and on the west [43] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA beach of Conference Point. On the property of Mr. Mark Healy, on the western shore of Williams Bay, there was recently found a perfect specimen of an Indian fire- stone, used in making fire before the advent of the early white man's flint-and-steel or other methods. The aboriginal method consisted in the rapid revolution of an upright stick of hardwood in a small hollow made in a piece of wood used as a base, the resulting friction presently igniting the fine, dry, tinder or "punk" with which the hollow was filled. The upright "drill," as it has been commonly called, was held in place, additionally weighted down, and the holding hand protected, by a stone held in the left hand. In the underside of this stone there was a hollow, a small cuplike or thimble-like depression, in which the top of the drill stick was placed, when it was pressed down, to increase the friction, as the drill was rapidly revolved by a bow-and-cord device operated by the right hand. The stone mentioned had been used for this purpose for so long a time that its surfaces are obviously worn by the gripping fingers and thumbs of the left hands of its aboriginal users. Such simple and crude, but, to their owners, valuable imple- ments of domestic life were often carefully kept and handed down from generation to generation. By the time of the coming of the white man to the shores of Lake Geneva the use of all these primitive weapons of the hunt and the warpath, as also of domestic life and use, was fast passing away before the superior efi^ectiveness of articles procurable from the trading posts, for often, perhaps always, an exorbitant price in furs and skins. Guns and ammunition had largely supplanted the [44] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA use of the bow. The knives, axes, hatchets, kettles, ornaments, clothing, and other articles from the traders' stocks, were similarly displacing the ingeniously con- trived and skilfully designed material of the earlier days of Indian economic and social conditions. Even vil- lages which the white man had never visited, or where the itinerant trader's pack had never been opened before the dazzled eyes of old and young alike, were yet not without many of these articles, procured by long trips to the posts or other settlements or by trade with other tribes nearer the source of supply of the coveted posses- sions. As such writers as Mr. Quaife have pointed out, the disintegration of the old Indian social regime began with the coming of the traders, for whose wonderful offerings, as they were to Indian eyes and minds, the red man would barter away all that he had, even to his winter's supply of food, often suffering the pangs of semi- starvation as a result of this childlike recklessness and extravagance. Interestingly enough, here and there among the Indians during their contact with the vanguard or even the later advance tide of civilization, there were individuals who scorned all the white man's advances and all his ways and even all his offered goods, preferring to retain un- changed the customs, the manners, and even the imple- ments of the days and ways of their ancestors. The most remarkable and widespread instance of this attitude was that accompanying the preaching, in 1805 to 18 10, by the brother of Tecumseh, commonly spoken of as the "Shawnee Prophet," of a movement to avoid all contact with and contamination by the white man and his ways. [45] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Of this remarkable Indian campaign of "reform" in the hope of averting the all-too-evident likelihood of ruin of the red race, Mr. Quaife says: The extent to which this advice was followed is astonishing, in view of the fact that it necessitated a complete revolution in the lives and habits of the natives. The influence of the Prophet's reli- gious teachings was felt from Florida to Saskatchewan. Most mar- velous of all, the love of liquor which had been the bane of the Indians from the beginning of their intercourse with the whites was for a time completely exorcised. In 1807 among the Ottawas the whiskey and rum of the traders had become a drug on the market, not a gallon a month being purchased. Unfortunately for the Indian, the sway of savage passions, the traders' schemes, and the inevitable westward move- ment of civilization could not be indefinitely held in check, and the succumbing of the tribes under the joint forces of destruction was but briefly checked. To the last, however, perhaps even today, there survived something of the same spirit in an occasional devotee of the "good old days." As late as about 191 5 there lived on one of the reservations of Wisconsin an aged recluse who dwelt apart from the rest of his people, refusing to share what he considered their degradation by the adoption of the manners, houses, garb, and tools of the white man. Around his bark lodge, built in the ancient style, he hunted with bow and arrow, scorning to touch the modern firearms which perhaps every other man on the reservation owned or longed to possess. To Dr. S. A. Barrett, of the Milwaukee Public Museum, he refused to divulge the store of native tales, legendary history, and primitive customs with which he was known [46] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA to be familiar, stating that he would impart these only to whatever white man would make him a present of such a flintlock gun as he remembered having been the chief treasure of his father and himself in his own youth. Not least of the perhaps inevitable sadnesses of the passing of the primitive races of America has been the fact that among them have been those who appreciated the simpli- city and the best characteristics of their own unspoiled native ways and days, and have mourned the passing of those qualities of the red man which, by any standard of human thought, were not without a certain nobility. Sadder still, everywhere that the trader went, and even in advance of his actual arrival, there traveled the curse which more than anything else proved the eventual ruin of the Indian, the early adventurer's kegs of French brandy, or their successors, the American frontiersman's whiskey barrels. From the reckless dissipations of the renegade Enghsh adventurers of "Merry Mount" in the New England Puritan days, to the Winnebago and the Black Hawk wars, the tale was ever the same. More than one far-seeing Indian chief, even an occasional tribal council, had begged the white man to keep away from their people the temptation that none of them could resist, sometimes the very speakers themselves pleading their own acknowledged helplessness before its seductions and its ruin. But scruples of conscience were few on the frontier, and whiskey brought in many furs readily convertible into gold in the eastern markets, and the deadly work went on. At the treaty council held with the Pottawatomie at Chicago in August, 1821, within twenty-four hours after the accompanying issue [47] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA of whiskey not less than ten murders took place among the assembled tribesmen. The red man was but a savage, it is true, with all that savagery has manifested the world around, whether beside Lake Geneva or the Congo, in the way of resentment of the entrance of civilization upon its domain. But the saddest tragedy of history is that the first contacts of superior with inferior races, which, had these been guided by wisdom, firmness, justice, and kindness, might have been all but invariably a blessing to both, have instead been all but invariably the ruin of the weaker. 1 [48] CHAPTER III THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN Frontiersmen make much history but write little. Many of what would be to posterity the absorbingly interesting details of the first glimpse or the first settle- ments of places later famous, their moving causes and accompanying circumstances, have been lost in obscurity through the illiteracy of their humble discoverers, or because the minds of those pioneers had in view only their immediate goals or gains and never dreamed of what generations to follow them would yet make of those hitherto unvisited regions. Such has been the fate of much that we of today would delight in knowing about the first white men to visit the body of water that presently received the name of Lake Geneva. No cairn marks the spot whence the first trader or trapper glimpsed its blue waters and green- clad hills. The very identity of the first visitor from the nearest American or Canadian frontier semi-civilization is unknown. We know that long before 1830 the exist- ence and approximate location of the Lake was known to the few white inhabitants of northeastern Illinois and southeastern Wisconsin, these having learned of it from the Indians. Records of the twenties tell of discussions of it among the traders, trappers, and voyageurs at Solomon Juneau's trading post at Milwaukee, while at the same time it was heard of by the soldiers, the few white civilians, and occasional visitors, at old Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago River. Solomon [49] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Juneau himself said that John Brink, the surveyor, was the first white man to see the Lake, alluding to his first visit in 1833. We know, however, as Juneau undoubt- edly did not, that two years before that date a party of white men and women had gazed with delight upon its beauty and had visited one of the Indian villages upon its shores. Brink, who also seems not to have known of this visit of the Kinzie party, of which we shall hear at length, replied to Juneau that he was not the first white man to reach the Lake, as a Frenchman had preceded him — doubtless some wandering fur trader from Green Bay. But how did it happen that the immediate neighbor- hood of the Lake remained unvisited by the white man through not less than a century and a half during which the soil of Wisconsin was continually crossed and recrossed by explorers, missionaries, traders, and mili- tary expeditions, and early settlements of hardy souls had sprung up at many points throughout its area ? A glance at the map of Wisconsin, together with the recollection of the fact that practically all the early travel through the central portion of the North American continent was by water, will answer the question. Two routes were chiefly followed: one via Green Bay, Lake Winnebago, and the Fox River, crossing to the Wisconsin where the city of Portage now stands, and so to the Mississippi, whose branching tributaries conducted white and red men alike to their respective goals of peace or war. The second was by way of Lake Michigan's expanse to its southern shore, whence various well-known portages and trails led to streams by which again were accessible [50] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA practically all points in the whole Mississippi Valley. La Salle was probably at the future site of Chicago in 1671. The expedition of Joliet and Marquette was almost certainly there in 1673, returning from their long tour of exploration via the Fox-Wisconsin-Mississippi route, when they heard of the possibility of regaining Mackinac by going up the Illinois River and thence to Lake Michigan, a course which they followed. From this time on, these two routes from the northern Great Lakes to the central west, the Mississippi Valley, to the Missouri, and even to the Gulf, were never without their expeditions of the white men, for purposes of trade, of military establishment, of settlement, or during the rival- ries, conflicts, and campaigns of the Revolution and the War of 1 812. Yet for 150 years the beautiful body of water that we know as Lake Geneva remained, so far as we definitely know, unvisited by any of the ever in- creasing numbers of white men. Lying between the mentioned waterways of traffic, this triangle of south- eastern Wisconsin, formed by the Fox- Wisconsin route, Lake Michigan, and the Illinois line, remained an almost unknown earthly paradise of richness and beauty until the progress of events brought it to the knowledge of the spreading spirit of westward settlement, when within two decades it became first the goal and then the home of thousands who learned of its attractions. The first authentic visit of the whites to the Lake is one of which there exists a most interesting and striking description, from the vivid pen of the wife of the head of the party, who was herself present on the historic occasion. [511 THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A This young woman, hardly more than a girl bride at the time, was Mrs. John H. Kinzie, without an apprecia- tive mention of whom and of whose rare qualities in that frontier day no mention of the early history of Lake Geneva is complete. Her husband was the United States sub-Indian Agent at Fort Winnebago, on the Wisconsin River, now the site of the city of Portage. A man of no small experience and culture for his circumstances, he was born in the tiny frontier settlement beside the stockaded walls of Fort Dearborn. His father, John Kinzie, a Canadian by birth, came to the United States, eventually became an American citizen, and in 1804, at the age of forty-one, opened his trading post beside the fort at the mouth of the Chicago River. Here he and his family were for many years the best-known and most influential white residents aside from the military garrison. He had had the advantages of a good education and of not a little travel in his early years, having lived in New York, Quebec, Detroit, and at several of the principal frontier settlements. As a boy in Quebec he had learned enough of the trade of a silversmith to enable him to make the silver ornaments which were among the principal articles of the trade with the Indians. Of an adventurous dis- position from his youth, he loved the life on the edge of the westward-moving American civilization, and early entered the trade with the western Indians, having had establishments at Sandusky and Maumee, Ohio, and at St. Joseph, Michigan, before his final settlement at Chicago. In 1798 he married a Mrs. Eleanor McKillip, the widow of a Detroit militia officer who had been killed [52] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA in the British Indian service, and six years later purchased the small store which a French half-breed named Le Mai had established at Fort Dearborn. Throughout his entire life and in all his business dealings he seems not only to have exhibited traits of courage and of financial enterprise, but also to have been widely deemed an honest man and one whose "word was as good as his bond." He was respected accordingly by the whites, among whom in that day such a standing as his was none too common on the frontier. Most of all was he held in high esteem by the Indians, who so often received scant justice — and perhaps as often downright cheating — in their dealings with white traders. In Mr. Kinzie's case his established reputation for fair dealing and friendliness toward the Indians was richly rewarded on the occasion of the Fort Dearborn massacre of August 15, 1 8 12, when he and his family and their household attaches were rescued by his red-men friends from the terrible fate that overtook so many in the horrors of that fight and the subsequent murders. The son, John H., was one of the children saved on this occasion, and grew up to become, as mentioned, sub- Indian Agent on behalf of the government at Fort Winnebago. His standing among the Indians is hand- somely illustrated by the fact that by many of them he was always known as "Shawneeawkee," or their "friend." In August of 1830 he married at Detroit the brilliant and accomplished young woman who twenty years later wrote a most vivid and fascinating account of her memo- ries of life in Wisconsin in the thirties, in her well- known book, Wau Bun, the Early Day in the Northwest. [S3\ THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA As, like all other writers on not only the early history of Lake Geneva, but indeed of the whole Chicago neigh- borhood, we shall have occasion to quote at length from this remarkable and much-discussed work, it is perhaps but just to admit that as far as many of its statements are concerned, it is far more the product of a descriptive writer, and of a reminiscent and imaginative mind, than of an exact and painstaking historian. Written more than two decades after the events with which it deals, it obviously perceives some of these in a more glamorous perspective than in the vivid and accurate light of the hour of their occurrence. The student who searches its pages for contemporary corroboration of reported events may find that many of its statements will hardly stand the acid tests of literal reality. It is certainly more the work of an impressionistic than of a realistic artist, its pictures drawn with the brush of a Corot or an Innes rather than after the style of a Meissonnier or a Detaille. Yet for our purposes of retelling the story of Lake Geneva, it is none the less valuable. If its writer indulges, as we shall see, in rhapsodies on the first recorded view by white men and women of the azure waters and emerald hills of the Lake, and is moved by the sounds characteristic of the forest at dawn to quote Paradise Lost^ we are none the poorer for its illustration of the fact that the surroundings of the Lake have ever made the deepest possible appeal to the mind open to aesthetic impressions, throughout the now almost com- plete century of civilization's abode upon its shores. In the early spring of 1831, in company with her husband, Mrs. Kinzie visited his family in their home at [54] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Chicago, traveling overland on horseback from Fort Winnebago by way of Dixon, Illinois. What with bad weather, roads that were little better than Indian trails or seas of bottomless mud, and the necessity of fording rushing and ice-filled streams, it was a hard trip, yet typical of what was common at the time of year in the Middle West. Among the dozen log cabins which stood beside the palisades of Fort Dearborn rose the consider- able establishment of the Kinzie "mansion," or Agency House, with its out-buildings, barns, dairy, bakehouse, lodgings for the French employees, and with large, well- cultivated gardens surrounding the whole. The visitors remained two months with Mr. Kinzie's mother, sisters, and brother until, it being made known that the gov- ernment had decided to remove the garrison to Fort Howard at Green Bay, the Kinzie family decided to move to Fort Winnebago for their future home. It was in the course of this trip that they made the first known visit of white people to the shores of Lake Geneva. The party consisted of Mr. Kinzie and his wife; his mother, Mrs. John Kinzie; a sister, Mrs. L. T. Helm; her little boy, Edwin; two French employees, Petaille Gringnon and Simon Lecuyer; a young half-breed "bound-girl," Josette Ouilmette, the daughter of a Frenchman and his Pottawatomie squaw (the father's name being perpetuated today in that of Wilmette, the northern suburb of Chicago); and a negro boy, Harry, formerly a slave but now, on Illinois becoming "free territory," the legal ward of Mr. Kinzie. The men and the younger Mrs. Kinzie and Mrs. Helm traveled on horseback, the others riding in a light ''dearborn wagon," [55] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA lately brought from Detroit, "the first luxury of the kind ever seen on the prairie," as Mrs. Kinzie describes it. Though it was only the late spring of the year, yet "the burning effect of the sun and prairie winds" on a long trip overland in the month of May was regarded by the women of the party as so severe that they equipped themselves with masks of brown linen, tied under the chin and around the head and with openings for eyes, nose, and mouth, and in this guise they made the trip, their resultant appearance, as Mrs. Kinzie narrates, being the source of astounded surprise and even superstitious terror to not a few of the Indians they encountered en route. The first night the party stopped at Dunkley's Grove, the second at Crystal Lake. The second day of the trip was marred by an accident in crossing the Fox River, when the team pulling the wagon became mired in mid- stream and broke the pole of the wagon in their struggles, frightening its occupants almost to the fainting-point and necessitating fashioning a new wagon tongue from a tree of convenient size. On the late afternoon of the third day the party overtook a detachment of soldiers from the Fort who had preceded them with a drove of cattle and horses for Fort Howard. Shortly after noon of the fourth day of the trip the party caught sight of Lake Geneva — the first known glimpse of its waters by white people, so far as we have definite knowledge. At the same time it is evident from the way the Lake is spoken of by Mrs. Kinzie as one of their intended stopping-places, that its existence and location were definitely known to them, and must have m THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA been to others of the time. Her striking description of the arrival of the party in sight of the Lake is at once so vivid and so illustrative of the impression which its appearance has never failed to make upon all interested and appreciative visitors that it deserves to be quoted almost in full. Describing their approach through the beautiful country that is now McHenry County, Illinois, she wrote: We shaped our course more to the north, in the direction of Big Foot Lake, now [i.e., in 1856, when the account was written] known by the appellation, Lalce Geneva. The air was balmy, the foliage fresh and fragrant, the little brooks clear and sparkling — everything in nature spoke the praises of the beneficent Creator. It is in scenes like this, far removed from the bustle, the strife, and the sin of civilized life, that we most fully realize the presence of the great Author of the Universe. Here can the mind most fully adore His majesty and goodness, for here only is the command obeyed, "Let all the earth keep silence before Him!" It cannot escape observation that the deepest and most solemn devotion is in the hearts of those who, shut out from the worship of God in temples made with hands, are led to commune with Him amid the boundless magnificence that His own power has framed We now found ourselves in a more diversified country than any we had hitherto travelled. Gently swelling hills, and lovely valleys, and bright sparkling streams were a feature of the landscape. Now and then a shout from the leader of our party (for, according to custom, we travelled Indian file\ would call our attention to a herd of deer "loping," as the westerners say, through the forest. But the game invariably contrived to disappear before we could reach it, and it was out of the question to leave the beaten track for a regular hunt. Soon after mid-day, we descended a long, sloping knoll, and by a sudden turn came in full view of the beautiful sheet of water denomi- nated "Gros-pied" by the French, " Maunk-suck " by the natives, [57] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and by ourselves, "Big-Foot," from the chief, whose village over- looked its waters. Bold, swelling hills jutted forward into the clear blue expanse, or retreated slightly to afford a green, level nook, as a resting-place for the foot of man. On the nearer shore stretched a bright, gravelly beach, through which coursed here and there a pure, sparkling rivulet to join the larger sheet of water. On the rising ground, at the foot of one of the bold bluffs in the middle distance, a collection of neat wigwams formed, with their surrounding gardens, no unpleasant feature in the picture. A shout of delight burst involuntarily from the whole party, as this charming landscape met our view. It was like the Hudson, only less bold — no, it was like the lake of the Forest Cantons, in the picture of the Chapel of William Tell ! What could be imagined more enchant- ing! Oh, if our friends at the east could but enjoy it with us! We paused long to admire, then spurred on, skirting the head of the lake, and were soon ascending the broad platform, on which stood the village of Maunk-suck, or Big Foot. The inhabitants, who had witnessed our approach from a distance, were all assembled in front of their wigwams to greet us, if friends — if otherwise, whatever the occasion should demand. It was the first time such a spectacle had ever presented itself to their wondering eyes. Their salutations were not less cordial than we expected. "Shaw-nee-aw-kee"^ and his mother, who was known throughout the tribe by the touching appellation of "Our friend's wife," were welcomed most kindly, and an animated conversation commenced, which I could understand only as far as it was conveyed by gestures — so I amused myself by taking a minute survey of all that met my view. The chief was a large, raw-boned, ugly Indian, with a countenance bloated by intemperance, and with a sinister, unpleasant expression. He had a gay-colored handkerchief upon his head, and was otherwise attired in his best, in compliment to the strangers. It was to this chief that Chambley, or as he is now called, Shaw- bee-nay, Billy Caldwell and Robinson were despatched, during the ' By this name, expressive of intimate friendship, the Pottawatomies always called Mr. Kinzie, Sr., as has been mentioned. On this occasion the Lake Geneva members of the tribe evidently applied it to his son as well, quite in conformity with Indian custom, [58] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Winnebago war in 1827, to use their earnest endeavors to prevent him and his band from joining the hostile Indians. With some difficulty they succeeded, and were thus the means, doubtless, of saving the lives of all the settlers who lived exposed upon the frontiers. Among the various groups of his people, there was none attracted my attention so forcibly as a young man of handsome face, and a figure that was striking, even where all were fine and symmetrical. He too had a gay handkerchief on his head, a shirt of the brightest lemon-colored calico, an abundance of silver ornaments, and, what gave his dress a most fanciful appearance, one leggin of blue, the other of bright scarlet. I was not ignorant that this peculiar feature in his toilet indicated a heart suffering from the tender passion. The flute, which he carried in his hand, added confirmation to the fact, while the joyous, animated expression of his countenance showed with equal plainness that he was not a despairing lover. I could have imagined him to have recently returned from the chase, laden with booty, with which he had, as is the custom, entered the lodge of the fair one, and throwing his burden at the feet of her parents, with an indifferent, superb sort of air, as much as to say, "Here is some meat — it is a mere trifle, but it will show you what you might expect with me for a son-in-law." I could not doubt that the damsel had stepped forward and gathered it up, in token that she accepted the offering, and the donor along with it. There was nothing in the appearance or manner of any of the maidens by whom we were surrounded, to denote which was the happy fair, neither, although I peered anxiously into all their countenances, could I detect any blush of consciousness, so I was obliged to content myself with selecting the youngest and prettiest of the group, and go on weaving my romance to my own satisfaction. The village stood encircled by an amphitheatre of hills, so precip- itous, and with gorges so steep and narrow, that it seemed almost impossible to scale them, even on horseback — how then could we hope to accomplish the ascent of the four-wheeled carriage? This was the point now under discussion between my husband and the Pottawat- omies. There was no choice but to make the effort, selecting the [59I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA pass that the inhabitants pointed out as the most practicable. Petaille went first, and I followed on my favorite Jerry. It was such a scramble as is not often taken. Almost perpendicularly, through what seemed the dry bed of a torrent, now filled with loose stones, and scarcely affording one secure foothold from the bottom to the summit! I clung fast to the mane, hterally at times clasping Jerry about his neck, and amid the encouraging shouts and cheers of those below, we at length arrived safely, though nearly breathless on the pinnacle, and sat looking down to view the success of the next party. The horses had been taken from the carriage, and the luggage it contained placed upon the shoulders of some of the young Indians, to be toted up the steep. Ropes were now attached to its sides, and a regular bevy of our red friends, headed by our two Frenchmen, placed to man them. Two or three more took their places in the rear, to hold the vehicle and keep it from slipping backward — then the labour commenced. Such a pulling! such a shouting! such a clapping of hands by the spectators of both sexes! such a stentorian word of command or encouragement from the bourgeois! Now and then there would be a slight halt, a wavering, as if carriage and men were about to tumble backwards into the plain below — but no — they recovered themselves, and after incredible efforts they, too, safely gained the table land above. In process of time all were landed there, and having remunerated our friends to their satisfaction, the goods and chattels were collected, the wagon repacked, and we set off for our encampment at Turtle Creek. The exertions and excitement of our laborious ascent, together with the increasing heat of the sun, made this afternoon's ride more uncom- fortable than anything we had previously felt. We were truly rejoiced when the "whoops" of our guide, and the sight of a few scattered lodges, gave notice that we had reached our camping ground. We chose a beautiful sequestered spot, by the side of a clear, sparkling stream, and having dismounted, and seen that our horses were made comfortable, my husband, after giving his directions to his men, led me to a retired spot where I could lay aside my hat and mask, and bathe my flushed face and aching head in the cool, refreshing waters. Never had I felt anything so grateful, so delicious. I sat down, and [60] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA leaned my head against one of the tall, overshadowing trees, and was almost dreaming, when called to partake of our evening meal. The Indians had brought us, as a present, some fine brook trout, which our Frenchmen had prepared in the most tempting fashion, and before the bright moon rose and we were ready for our rest, all head- ache and fatigue had alike disappeared. One of the most charming features of this mode of travelling is the joyous, vocal life of the forest at early dawn, when all the feathered tribe come forth to pay their cheerful salutations to the opening day. The rapid, chattering flourish of the bob-'o-link, the soft whistle of the thrush, the tender coo of the wood dove, the deep warbling bass of the grouse, the drumming of the partridge, the melodious trill of the lark, the gay carol of the robin, the friendly, familiar call of the duck and the teal, resound from tree and knoll, and lowland, promoting the expressive exclamation of the half-breed, "Voila la foret qui parle!" It seems as if man must involuntarily raise his voice, to take part in the general chorus — the matin song of praise. Birds and flowers, and the soft balmy airs of morning! Must it not have been in a scene like this that Milton poured out his beautiful hymn of adoration, "These are Thy glorious works, Parent of Good!" What more vivid, realistic, and striking description of the first recorded visit of white men and women to the shores of Lake Geneva, and of the impression made on them by its natural surroundings and unique beauty, could its most ardent admirer ask than these remarkable words from the sensitive appreciation and the gifted pen of the first white woman to look upon its hills and waters ? Much interesting information is given us, directly and indirectly, in Mrs. Kinzie's words. The approach of the party to the Lake, and the first glimpse of its waters, must have been from the hills behind the resort of Glen- [6i] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA wood Springs, whence they descended to where the road skirts the beach at the west end of the Lake, as the Indian trail passed between the water and the swamp at that point. Big Foot's village stood on the natural "platform," as the elevation is called, the rising ground at Buena Vista Park and vicinity, on both sides of the road where it turns westward from the lake shore. The "pass that the inhabitants pointed out as the most practicable" from the shore to the summit of the sur- rounding bluffs, must have been the natural ravine now used by the Delavan Lake-Fontana Road, beside which lies the creek, called by Mrs. Kinzie, "the dry bed of a torrent, filled with loose stones." The level ground above is some i8o feet above the Lake below. On accomplishing the ascent of their wagon and freight, the party struck northwestward to their next encamp- ment on Turtle Creek, probably passing near where Darien now stands, as they were following the trail to Lake Koshkonong. They neither visited, saw, nor mention Delavan Lake, though their route must have taken them not more than a couple of miles, at most, from its southern shore. ^ ' For many years there has existed a popular error as to the year in which the visit of the Kinzie family to Lake Geneva occurred. This has been due chiefly to the fact that Mr. James Simmons' Annals of Lake Geneva states that it took place in 1832. Mrs. Elizabeth Therese Baird, in her Recollections of Early Wisconsin, gives 1833 as the year. Both of these statements are, however, erroneous. Mrs. Kinzie's narrative says that, having been married in 1830, the trip which she describes in such detail took place the next spring. The movement of troops from Fort Dearborn to Fort Howard, which took place simultaneously with the journey, was in 1831. Moreover, the year 1832 was that of the Black Hawk War, and Mrs. Kinzie states that she was living at Fort Winnebago when the first news of the outbreak reached there, in the month of April. The first authentic visit of white people to Lake Geneva is thus seen to have occurred a year earlier than has been the heretofore commonly accepted impression. [62] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The description thus given of Lake Geneva in 1831 is not only the first known occasion of its visitation by the whites, but is one of only three extant accounts of its appearance in those days, as well as. of the location, inhabitants, and life of Big Foot's village during its Indian occupancy, which terminated five years later. The next known visit of a white man to the Lake was by the frontier surveyor, John Brink, who in 1833, on a trip from Fort Winnebago to the Illinois line, retraced the route of the Kinzie party and for the first time saw the waters in connection with which his name will long be remembered. His mention of a "tree burial," near the village, and a description of the Indian lodges by a visiting missionary in 1836, are given in our chapter on the Indians of Lake Geneva. Two years later, about September i, 1835, Brink again came on the scene, this time at the foot of the Lake, and in a way destined to have a most important and permanent effect on the future of the neighborhood. The territory being about to be opened for settlement, he took a government subcontract to survey and mark township and section lines through this and other parts of the then Territory, beginning at Beloit and working east- ward. With three assistants he camped for a day at the Geneva end of the Lake to examine the water power afforded by the overflow of the Lake into the White River. A native of Geneva, New York, the appearance of Big Foot Lake reminded Brink of the scenes of his early home, and feeling, with sentiment as commendable as unusual in a young frontiersman, that the beauty of this THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A little-known body of water deserved a better appella- tion than the uncouth title by which it was known up to that time, he decided to call it Lake Geneva, and so entered it on his maps and reports, thus giving it the beautiful and appropriate name by which it has been known ever since. His second step was to claim the mentioned possible water power formed by the drainage of the Lake, making a "claim" to the land in the vicinity by follow- ing the custom of the day in cutting down a few trees and marking his name and the word "claim" on another, on the land now the site of the Hotel Geneva. That he performed these required and customary acts by way of establishing his title to the indicated ground was his life-long assertion, up to his death at Crystal Lake, Illinois, in the nineties, at well above eighty years of age. In February of 1836 Brink's surveying compan- ions returned to the Lake and began preparations for residence there. Their operations were interrupted by occasional absences to procure supplies from Milwaukee, 40 miles distant "as the crow flies." Of fish and game the Lake and its surrounding country supplied these pioneers, as their early successors, with every abundance. During the same month there came to the spot another noted character in the early history of the Lake, one Christopher Payne, a typical frontiersman. A Pennsylvanian by birth, he had spent his fifty years in keeping ever just ahead of the westward-moving con- quest of the continent. The virgin forests of Penn- sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had seen successive residences on his part, and he had been in turn hunter, [64] THE B OOK OF LAKE GENEVA farmer, soldier, Indian fighter, and miner. During the Black Hawk War he and his family had left his squatter's clearing near Naperville, Illinois, to take refuge under the bastions of Fort Dearborn. There a half-breed Indian trader had given him, in March, 1832, a descrip- tion of "Big Foot Lake," and indicated on a rude map its location, that of the neighboring Lake Como, and something of the surrounding country. Soon after, with several companions, he had tried to find it, but without success, and located instead at what is now Belvidere, Illinois, where he built the first house and turned the first sod on the prairie. Almost four years later, in February, 1836, with two companions, he made a second expedition in search of the Lake, the trio traveling on foot and carrying five days' rations in knapsacks. On the evening of their second day's tramp they found the foot of the Lake, remained two days, and, as Payne always claimed, walked around both Geneva and Como, looking for any indications of previous settlers or claimants and finding none. They made their own "claim" accordingly, by cutting down and markmg trees, and returned the next month to build a small log cabin near the present mill race in the town of Geneva. This occurred during the absence of Brink's partners, and the two claims covered the same ground and the coveted water power. Brink's companions returned in April to find Payne m possession and refusing to move. The subsequent strife was typical of a thousand similar frontier quarrels be- tween rival claimants to desirable sites. Each side sought reinforcements in the form of sympathizers with the [65] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA alleged justice of his claims. Several fights occurred between these parties, fortunately without recourse to firearms. Payne began the framework of a dam, but it was burned at night by his opponents. On another occasion, having gone to a neighbor's without the rifle he ordinarily carried, he was kidnapped by his rivals and deported to some distance, but returned. After five months of bickerings and threats, Payne's party having been materially increased by accessions of would- be settlers and their famihes, the matter was settled in the month of July by a payment to Brink's partners of ^2,000 in cash and goods, including some wagons and teams, and Payne and his followers remained in posses- sion. He then erected a mill, which he later sold, with his share of the original claim, and built a second mill at the outlet of Lake Como, at a point east of the present Lake Geneva-Elkhorn Road. This he oper- ated successfully for seven years, finally selling it to other parties. After various local troubles and suc- cesses, which have nothing to do with this history, he moved near the town of Scott, in Columbia County, Wisconsin, where he died in 1871, at the age of eighty- five years. Many an early frontier document bore his curious "signature," for, being illiterate, he was accus- tomed to "make his mark" by a jab or stab of the pen completely through the paper, a trait that was long remembered of him. As we shall see in a later chapter, Walworth County, which includes Lake Geneva within its bounds, was out- lined in 1839, having been formerly included in Racine County, of which it remained officially a part till 1841, [66] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA when it was fully organized and the county seat located at Elkhorn, where it has remained. The township of Geneva was formed in 1839 ^^s°j though the village was not incorporated until 1844. The first accommodation for travelers in the vicinity of the Lake was the house of a Mr. Ferguson, in Geneva, known as the "Owl Tavern," from a large owl that had been killed and affixed to the barn. At the same time, another house, from a loon similarly displayed, was known as the "Loon Tavern." In 1836 a rude log "hotel" was built, chimneyless and earth-floOred, which was replaced two years later by a "public-house" with plastered walls and boasting a "ballroom" on its second floor. The first store in the little hamlet was opened in 1837, and the first school was held in a room over it, the first schoolhouse being built the next year. The first regular stage route, the common method of public conveyance everywhere along the frontier before the coming of the railroad, began operations in 1840, running from Kenosha to Beloit, its road passing around the north shore of the Lake. The first permanent settlement on the Lake outside of the village of Geneva was at Williams Bay, where, in 1836, Captain Israel Williams, Sr., of a New England family, with his seven stalwart sons, took up claims at the head of the Bay, on its northwestern shore. The father built a log cabin which he occupied till 1841, replacing it by a frame house, where he died eight years later. On his death his son Royal bought out his brother's interests, and resided there until his death in 1886. [67] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A The first settlement at Fontana was the farm claim of James Van Slyke, who in 1836, built for himself and his young wife a cabin on a site between the present electric railway station and the turn of the shore road westward beside Buena Vista Park. Some of the trees that then stood about the house still stand beside the road along the shore. Mrs. Van Slyke was widely known among the incoming settlers of the neighborhood as a woman of eminent practical ability under frontier circumstances, and early won the friendship of the Indians of the native village that, for a brief time, stood almost at her door. In the earliest days of the local settlements such money as was in circulation consisted as largely of Eng- lish, French, and Spanish coins as it did of those bear- ing the stamp of the United States government. While the earliest trade consisted chiefly of barter of the products of fields and forests for the desired goods, when money passed from hand to hand it was quite as likely to consist of French five-franc pieces, Spanish silver, or English sovereigns, as of American dollars or smaller pieces. This was of course due to the still recent fur trade, so largely in French hands, and to the considerable number of English settlers who came to the northeastern part of the country. Indeed, the tax collector for the township of Sharon for the years 1 843 and 1 844 reported that during his entire two years in office he never received a single American coin among the I300 a year which it was his duty to collect by making the rounds of the farms. A considerable amount in American "paper money" was received — which he describes as "an un- [68] \ THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A certain commodity," being of various origins — but it was evident that the coin of the government was hoarded by all who were so fortunate as to come into its possession. The mentioned early "claims" to land in the Lake country had no actual standing at law until the formal opening and sale of the territory for settlement. They were, however, generally respected by neighboring claim- ants until legal title could be secured. The first govern- mental sale of the newly opened lands of Walworth, Rock, Racine, and Kenosha counties took place in Milwaukee in February of 1839, lasting for three weeks. Settlers took care of their interests and their "claims" at this time by sending committees to the sale empowered to bid in the selected areas, and by agreeing to deal in summary fashion with "outsiders" who should interfere with any honest homesteader's "squatter's rights." It was currently reported that after the involuntary immer- sion in the Milwaukee River of two or three "sharks" who endeavored to semi-blackmail settlers by securing title to their land and forcing its repurchase, this form of "competition" ceased to be heard from. The fixed lowest price considered by the government officers for the land on sale was $1.25 per acre, and at this price practically all land was disposed of. A fact which played no small part in the develop- ment, the character, and the reputation of the Lake and the surrounding country was that the majority of the first settlers — farmers, store-keepers, doctors, lawyers — were from the states of New York and Pennsylvania, and the farther eastern states of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, rather than from the nearer, western, [69] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA semi-frontier regions of Indiana and Illinois. Thus the New England ideas and modes of thought, established customs of government and justice, and the correspond- ing forms of law, politics, property, temperance, educa- tion, and religion, came with these men and women and gave a permanent color and character to the growing hamlets. That there has been something contagious about these principles, their ruling ideas and motives, and much of satisfactoriness in their general effect and operation, is proved by the fact that even after the lapse of nearly a century, anyone familiar with American life and attitudes and acquainted with the communities of the Lake country may detect more traces of a flavor of New England thought and ways than is often found in mixed and even polyglot elements of the rural districts and towns of the Middle West. An amusing social experiment, which the writer has tried in every part of the country and repeatedly in Walworth County, is for the motorist to wave a friendly hand at any of the rural population whom he may pass, at work in the fields or around the farmsteads. If done without effusiveness or condescension, but as an im- promptu semi-greeting, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the American-born farmer or one who has caught the American spirit, will lift a hand in friendly return. In ninety-nine times in a hundred the foreign- born individual, the newcomer to our shores, will stare uncomprehendingly at the phenomenon, without a trace of comprehension or grasp of the spirit of the action. To the American the gesture is equivalent to meaning, "We don't know each other, it's true, but here's good [70] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA luck to us both, just the same!" It is a gesture of the democratic spirit, of recognition of a mutual equality, the thing the foreigner has never known in "the old country," and that only slowly dawns upon his conscious- ness here. His children, however, are often quicker to catch the unspoken good will of the semi-greeting, and to respond in kind. The chances are that they have learned in the spirit of their schools what their parents are far slower to realize. It is worth noting, too, that a wave or a lift of the hand, between passing strangers, as an indication of an unspoken friendliness, greeting, or good will, has even a bit of typical American history of its own. In the old frontier days of the farther west — as Philip Ashton Rollins has pointed out in his notable book on The Cowboy — it was regarded as the grossest discourtesy, even as suspicious of a latent hostility, for any rider or other individuals passing through the country to fail to at least lift a hand in greeting to anyone, strangers included, whom he might pass. A detailed local account of the growth of the town of Lake Geneva exists in the excellent and unusual village chronicle of Mr. James Simmons, one of the earliest settlers, entitled Annals of Lake Geneva, to which the interested reader may be referred, and to whose pages the writer is indebted for not a few items of interest and value. The first railroad reached Geneva in June of 1856, though it did not become permanent from this time. It was built from Elgin, Illinois, where it connected with a line from Galena to Chicago. Its roadbed was of a crude type, then not uncommon, consisting of long, [71] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA flat bars of iron spiked to wooden stringers laid on the ties, a construction which hardly made for durability. It suspended operations in the fall of i860. On July 6, 1 871, the first train on the newly built line of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway arrived amid great public elation. The citizens promptly contributed $1,000 toward the erection of a suitable depot, replaced by the present station building in 1891. The extension of the line to Williams Bay was accomplished with the first train thither on June i, 1888. The first steamboat on the Lake was brought in 1858 by a Mr. F. E. Brewster, from Wilmot, Wisconsin, where it was built. A stout little craft of 20 tons* capacity, 65 feet long and of 12-foot beam, with an engine of 15 horse-power, "The Atlanta" by name, the little vessel was capable of carrying 150 passengers, and for some years sufficed to take sightseers along the shores. Later vessels, memorable to early visitors of their time and most unusual in size for a western lake, were "The Lady of the Lake," built in 1873, ^^^ ^^^ "Lucius New- berry," launched in 1875. These were large, double- decked, side-wheel boats, handsomely furnished and patronized for many years by an ever increasing num- ber of tourists. The former was dismantled after seven- teen years' service, and the latter burned at its dock a year later. The first church in the Lake settlements was organ- ized by a Presbyterian frontier missionary. Rev. Lemuel Hall, in the town of Geneva in 1839, "^^^ ^^^ members did not build till a dozen years later, and in 1883 it voted to affiliate with the Congregational denomina- [72] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A tion. The Baptists organized in 1840, and finished the first house of worship in 1846. The Catholic church was founded in 1847 and aptly named "St. Francis* Church," after St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, in the first part of the seventeenth century. The resident population of Geneva in 1847 had reached 1,238 persons. In 1885 there were 2,281; in 1895, 2,452. Today there are 2,600 residents. In the summer season these figures are of course enormously increased by the crowds of visitors, motorists, boarders, residents, and tourists, whose coming in large numbers dates from the completion of the railroad and the spread of a knowledge of the attractions of the Lake, in 1873, and often reach a total of over 100,000 persons in a season. Among the visitors to the Lake in the first year of its great popularity were both General Ulysses S. Grant and General Philip Sheridan, then, as throughout their lives, the popular idols of the nation. In the same year the first large hotel was built, the well-remembered "Whiting House," which for fifty years occupied the site of the present elaborate and beautifully situated Hotel Geneva. But one notable disaster — if we except^the largely fatal epidemic of whooping cough among the Indian villages in 1836 — has ever marred the history of the Lake. This occurred during the great storm of the afternoon of Sun- day, July 7, 1895, during whose unprecedented violence a steam launch with six persons on board was sunk, mid- way between the old resort of Kaye's Park on the south- ern shore, and Cedar Point, directly opposite, in no feet of water, all the occupants of the vessel being Jost. [73] CHAPTER IV VEGETATION OF THE LAKE GENEVA COUNTRY In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it may be taken for granted that the present vegetation era in the Lake Geneva neighborhood is not more than twenty thousand years old. As has been commented in our chapter on geology, that date in the far past — your geologist does not consider it at all "far," but on the contrary quite a modern period in geologic time — is generally accepted as about the time of the final recession of the southern edge of the ice of the last glacial invasion. As the last ice sheet is known to have extended only as far southward as, approximately, the present Wisconsin- Illinois state line, the territory about the Lake must have been among the earliest areas uncovered by the final melt- ing of its icy covering. As the previous vegetation of the interglacial periods must have been completely extinguished by the subsequent return of the ice, on its final disappearance all vegetation had to begin anew. Moreover, the terrain also, the rock, gravel, and earth formations which we may think of as thus left bare for re-covering by the new growths which were the ancestors of the vegetation of today, was thus finally left molded into very much the topography — the contours, hills, valleys, level areas, and lakes — which we see today. The successive glacial invasions had each altered to a considerable degree the contours of the earth over which they had advanced or which they had covered. With the final retirement of the ice the surface thus bared may [75] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A be thought of as left in form and outHne much as we have it now, ready for the new vegetation to take root, to spring up and develop, and to follow literally and swiftly the primal command, now for the first time allowed a long future for its execution, to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." The ages of successive plowings and harrowings were over, and the vast garden was now ready for replanting. In the meantime, some of the vegetation, like some forms of animal life, had been permanently shifted by the glacial waves. Once upon a time, such trees as the pawpaw and the osage orange grew as far north as Toronto, but after their extinction in that latitude by the ice they never returned as far north again. Similarly, during the southward prevalence of the cold periods accompanying the ice, several of the more northerly forms of vegetation, such as the larch, the white cedar, and other conifers, spread as far south as Georgia. With the recession of the ice these forms also retired northward again, and became extinct in their temporary more southern habitat. Still again, in the mild periods between some of the ice epochs, dense forests are known to have existed as far out on the western plains as Iowa and South Dakota, where, thus far in the post-glacial period in which we live today, they have never returned. Swiftly, however, upon the heels of the northward- shrinking glaciers the new waves of vegetation followed and covered the great areas now open to their spread. First sprang up, of course, the grasses, sedges, reeds, and such forms of northern shrubs as mature rapidly, and whose seeds are borne to a considerable distance, by such [76] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA agencies as winds, birds, and the like. In their train followed the slower-growing plants and those whose seeds, like the fruits of the nut-bearing trees, seem to have depended for their distribution, as they do still, upon transportation by squirrels and other animals. This has even been so recognized as forming what we may call the means of invasion by these trees that attempts have been made by scientists to compute the length of time since the end of the last glacial invasion by estimating how long it would take, and how many generations of seedlings would be needed, to effect the extension of nut-bearing trees from the more southern territory which they occu- pied during that ice period to their known range by the time of the discovery of the continent by the white race!^ There is every reason for believing that, dependent upon climatic conditions first of all, as all plant hfe is, the vegetation of the Lake Geneva neighborhood soon after the final disappearance of the ice, and of the condi- tions which had efl'ected its existence, gradually became organized into the plant associations of the same forms and species which mark it today or which prevailed at the time of its discovery by the whites. This was accom- plished by the invasion of more southern forms and by the dying out of the arctic or subarctic forms that retreated northward with the retirement of the ice till they reached that territory where the remnants of the glacial ice still linger, with its neighboring typically arctic forms of vegetation. With the northward dis- appearance of these forms of vegetation there moved I Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, III. 533-34- [77] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A also the animal life which subsisted chiefly upon them or under their conditions. Thus the musk ox and the reindeer, whose remains have been found along the edge of the once glaciated area from West Virginia to Iowa, have been in historic time confined to the Arctic Circle. In their stead there now moved in over their one-time pasture ground the animals whose food and favoring surroundings were those of what we call the temperate zones. With this northward retirement of the fauna and flora of colder latitudes, the pines, the spruces, the firs, and the larch (or tamarack) largely deserted the shores and hills of Lake Geneva. There is no evidence that any of what are commonly called the "evergreens" ever formed any considerable proportion of the recent forests about the Lake. In other portions of the state the absence of pines today does not signify that there were none there when the white man came, but only that he and his descendants have exterminated them in the course of their clearing of the land. In parts of Door County, for instance, not a pine tree may be seen today, but at the same time the traveler will note with interest that whole fields on some farms are still surrounded by curious fences composed of rows of often enormous pine stumps, their great, straggling roots interlacing, their wood now iron-hard and practically indestructible by the elements. Some of these improvised fences date back nearly a century, and were placed in position by the earliest settlers, who found practically the entire peninsula of Door County densely wooded with pine forests. These being presently cut in the process of [78] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA making clearings and farms, their stumps were used to form inclosureSj some of which have been allowed to remain ever since. Nothing of the sort has been the case around Lake Geneva. A few straggling conifers managed to maintain their existence, some lingering until today, others occasion- ally attaining a size that attracted the attention of the Indians by their uniqueness in the neighborhood. Such a one was the tall red cedar which, as mentioned in our chapter on the Indian population, attracted the admiring notice of the red men and was accordingly cut down, trimmed, stripped of its bark, and set up as the "council pole" indicating the residence of Big Foot, the chief of the local Pottawatomies at the time of the discovery of the Lake by the whites. From the appearance of pro- longed weathering shown by the extant remains of this symbol, it is believed to have occupied its distinguishing position in the settlement at the western end of the Lake for some decades at least. A very few other relatives of the pine were found by the first white men, and here and there some still stand. A few stunted cedars occupy some irregular, gravelly knolls in Lyons Township, east of the southern road from Geneva to Lyons. A few are found where they have been allowed or encouraged to remain on the grounds of private estates about the Lake. A tamarack grove of considerable extent stands in a low area in Bloomfield Township, near Genoa Junction. In former centuries it doubtless furnished the tough, stringy fibers used by the Indians in their canoe-making, as Longfellow makes Hiawatha exclaim: [79] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! My canoe to bind together — So to bind the ends together That the water may not enter, That the water may not wet me. Another product of the pine family, wherever these were found, was in constant demand by the Indians for their canoes. This was the sap or resinous exudate, which was collected, heated, and poured over the seams of the craft, where it soon hardened and rendered them perfectly water-tight. This practice was rare among the Indians of the Lake except as such canoes came from farther north, as, for lack of other adaptable local material, their canoes were almost wholly made of hollowed logs, which, if vastly slower and more laborious to manufacture, were infinitely more solid and long-lived. The vast stands of forest which almost wholly covered the uplands of the Lake country for centuries before, and at the time of, its discovery were chiefly of a few species of hardwood, usually growing to a great size and in such abundance that almost a century of settlement has happily not been able to effect their extermination. Of these the oaks were probably the most abundant, as they are still wherever the original woods have been allowed to remain or where another generation of trees has followed the clearing away of the original occupants of the ground. The white oak and the bur oak were the most common, the former not infrequently attaining a height of loo feet, with a trunk 4 feet in diameter, while the latter, sometimes known from its acorn as the [80] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA "mossy-cup oak," is known in places in the Mississippi Valley to reach the great height of i6o feet. Other oaks intermingle with these, the red oak. Jack oak, the swamp white oak on the borders of the marshes, and the yellow or chinquapin oak being the most abundant. The red oak, with its noble outlines, massive trunk, and lovely pink-and-white budding leaves in springtime, attains its greatest perfection in this latitude, from the southern shore of Lake Erie westward to the Mississippi River. The great hardwood forests formed by the natural abundance of these trees almost completely covered, at the time of the coming of the whites, the uplands, hills, valleys, ravines, and indeed all but the swamps, river valleys, and channels of the watercourses of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, as of so great an area of other Central states, southern Michigan, and northern Indiana and Ohio. Occasional naturally open spaces in such forests were commonly called by the settlers "oak openings," from the invariable nature of the surrounding woods. Their timber furnished the pioneer with the logs for his first cabin or the beams for the later, more preten- tious and commodious dwelling which succeeded it. For every use for which wood was needed or to which it could be adapted, their seemingly inexhaustible abundance afforded endless quantities and of every size and strength. For decades, of course, as perhaps in the majority of rural residences even today, their wood provided all the fuel that was used, the year around. The regular late autumn task on every farm was the setting aside of so many days or weeks for the hauling, cutting, and splitting of the firewood for the coming winter, much of which had been [8i] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA felled in the forests earlier in the year, and cut and piled for later hauling. Not infrequently, depending on the size of the pioneer's home and its facilities and needs, this work of getting up the winter wood took an entire month of his time and that of his sons. On every farm the wood lot was that part of the claim or farm from which this supply was drawn, and this was often selected beside some lake or stream as affording easy opportunity for hauling such supplies over the ice of midwinter. On the original claims which were made to the shores of the Lake itself, the slopes along the water's edge were fre- quently designated as "So-and-so's wood lot," and many of the spots where modern summer homes stand were thus first cleared, while the roads by which they are reached were first made by the settler for hauling out his winter fuel or his loads for the nearest market. Before the general spread of the use of coal in the Middle West the industry of cutting and shipping wood for use in towns and cities assumed large proportions, and its supply furnished many a farmer's revenue during the fall and winter months. By some students and observers there has been claimed as large an original extent and abundance for the various varieties of trees of the maple family as for the oaks themselves. This was probably hardly the case, and is certainly not substantiated by the remaining standing forests, but it is still certain that such varieties as the silver (soft or river) and red maples abounded along the streams and about the margins of swamps, while the sugar (or hard) maple occupied many sheltered ravines and fertile hillsides. To the aboriginal inhabitants the chief value [82] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A of the maples lay in the sugar-maple groves or "sugar bushes," as the whites always called their dense clumps, from which in the springtime, throughout the central latitudes of the continent, both white and red men drew immense quantities of that sap which was easily if often in most primitive fashion converted into the maple sugar of commerce and the maple syrup of fortunate family tables. Today, when a certain government report stated that there was not found in the American market a single brand of maple sugar or syrup which had not been adulterated by at least the addition of some other elements, it is difficult for Americans to imagine the extent to which the early maple-sugar trade existed. In the earliest trade reports of local markets throughout Wis- consin and Illinois, in the first half of the nineteenth century, along with the summaries of the lumber, beef, pork, cheese, and other commodities marketed locally, one frequently finds stated the number of hundreds of pounds of maple sugar dealt in. In the earliest days of the frontier settlements of the whole Mississippi Valley, as of course earlier still in the more eastern states, to the whites as to the Indians, this form of sugar was the only available sweetening in use, and its store formed no small part of the winter's provision laid up alike by squaw and frontiers- woman. Indeed, in the spring of 1922 the owner of one of the estates on the south shore of the Lake made 300 pounds of maple sugar from the trees of a "sugar bush" on the property. Such a possession was also a remarkably long-lived source of supply or revenue, as instances are known of maple trees which have yielded their annual supply of sap continuously for a century. [83] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The wood of the maple was only second to that of the oak in usefulness to the pioneer. Abundant, strong, easily worked, it formed much of his building material for every requirement, from house and furniture material to fence rails. Equally a favorite was it for the fireplace, when cut and allowed to season before being called on to furnish its quick, hot blaze beneath the pot hooks. Other trees, if not as universally abundant as the oak and maple, were yet everywhere common and highly prized for their qualities or their annual yield. Foremost among these were of course the walnuts, butternuts, and hickories. Of all these their strong, hard timbers were among the most valuable for the purposes of both Indians and whites, though of course workable by the former, with their crude stone axes, knives, and scrapers, only with the utmost difficulty. Their quantities of nuts were eagerly gathered in the fall, as they are still wherever they have been allowed to remain, and were not less appreciated by the nut-eating rodents, the squirrels and chipmunks, by whom the entire yield of a tree was often speedily borne away to their underground storehouses. Of all the trees which originally so densely covered the hills about Lake Geneva, the linden or basswood was perhaps the favorite of the Indian, because the most easily and largely adapted to his needs. Its wood is at once light, soft, tough, and durable. From it, as else- where described, he made his canoe. Its outer bark roofed his lodge. From its inner bark layer the long, tough " bast " fibers, very like raffia, supplied a satisfactory cordage for innumerable uses and the equipment of both the warrior and the squaw. From the linden, the willow, [84] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A and the birch, the latter especially in the more northern latitudes, and the abundant reeds of the marshes near which they usually lived, the domestic outfit of the Indian lodge in the Middle West was chiefly constructed. The mentioned trees formed the greater proportion of the forests growths indigenous to the Lake Geneva neighborhood. In addition there were to be found more or less everywhere, if not as abundantly, the elm, iron- wood, the white ash which the Pottawatomies chose for canoe paddles and often for his bow, the birches, bitter nut, locust, poplar, cottonwood, slippery elm, winged elm, or wahoOj and such fruit-bearing trees as the scarlet haw, or thornapple, wild black cherry, wild plum, wild crab- apple, and chokecherry. The abundant thickets were composed of smaller trees and the larger shrubs, the alder, sweet viburnum, dogwood, elderberry, and witchhazel, and these the thicker for dense growths of wild raspberry, blackberry, and gooseberry bushes, the climbing tangles of the wild grape and the wild cucumber. Rarer varieties were occasional redbuds and coffee trees, found chiefly in moist places, and the six-foot giant Solomon's seal. Growths characteristic of swamps and marshes were everywhere, more abundantly in the wild state of the country than today. Drainage has greatly decreased the acreage of these, converting to other uses much of the borders of lakes and streams once covered with water, bogs, cat-tails, and dense reed growths. Many of the once abundant rows of willows bordering such places have disappeared with these, especially in recent years with the reclaiming of drained land for agriculture. The original vegetation of swamps and marshes about the Lake [85] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA afforded, as elsewhere, much material for the red man's lodge or for the kettle that hung above the fire in its center. The making of endless mats of woven marsh grasses and reeds was typical of the characteristic labor of the Indian women of the Middle West, and these, often neatly made and so tightly woven as to be practically windproof, now formed the usual wall of the lodge and now its only floor-covering. Roots and tubers of marsh growths were known to the Indian as edible, of which the white man had never heard for such purposes, and these, boiled to a syrupy consistency, rivaled the corn, beans, squashes, and melons of the local rudely cultivated village gardens as a common source of vegetable food. One of these sources of such natural food supply was afforded by the now famous lotus beds of Grass Lake, near Antioch, Illinois. Here it is said that the Pottawat- omie came in the fall to dig up the tuberous roots from the great marsh beds and to collect the contents of the dried and rattling seedpods, adding both to their winter's store. All of these forms of vegetation survive, if to a greatly lessened extent owing to the clearing of the land, about the Lake and more or less throughout its neighborhood today. They constitute the great majority of all the trees and shrubs which the student of plant life will find upon its wooded hills. In all probability just such forests covered the same hillsides and bordered similar marshes when amid their fastnesses there moved the gigantic forms of the last of the mastodons, the wood- tenanting bison herds, and the now long-extinct saber- toothed wild cat. Compared with that long vista into the past all our present-day descendants of that forestation [86] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA of the long ago are young things indeed. Yet in view of the known ages of oaks and lindens in England and in Germany, where specimens of each are believed to have attained the age of a thousand years, there may be trees still standing on the hills above the Lake which looked down upon its waters before ever Columbus discovered the New World of mankind; and many, many more behind whose trunks the red man stalked the deer or lay in ambush for his foe. The majority of visitors to Lake Geneva see its wooded hills and shores only in the comparatively uniform green of midsummer. More fortunate are those who watch the charming and delicate beauty of the reclothing of the hillsides in early spring or are fairly startled by the brilliant emblazonment of the massed ranks of oaks and maples in the fall. Few city folk are familiar with what Tennyson wrote of as the "ruby buds" and "million emeralds" of the opening linden leaves in the spring, or the "scarlet flag" as Thoreau calls it, of the red maple at the same season, or the delicate silver-pink of the baby oak leaves. The blended crimson-green autumnal dome of some splendid sugar maple is more familiar, from its presence in city parks, as is the pure, pale yellow of the silver and the ash-leaved varieties in late October, Perhaps every motorist, and that means everyone, is nowadays familiar with the flame of the sumach along the highways, side by side with the goldenrod, the masses of asters, and the brilliance of the cardinal flower. But only the seeker ever sees the first blue and the first yellow violets of May, the yellow moccasins or lady's-slippers of the deep woods, the occasional masses of red or white [87] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA trilllums, and, almost as rare as the fringed gentian itself but like it to be found of those who seek, the fairy-like, unearthly-looking pearly white of the Indian pipe. The passion to pick all the wild flowers one sees or can reach, if ever pardonable, is perhaps so in the city dwellers who see them so rarely. At every season of the year one sees them motoring homeward on holiday after- noons with handfuls or bunches of the flowers of the season, hepaticas or anemones or spring beauties; later the marsh marigolds and jack-in-the-pulpits and whole branches of apple blossoms; and in midsummer armfuls of brakes and ferns and even maidenhair and the superb wild tiger lilies. Later still they invade the marshes and carry away stacks of cat-tails. Last of all those who have toured the northern part of the state are seen returning Chicago-ward with a whole small pine tree tied on behind or lashed to a running board, evidently in the hope that it will keep till midwinter and give the family a Christmas tree of their own selection on their precious annual vacation. Yet why must they do it ^ The truest flower lover is not the one who picks and bears away every blossom in sight or within reach, soon to fade at best, often completely eradicating the growth on the original site. There are miles of popular highways about the Lake from which the once dense bordering of asters and goldenrod have been almost exterminated by the thoughtlessness of late-summer motorists. Places in the woods open to the public where once the yellow moccasin or lady's- slipper grew in abundant natural loveliness are now ab- solutely bare of any lingering specimen, having been ruth- [88] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA lessly stripped by those who fancied themselves nature- lovers! They prove themselves Nature's truest friends who can admire, study — even sample, if they must — her natural abundance, but leave her gardens uninjured for the enjoyment of their fellows and the assurance of undiminished beauty for generations to come. Space must fail to recount the beauties and loveliness of other growths, of shadbush and honeysuckle and wild roses and blue lobelia and blue phlox, of columbine and wild geranium and buttercups and blue lettuce and blood- root, of the star-flowered Solomon's seal and all the milkweeds and the fifty varieties of massy goldenrods. All are residents of Lake Geneva's shores and are to be found by anyone who will take the trouble to look for them, with perhaps a botany book along for their identifi- cation. But what about the poison ivy ? Ah, yes ! We had almost forgotten that single vicious tenant of the Lake's Garden of Eden. It is abundant in many places, though far less so than formerly, as every thoughtful property- owner eradicates its lurking ambush wherever it is dis- covered. Individuals differ greatly in sensitiveness to its baneful effects, some being completely immune to it, others discovering its painful and lasting rash, swelling, irritation, and discomfort upon the slightest exposure to its presence. The writer believes himself to be immune to its poison, as a result of having escaped unscathed from many contacts with it. But he refuses to base that conviction on actual experiment, remembering one very pretty girl who undertook to demonstrate to her friends that it could not hurt her, with appalling and I89] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A lasting consequences! The vine itself is often confused with the common woodbine, and patches of the latter are shunned accordingly by many. This need never be the case, as the two are easily distinguished by the fact that the leaves of the woodbine always grow in divisions of five, and of the poison ivy in threes. For the benefit of any who may suffer from its effects, let the writer add here the curious fact that the crushed leaves and accompanying juices of the common elderberry, applied poultice-fashion to the affected area, will afford relief and often even a complete cure. It is a typical "old wives' remedy" of the frontier days, it is true, and may be found in no pharmacopeia, but it has proved effectual in the cases, including the writer's family, in which it has been tried, and is gratefully testified to accordingly. It has been the scope of this chapter to mention only the native vegetation of the Lake Geneva country. Nothing has been said of the innumerable and wonderful additional forms that have been introduced by lovers of trees, plants, and flowers, and which have been brought to marvelous perfection by the assiduous and loving care of some of the foremost gardeners of America, amateur and professional. These range from the simple but annually charming lilacs of every farmyard, and the dozen wonderful varieties developed from them, to the mountain ash and the Ginkgo tree of China and the hedges of flaming Japanese barberries, the spruces and pines, the serried ranks of apple orchards of a score of varieties, and the prize displays of great greenhouses full of jeweled geraniums and huge chrysanthemums and roses literally [90] GARDEN VISTA, ESTATE OF E. G. UIHLEIN THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA by the thousands. It is the simple fact that today there are to be found on the estates about the Lake every variety of tree, shrub, plant, and flower that will thrive in the latitude of the region. It is not the less the fact that the handsomest places, public and private, are those which have been marked by the care bestowed upon the planting or transplanting, the arrangement or cultivation, of the varieties of tree and flower that have descended from those planted here by the Master Gardener of all the earth when the servant forces of Nature did His bidding, and wrought, after His taste, their earthly Paradise. [91I CHAPTER V THE FISH OF LAKE GENEVA Alike in the uncounted centuries of the Indian habita- tion of its borders and in the still comparatively few decades of the white man's occupation of its shores, the fish of Lake Geneva have formed one of its prime attrac- tions. To the Indians and the first settlers the fish of the Lake were a source ot food second only in importance and availability to the game that swarmed in the surround- ing forests. The commercial aspect and the financial value of the fish trade made an additional appeal in the first days of civilized settlement, and no sooner was a connection made between the neighborhood and the near- est considerable market at Chicago by the completion of the railroad, than a large traffic in fish sprang up and continued for many years. Until the passage of modern laws protective of the fish, there was established every winter on the ice of Geneva Bay a great number of fisher- men's huts, nicknamed " Pickerel ville," whose catches rose in some winters (as in 1872-73) to a total of 40 tons of fish caught through the ice and shipped to various cities. Happily, from an almost equally early date there have been those who have been as much interested in stocking the Lake with fish as others were busy depopulating its waters. As early as 1863 this work began, in the first instance with the quaintly small attempt of an optimistic citizen of Geneva who carefully imported from Lake Michigan a total of twelve lake trout and three whitefish, in the hope that these and their progeny would vastly [93] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA "increase and multiply and replenish" the Lake with their kind! With the better knowledge and methods of later years many thousands of the young of other varieties of fish have at times been introduced, chiefly salmon trout, California salmon, silver bass, and brook trout. Of all these mentioned attempted additions to the original stock of the lake, every one has disappeared except the last. It is with no small pride that those who know Lake Geneva best boast its unique possession of true brook trout, and that in numbers, if not sufficient to satisfy the angler visitant, yet enough to be taken occasionally and to be reckoned with by the scientists whose studies have given us a remarkably accurate knowledge of its finny population. The most thorough study of the fish of the Lake that has ever been made is the work of Professor A. S. Pearse, of the Department of Zoology of the University of Wis- consin, who in the summer of 1920 made a thorough inves- tigation of the fish of Geneva, their food, their respective habits, and of such parasitic affilictions as are inimical to their welfare. The results of this notable work may be found in the pamphlet, "University of Wisconsin Studies in Science," No. 3, entitled. The Distribution and Food of the Fishes of Three Wisconsin Lakes in Summer^ to whose rich contents of valuable information the reader is referred who desires full scientific information with respect to the fish of the Lake. Professor Pearse's work states that the fish to be found in the Lake, named in the order of their propor- tionate occurrence, are: yellow perch, rock bass, small- mouth black bass, cisco, wall-eyed pike, common sucker, [94] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA pickerel, pumpkinseed, bluegill, large-mouth black bass, and brook trout. From Professor Pearse's comments — for whose valuable and accurate statements both the interested fisherman and the student of Nature cannot be grateful enough — we quote the following interesting comparisons: Lake Geneva contains the largest number of desirable game fishes — wall-eyed pike, small-mouth black bass and pickerel — of any of the lakes under observation [Mendota, Michigan, Pepin, Wingra, and Geneva]. There are fewer different species of fish than in any other lake. This is probably due to lack of variety in shore habitats. The domi- nant large fishes are yellow perch, small-mouth black bass, rock bass, pickerel, suckers, and wall-eyed pike. The rock bass, small-mouth black bass, and wall-eyed pike are more abundant than in any other lake. There are a small number of bluegills, large-mouth black bass, and brook trout. Of the eleven species caught during these studies, six did not extend below a depth of 15 meters: common sucker, pickerel, pumpkinseed, bluegill, large-mouth black bass, and brook trout. (One meter = 39 inches.) Ciscoes are found at depths of 1 5 to 25 meters in summer — above the region of stagnation and in fairly cool water. Though there appear to be many young large-mouth black bass in the lake, there are few adults. There are very few shiners. Bull- heads, gars, and carp are rare in the lake. Professor Pearse's investigations and the experience of the average fisherman alike demonstrate that the numbers of perch, rock bass, and small-mouth black bass far surpass all the other varieties. These are the fish caught almost invariably and in considerable numbers by every fisherman, from the expert sportsman to the small boys who spend every summer holiday on the piers with bamboo pole and worm can, and on whose frequently well-laden strings the perch and rock bass outnumber all [951 THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA others. The number of perch is very large, surprisingly so to the uninitiated. The writer has often seen a single rowboat take a hundred in a morning with hook and line. In two hauls of a seine, 50 feet long by 4 feet wide. Professor Pearse caught the remarkable total of twenty- eight hundred perch! — which were of course promptly returned to the water as soon as they had been counted for the purposes of the mentioned studies and estimates. The more highly prized and "gamy" fishes, the small- mouth black bass and the large-mouth variety, are gener- ally taken only by fairly expert anglers who know the Lake well. They are perhaps chiefly found along the rocky ledges that form the bottom of the Lake at points in Buttons Bay and Geneva Bay. During the season excel- lent catches of these fish may be seen brought in almost any day at the piers in Geneva village. Occasionally they surprise the fisherman elsewhere. The writer saw a very much astonished lady "fisherman" struggling with an unexpected prize in the form of a 4^-pound large- mouth bass that took a "minnow hook" and its tiny bait in the shallows under the trees of Conference Point, but was finally successfully landed. The cooler months of the year are the best fishing months on Geneva, as in similar lakes in its latitude. The water of the Lake stagnates somewhat in the heat of midsummer, when the fish betake themselves to the cooler depths of their respective favorite levels. The summer fisherman should remember this and lengthen his line accordingly. The Lake is fortunately entirely free from the typical coarse river fishes of other waters of the Mississippi drainage [96] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA system, the red horse, quillback, spoonbill, moon-eye, gizzard shad, and catfish. It is practically untenanted by carp, which is by preference a muddy-bottom fish, and almost unknown in deep, clear lake waters. The common foods of the fish of Lake Geneva are, first, other fish in the case of the perch, pike, large-mouth and small-mouth bass; of the other varieties, chiefly insect larvae; the exception being the rock bass, whose favorite food, the crayfish, is hunted vigorously along the rocky or pebbly shores. In the mind of the average amateur naturalist andfisher- man the name of Lake Geneva is closely connected with that of the cisco. By some it is believed, and occasionally asserted, that the cisco is only found in this lake. On the contrary, ciscoes are found in many other lakes of Wiscon- sin and Indiana, and they are even more abundant in Green Lake, Wisconsin, in proportion to other fish, than in the waters of Geneva. The association of this partic- ular fish chiefly with Lake Geneva in the minds of the less informed is traceable to the once very considerable custom, before the passing of present fishing laws, of supplying the Chicago public markets with great quanti- ties of ciscoes from Geneva in the late spring, the spawn- ing time of these fish. At all other times of the year they live in the deeper water of the Lake, at a depth of 60 to 80 feet, as Professor Pearse determined, and are practically never taken by fishermen or with hook and line during these ten to eleven months of the year. At spawning time, however, they rise to the upper levels and shallower waters of the Lake and its shores, from the latter part of May through the first half of June. At this time, as [97] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA doubtless ever since human habitation of the Lake shore, they are taken in large numbers by fishermen, who often come from Chicago and other cities for this fishing and are amply rewarded by the readiness with which the cisco then takes a bait. In the old days of the market fishing, a single rowboat would often take two hundred in the course of a day. In 1872 Professor Louis Agassiz pronounced the cisco to be a species of the group of whitefishes, which include the lake herring. Lake Michigan whitefish, and Menomonee whitefish of the Great Lakes; the whiting and shadwater of Lake Winnepesaukee, New Hamp- shire; the Otsego Lake whitefish of Otsego Lake, New York; and the Lake Michigan cisco of the upper Great Lakes. Like all these, its relatives, the cisco is a beau- tiful silvery white in color with sometimes a shade of steely blue on the back, and is spiritedly gamy and combat- ive for its size during the season when it is taken. At this time its flesh is also excellent, firm, and well flavored, though at other times of the year it becomes soft and less desirable for the table. It may attain a size of 8 or 9 inches in length, though its relative the lake herring of the Great Lakes, taken at about the same time of year, frequently attains twice this length. The brook trout mentioned as found in the Lake are the result of "planting" by various parties interested in stocking the waters with the most desirable varieties adapted to life and increase under the special character- istics of the Lake. While other varieties introduced have completely disappeared, the brook trout have thrived and multiphed, and occasionally surprise and delight the angler [98] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA who has expected only a perch or rock bass to take his offered worm, when he is astonished to find a fight on his hands, and is perhaps rewarded with a good-sized "speckled beauty." While the least common, propor- tionately, of the fish inhabiting the Lake, they are yet con- fined to no particular locality, but have been taken alike in fairly deep water and in the creeks and rivulets along the shores. The pickerel of Lake Geneva, as of the other lakes of the county, are occasionally caught of a surprising size, up to 1 8 pounds or more. The wall-eyed pike, in rare instances, equal or even surpass this. In June, 1922, the first cast of a fisherman's spoon, made half at random from a pier head, was taken by a fish that was landed after a twenty-minute battle and proved to be a pike 48 inches long and weighing 17^ pounds. An even larger specimen, weighing over 21 pounds, was taken a few days later along the eastern shore of Williams Bay, on a small single-hook double-spoon and a lo-pound-test line. The lucky fish- erman won after a forty-five-minute battle that attracted to the nearest point along the shore every spectator from the neighborhood. This great fish, with its powerful head, soHd bulk, and vigorous fighting qualities, was a worthy rival of the famous muskellunge of the more northern lakes. Unlike the denizens of some of the less fortunate middle western waters, the fish of the Lake have been proved by Professor Pearse's investigations to be almost free from parasites. None have been found which would be in any way injurious to man. The most common parasite is the larva of a small trematode worm, which causes the small THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A black spot often seen in the skin and fins of rock bass, perch, and other fishes. This larva, curiously enough, can- not develop to maturity unless eaten by a heron. When this bird eats a fish containing these parasites, the larval worms are set free from their cysts and find their way to the esophagus, where they attach themselves and pass their adult life. Their eggs pass out from the intestine of the heron and hatch into larvae which bore into the skin of some fish and wait to be eaten, and thus their strange life-cycle goes on. Every conclusion, therefore, of the scientists who have studied the fish of the Lake, is but added testimony to its unusual desirability for the fisherman's pursuits. The small-mouth black bass and the wall-eyed pike are abun- dant, while such undesirable types as the carp and dogfish are so rare as to be almost non-existent in its waters. The number of small-mouth black bass is very unusual, far above that in any other lake hitherto studied in the state. This fish is primarily an insect-eater, and is best and most readily caught on grasshoppers, cisco flies, or artificial flies. For the wall-eyed pike the minnow is the bait preferred, as has been said, by its most experienced pursuers, though these are rivaled by the use of the small frog or simple spoon. lOO 4 CHAPTER VI ANIMALS AND BIRDS OF LAKE GENEVA Not only "once upon a time," but for a time that covered uncounted centuries together, the whole neighbor- hood of Lake Geneva, like many other parts of the con- tinent for the same period, was none other than a literal "hunter's paradise;" and such its Indian residents or visitors knew it to be and prized it accordingly. Until a date shortly before the arrival of the white man the buffalo roamed the woods and open savannahs of southern Wisconsin, and that in considerable numbers. While they are generally thought of as having been chiefly denizens of the great western plains, as they were, the fact is that prior to the combined destructiveness of the demands of the fur trade and the westward progress of settlement, the habitat of the buffalo extended practically to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the long existence of the buffalo in what is now Wisconsin there is ample evidence. Among the many Indian mounds found at Beloit is a group which is thought to have been erected by prehistoric hunters as a game driveway for the purpose of taking these animals. Of this group of artificial elevations, two have been identified as "effigies" of buffalo. Father Marquette, writing of his first trip, in 1673, mentions in his Journal seeing buffalo along the Wisconsin River, in the southwestern portion of the state. The published records of the Field Museum of Natural History contain mentions of buffalo lingermg in the western portion of the state in 1832 and 1833. [lOl] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA By the time of the arrival of the first whites in the Lake Geneva country the buffalo had disappeared, as had the elk, the largest former local resident of the deer tribe. The latter had nevertheless been abundant at a period still fairly recent, for their shed antlers were con- tinually found by the pioneer settlers, as the name of the town of Elkhorn, the county seat of Walworth County, itself indicates. As late as the year 1899 a magnificent pair of elk antlers were found in Pewaukee Lake, in Waukesha County, and are preserved in the Milwaukee Public Museum. In the northern portion of the state the elk lingered for some decades, instances being on record of their having been killed by Indians of that region as late as 1863. The early records of the trade in furs and skins at the frontier trading posts of Wisconsin indicate what were the fauna of the territory immediately prior to its settlement. Thus we learn that the principal animals hunted by the Indian residents, formerly for food and the various articles of clothing and domestic equipment derived from their source, and later for barter with the whites, were the Virginia or white-tail deer, the black bear, the timber wolf, the coyote or prairie wolf, lynx, wildcat, otter, beaver, fox, wolverine, badger, marten, mink, raccoon, and muskrat. In addition to these there were of course continually taken by the native hunters such smaller animals as the skunk, porcupine, woodchuck, gray and fox squirrels, the common gray or "cotton-tail" rabbit, the larger northern hare or "snowshoe rabbit," and the weasel, or ermine, as it was called when in its much-prized snow-white winter coat. [102] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Of all the larger animals the bear was probably the only one regarded as a possibly dangerous foe when attacked. The killing of a bear was always deemed by the red men sufficiently an exploit to warrant the successful hunter's wearing some personal decoration emblematic of the achievement. A few years ago a boy living in Water- town, in Jefferson County, exploring an Indian mound beside a small stream west of the city and north of Lake Mills, unearthed a human skeleton with which he found a number of well-preserved bear's claws, each pierced at the base, obviously the remains of a necklace of the strung claws of such an animal, which some Indian hunter had worn as a trophy of the fierce encounter, and which had been on his person at his burial. The vicinity of Lake Mukwonago, immediately north of Walworth County, was a noted resort for black bear in Indian times, and thither the young hunters were sent to procure these animals when some great savage banquet was about to be held. The name of the lake itself is said to be a corruption of two Indian words meaning "fat black bear." Such, if to a decreased extent, yet in numbers which were rightly regarded as little short of marvelous, was the prevalence of wild animals when the first white men came, and for a few years thereafter. The deer were far the most numerous of the larger animals. In Mrs. Kinzie's account of her party's journey from Fort Dear- born to Fort Winnebago, i.e., Chicago to Portage, in 1 83 1, she mentions that even in midsummer, the season of the least wandering and activity on the part of the deer tribe, these animals were constantly seen, crossing the trail or the line of march or springing off at one side [103] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA amid the dense timber at the party's passing. Within a few years afterward they still existed in such numbers that the first settlers around the Lake reported that it was no uncommon sight in winter to see deer crossing on the ice and snow in herds that extended from shore to shore. As late as 1842 deer were so abundant about the village of Delavan that experienced residents mention that it was a matter of but a short trip and a brief absence from the hamlet to enable any hunter to procure the desired venison, while the animals thus seen on such a trip were described as "apparently thousands in number." In wintertime the hunters wore white hunting garments to render themselves less strikingly visible amid the snow, and when using horses often covered their darker animals with white sheets for the same purpose. As for other animals than the deer, many of the first- comers to the shores of Lake Geneva reported that one could hardly ever look out over the frozen lake without seeing one or more dark objects, animals of one kind or another, crossing its white expanse. Within a few years of the rapid entry of settlement on the rich woodlands and fertile clearings of southeastern Wisconsin this abundance of the larger animal life became a thing of the past. Increased numbers of hunters, with the white man's superior weapons, slew the larger ani- mals in great numbers, for food or for the last years of the fur trade, while the continual cutting down of the forests for wood or to clear the land for agriculture steadily decreased their natural habitat and forced the survivors northward to the less-settled districts and the still un- touched forests, a process in the spread of civilization and [104] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA the inevitably accompanying extinction of wild life before the coming of man which we may still see going on in the northern portion of the state. The wild life of the mammals lingering in so settled a country as the Lake Geneva neighborhood today is confined to those smaller animals whose habitat and adaptability to changing circumstances enable them to sur- vive and to find food and refuge even amid the encroach- ments of civilization and cultivation. They are probably no more than the raccoon, mink, muskrat, gray and fox squirrels, woodchuck, common gray rabbit, the skunk and the weasel, the gopher and the chipmunk. The rabbit may still be found in every patch of woods, and, as everywhere, is much more abundant in some years than in others. Amply supplied with food and dense cover in midsummer, he is less often noticed then than in the wintertime, when his tracks betray his presence every- where and the bark of many an orchard tree suffers from his keen teeth. In the first of the spring, too, he is the object of execration by every gardener, who soon discovers that there is nothing that "B'rer Rabbit" enjoys more than the first succulent green tips of everything that appears above the mold of neatly planned gardens. The raccoon, too, for so large and bulky an animal, manages to survive surprisingly even in thickly settled farming districts. Living chiefly in hollow trees near his favorite haunts, the neighborhood of creeks and streams— perhaps conveniently near some well-stocked henhouse as well! — and largely nocturnal in his habits, his presence is often unsuspected until the diminishing number of little chicks reveals the marauder, or in wintertime his tracks, like [105] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA the print of tiny hands, show where he passed in the night. Raccoons are known to exist today, and have even been hunted with success, in the woods of the lakes around East Troy and along the north shore of Jackson Creek, the inlet of Delavan Lake, while a tame specimen kept during a winter in an outdoor cage near the Yerkes Observatory grounds was visited by its wild relatives, as their tracks in the snow often revealed. As the writer was motoring on a recent midsummer evening from Dela- van Inlet to East Delavan a large raccoon crossed the road in the glare of the headlights that unmistakably re- vealed his waddling figure and bushy striped tail. The skunk, though diminishing in numbers, especially since his black-and-white fur has become an article of fashionable wear, is not infrequently "among those present," if not to anyone's sight yet nevertheless to everyone's sense of smell. The mink and weasel are occasionally trapped by farm boys familiar with their likely haunts. The muskrat, though decreasing in numbers with the draining of many of his favorite swamps, was until recently so numerous as actually to have sunk steam yachts, at anchor late in the season, by gnawing holes in plumbing pipes exposed beneath the water line. The ubiquitous woodchuck, thanks to his ceaseless alertness, the depth and safety of his holes, and his hibernation during half the year, not only survives but may be traced on almost any sunny, gravelly slope which is conveniently near some rich patch of clover, his favorite food. About October i he disappears for his long winter's sleep, from which he emerges six months later, thin and hungry, and at once sets about fattening [io6] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A himself again on the tender green of the reviving fields, farms, and gardens. The experience of Thoreau in his historic bean patch beside Walden Pond, where he recorded the invasions of the woodchucks as, the chief difficulty to be overcome in successful bean-raising, is duplicated in the devastated rows of many a Walworth County market garden. Entirely a vegetarian, the woodchuck robs no hen coops, but acquires a bulky size wherever the farmer has planned his clover hay. A favorite food of the Indian, owing to his plump little body, fattened on the cleanest of good vegetable food, he is today molested only by the farmer or his boy, or by the farm dog, that has to be quick indeed to catch him, and may be well bitten by the woodchuck's sharp teeth in the ensuing conflict. An occasional rifleman, too, finds that stalking the woodchuck as he sits erect and vigilant at the mouth of his burrow demands all his patience and woodcraft, and that to hit him at long range calls for the most accurate of weapons and the best of rifle sights. The farmer who locates a burrow puts an end to its occupants with little ado and in modern fashion by backing his automobile or tractor to the place, connecting one end of a section of gutter pipe to the exhaust, inserting the other end in the mouth of the burrow, and letting the engine run for a few moments, after which dose of rapidly asphyxiating poison gas the troublesome occupants of the subterranean residence are never seen again. In the early days of the settlement of Walworth County, as in many other parts of the country, the woodchuck was regularly hunted for the purpose of making shoestrings from its hide, for which purpose it was commonly reputed [107] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA to be the toughest and most durable material available. A few years ago a discussion having arisen among the amateur naturalists of the country as to whether a wood- chuck could climb trees, or ever did so, the question was definitely settled by a piece of unmistakable evidence from Walworth County. Professor Edwin B. Frost, of the staflF of the Yerkes Observatory, having one day the good fortune to discover one of the animals up in the crotch of a sizable tree near the Observatory grounds, had the creature guarded and compelled to hold its lofty position until a camera could be brought, when a successful snapshot made a permanent record of the performance, and its subsequent publication in one of the outdoor magazines of the country conclusively determined the debate in the affirmative. Squirrels, of both the gray and the "fox" varieties, are common wherever there is sufficient standing timber to give them ample cover. They are even sufficiently abundant in the southern portion of the county to require that the wooden poles supporting electric high-voltage power lines be sheathed with tin at the power portion, to prevent the animals from climbing the poles and short-circuiting the wires, with widely disastrous results, as happened on several occasions before the adoption of this device. But if the remaining fauna of the Lake Geneva hills and woods are comparatively few in number, the presence of wonderful native birds in great numbers and notable variety more than make up for any deficiency of other wild life. The vicinity of the lakes of Walworth County is one of the "bird paradise" portions of North America. Each fall and spring bring the water fowl to every lake [io8] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and swamp. The great Canada geese often spend the entire winter on the Lake, if they can find open water well out of rifle shot from the shore. Long, arrowy- flocks of ducks come by night and stop to feed by day. Immense numbers of coots or "mud hens" at times fairly blacken the waters of Lake Como, and these, once scorned by the duck hunter, have in recent years become a game bird, recognized as such alike by the legislator, the gunner, and the chef. Recent protective game legislation, espe- cially the Federal Migratory Bird Act, has done much to preserve and even markedly to increase the numbers of the game water fowl which annually traverse the Mississippi Valley. A century ago, as at the time of the coming of the white man to the Lake country, the number of the ducks, geese, and swans at the time of their semi- annual migrations was such as to be almost beyond the conception of the modern hunter. In the fall of 1830 a traveler on the Wolf River, stopping to make camp between lakes Butte des Morts and Poygan, noting the Indians shooting teal among the wild-rice beds, handed an Indian a flintlock musket and some ammunition and told him to bring back some ducks for supper, and in one hour's time the red man returned with fifty birds! As for song birds, of all the famous and beautiful singers of North America, only the southern mocking birds remain unheard in the annual chorus that wakes with every springtime sunrise over the Geneva hills, and continues daily until well into the summer's heat. Even the beautiful " Kentucky cardinal," long considered almost wholly a bird of the states south of the Mason and Dixon line, has in the last half-dozen years invaded Wisconsin, [109] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and has become, if still of occasional occurrence only, yet unmistakably an all-the-year resident in such quarters as he has selected as meeting his fancy. A dozen points in the southeastern counties claim his presence through the year. Several pairs have adopted the beautiful city parks of Milwaukee as their homes and have learned the city birds' fashion of feeding at the bird trays that many city homes place on lawns or at window ledges for the winter- time residents or for the squirrels that like the same edibles quite as well. A male cardinal having been seen several times along the north shore of Lake Geneva a few years ago, an owner of one of the beautiful residences in the vicinity went to the trouble of importing a female and placed her in an outdoor cage to make the acquaintance of the lone Kentuckian. Later, on her release, the pair promptly went to housekeeping, and they and their descendants are believed to be the several pairs that are now to be found in the surrounding woods. In the spring of 1922, in the months of April and May, the following varieties of birds were noted along the north shore of the Lake and at the points between Williams Bay and Delavan Inlet by four observers, who joined forces for the purpose of noting the birds' arrival: Swan American merganser Canada goose Pied grebe White goose Coot Mallard duck Large white gull Red-headed duck Franklin's gull Bluebill duck Common tern Canvasback duck Least tern Pintail duck Black tern Blue-winged teal Virginia rail [no] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Yellow rail Carolina rail King rail Cormorant Loon Blue heron Little green heron American bittern Least bittern Killdeer plover Jacksnipe Spotted sandpiper Pectoral sandpiper Least sandpiper Kingfisher Junco Purple grackle Red-winged blackbird Yellow-headed blackbird Cowbird Bobolink Baltimore oriole Orchard oriole Golden-winged woodpecker Red-headed woodpecker Hairy woodpecker Yellow-bellied woodpecker Downy woodpecker White-bellied nuthatch Brown creeper Chickadee Chewink Chimney swift Martin Barn swallow Bank swallow Eaves swallow Robin Hermit thrush Wood thrush Brown thrush Olive-backed thrush Catbird Bluebird Indigo bunting American goldfinch Purple finch Bluejay Crow Loggerhead shrike Red-tailed hawk Cooper's hawk Sparrow hawk Screech owl Kingbird Great-crested flycatcher Traill's flycatcher Phoebe Wood pewee Ruby-crowned kinglet Golden-crowned kinglet House wren Long-billed marsh wren Redstart Scarlet tanager Mourning dove Yellow warbler Blackburnian warbler Black-throated green warbler Black-and-white warbler Myrtle warbler Maryland yellowthroat [III] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Horned lark Cardinal grosbeak Meadow lark Rose-breasted grosbeak Western meadowlark Yellow-throated vireo Dickcissel Blue-headed vireo White-throated sparrow Red-eyed vireo Swamp sparrow Ovenbird Grasshopper sparrow Cedar waxwing Vesper sparrow Bohemian waxwing White-crowned sparrow Yellow-billed cuckoo Song sparrow Humming bird Fox sparrow Quail English sparrow Whippoorwill Field sparrow Nighthawk It is quite possible that more experienced, well- informed, and scientific observers would have found in the same territory and at the same time twenty or thirty more varieties. Of the ii6 noted, all may rightly be considered among the common birds of the Middle West, either as residents or migrant visitors, except the swans, cormorants, western meadowlarks, cardinals, and yellow-headed blackbirds. But where else can one find an area of not over a half- dozen square miles of lakes, swamps, farms, and woodlands, in which the bird lover may expect to find in its season every bird that could possibly be expected in that part of the continent, and, in addition, several whose proverbial haunts lie elsewhere but who choose to come to Lake Geneva for their homes ? Some of the latter, like the yellow-headed blackbird, are known in no other nearby locality, and yet have been seen in one spot annually for almost half a century. In the case of the above- mentioned blackbird this favorite haunt consists of the [112] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA marshes and reed beds at the junction of Delavan Inlet and the Lake. The cormorants, too, were considered very rare by old residents of the Geneva and Delavan neighborhoods. Some of them, indeed, had never seen these curious and ungainly water fowl before. The flock noted, some two dozen in number, remained at Delavan Inlet for two weeks before resuming their northward way. The Canada geese and their smaller companions, the white geese, gathered in numbers amounting to many hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the middle of Lake Geneva, early in the year. Spending the nights there, their clangorous honking could be heard at all hours of the darkness, and with the dawn their heavy-winged battalions moved out in long lines to favorite feeding- fields. At a little after sunset these flocks would be seen returning, their clanging calls sounding from high up in the air and increasing as they approached the Lake, when with set wings the members of the flocks broke their lines and seemed to tumble and side-slip downward to join their companions resting on the water. Many a time the line of descent of these great flocks of geese and ducks would carry them so low over the hilltops about the Lake that the fortunately posted observer could see every marking of the birds. Indeed, on occasions in the hunting season, it has happened that some tireless and ingenious devotee of the gun has betaken himself to the roof of some hilltop residence which he has observed to be in the usual line of flight, and has been rewarded by dropping a bird or two as they have slanted sharply down over his head to the Lake below. [113] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A But the song birds, their numbers, and their songs! How shall one begin to do accurate justice to their variety, the charm of their presence, and the vigor of their activi- ties, and to the ceaseless chorus of their music, from the arrival of the first robin in March, or the prompt house- keeping of the horned lark, the earliest nester of them all, to the completion of their domestic duties and the achieved independence of their first broods in midsummer ? Before the first buds are in evidence on the leafing trees, the robins and bluebirds have made selection of their homes and are hard at work collecting twigs, dead grasses, and the welcome findings of string or horsehair, for their nests in the central crotch of some maple tree or under the eaves of some summer home whose human tenants will not arrive till perhaps the second brood has been hatched. Every tree has its nest, sometimes several. Every wooded ravine has its dozen varieties of birds. Every roadside fence-corner brush heap has its bustling pair of brown thrashers darting into concealment as the motorist roars past. Every tall bush has its busy catbirds, stopping long enough now and then to mimic every other singer within hearing. Every dead stub has its woodpeckers' holes. Every farm fence seems to have its individual kingbird, now darting into the air to capture passing insects and now dashing off in eager pursuit of a bandit hawk or even of golden-wing woodpeckers if they venture too near the pugnacious little sentinel's chosen post. Every tree trunk is searched inch by inch by chickadee or nuthatch, the only birds to whom it makes no difference whether their bug hunt is conducted right side up or upside down. Every barnyard has its eaves-colony of [114] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A swallows. Every meadow and farmyard is swept by the keen eyes of the hawks who daily scour a selected territory — often at almost exactly the same hour of every day — in search of field mice or straying little chicks, sometimes coming to a sudden end, memorialized by the pair of wings afiixed to the barn door, when straying within range of the unseen farm boy's shotgun. It has been aptly commented that the song period of the birds is invariably limited to what may be called the altruistic portion of their annual cycle. The successive times of courtship, mating, incubation, and feeding of each brood is accompanied from first to last by the best efforts of each songster, from the robin's "Cheerily, cheerily," to the brown thrasher's flood of wonderful double notes rippling from the topmost branch of the tallest tree near his home. But with the flight of the last nestling and the end of the domestic season, when family interests are over and the parent birds have no tasks beyond those of finding food for themselves, songs cease as if without incentive, and the midsummer silence sets in with the moulting season, so that many a summer visitor would never guess how many birds there are in the woods that a few weeks ago were ringing with song from sunrise to sunset. The alert observer of the birds during the nesting season is sure to be rewarded with instances of their quaint ways at every turn. For four successive years a pair of robins — almost certainly the same — built their nests in the shelter of a garage on one of the estates on the north shore of the Lake. One year it was placed on a horizontal length of stovepipe, the next year on a [115I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A ceiling beam, the third year over the sHding door, and one year it was placed on a shelf beside the wash rack and not 3 feet from where the big limousine stood when in the garage, the noise and action of the cars and the continual passing and repassing of people seeming in no way to disturb the busy parents or to affect the ever hungry nestlings. One pair of wrens built a nest inside a child's- size tin watering-pot that hung on a nail not 3 feet from a kitchen door. Another pair stuffed their building material into the pocket of a pair of overalls which they found hanging on a clothesline, whose owner interestedly allowed them to continue to hang in disuse till the tiny family had grown and flown away. Several pairs of red-headed woodpeckers were so desperately possessed to drill their way into the attic of one home, boring through the siding under the eaves, that nothing sufficed to stop their efforts, and finally the owner of the house — first conscientiously informing the state authorities that he was resolved to protect his property against damage from wild creatures — borrowed a shotgun and executed all the determined breakers-in! Another pair of wood- peckers decided that a certain little church offered su- perior domestic attractions, and worked so steadily at hammering through some resounding boards that during the sermon-time one of the church officers stationed him- self outside the building with handfuls of pebbles to en- force a half-hour's suspension of the machine-gun-like rattle of the tireless pair! A Chicago woman, deeply interested and well versed in bird ways, coming early one summer to a cottage on Conference Point, found a baby Baltimore oriole that, [116] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A hardly more than hatched, had had the misfortune to fall from its pendent cradle. Picking the tiny creature up and taking it home, she endeavored to keep it alive by feeding it from a fountain-pen filler. The nestling re- sponded to this devoted care so promptly that it swiftly grew fat and strong, and not only developed into a beauti- ful specimen of the oriole's most gorgeous color, but became a firm attache of the cottage, the resident family, and their generous food supply placed out for its benefit. It grew so tame that, while free to roam the woods as it did, it never went too far away to hear a meal-time call, a whistle, or its name of "Baby," at either of which summons it would fly down from some tree top to sit on its mistress* finger or ride on her shoulder about the cottage or the grounds. The regularity of the arrival of the birds each spring is a never failing source of interest and wonder to the alert and experienced observer who has the good fortune to live near the Lake sufficiently early in the year to note the coming of each species. The northbound water fowl may be the first to appear in stretches of open water amid the melting ice, and the robin and the purple grackle are in no way intimidated by the snow squalls of March or even February. But the horned lark is the earliest nest-builder and its eggs may be found in their ground nest in some meadow before the new grass has begun to tint the fields with the ever welcome assurance that spring is at the doors. The experienced student of bird ways, watching and listening for the latest arrival, last year's notebook in hand, may say: "Today is the fifth of May. Tomorrow the oriole and the bobolink ought to be here." [117] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA And the chances are that with the next morning's sunrise the expected notes will be heard from tree, bush, or garden, teUing of the unfailing regularity with which the tiny travelers up from the Gulf states or from their South American winter resort keep to the centuries-old schedule of their kind. One such notebook of twenty-five years* annual records shows that for that time the various vari- eties of birds have varied hardly more than twenty-four hours each year in the date of their dropping from the night's long flight to begin their mating and nesting on the hills about the Lake, or, in the case of transients who nest farther north, to put in a few hours of vigorous feed- ing in preparation for the resumption of their journey toward the Arctic Circle. Those who have thus studied the avi-fauna of Geneva and its neighborhood for many years confidently believe that there are many more birds in its woods and fields today, and more with each year, than for many years past. This is probably true of at least the migrant varieties. Of course the upland game birds which once existed around the Lake in great numbers have vanished, as everywhere, before the transformation of their haunts into the farms and villages of a modern civilization. The once-famous sky-darkening flocks of the passenger pigeon, whose incredible numbers as they settled on the trees about the Lake furnished literal gorgings on their flesh for every Indian lodge, are now no more than tales dimly remembered by the oldest inhabitant as having been told him by his grandfather. The stalking figures of the great sand-hill cranes have not been seen on any upland wheat field of Walworth County for almost half a century. [ii8] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A The last recorded great flock of big, bronze, wild turkeys, once the common reward of the skilful hunter, Indian or early settler, throughout all the region, consisted of thirty of these birds seen, and some of their number bagged, near the hamlet of Spring Prairie, in 1838. The writer saw coveys of partridges, and heard them "drumming," in the woods of the north shore in 1884, and single birds were met with along the old trail between Conference Point and the Yerkes Observatory in 1897; but these were the last of their kind. Now and then a woodcock is seen making its curious summer-evening flight at dusk near some likely lake-shore nesting-place. A few coveys of prairie chickens linger on farms in the outlying corners of the county farthest from towns and railroads, occasion- ally startling the hunter with their roaring rise awing as he crosses some stubble on autumnal rabbit hunts. Quail are still seen in midsummer, scurrying across country roads ahead of the speeding motor, and a few are bagged each fall by hunters famihar with their haunts. All the birds, however, that come beneath the sheltering wings of the mentioned Migratory Bird Act, seem to have responded to the thoughtful interest and offered protection of the bird lovers, naturalists, and sportsmen alike, of the United States and Canada. As intimated, the semi-annual flights of ducks and geese are noticeably larger than for some years before. Especially the numbers of the songsters show that the spread of public protection, and perhaps of education and intel- ligence as to their ways, their beauty, interest, and value, are already producing the hoped-for result of bringing more birds to every lawn and hedgerow and woodland [119] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA with each spring than either the naturalist or the schoolboy had been accustomed to note. With such happy results accompanying even increasingly intensive agricultural cultivation and the expansion of villages and towns into the surrounding countrysides, Lake Geneva will remain the bird paradise of the Middle West for all the generations of bird lovers who will yet spend their happiest hours about its shores. [120] CHAPTER VII THE YERKES OBSERVATORY No visitor to the Lake Geneva neighborhood can fail to note the enormous khaki-colored dome that looms high above the trees crowning the summit of the hills on the northwestern shore of the Lake. Visible for half a dozen miles or more in every direction, it dominates the landscape and holds the eye of the spectator over a large part of even all Walworth County itself. Glittering like gold in the level rays of the rising sun or silhouetted against some flaming sunset or somber beneath the leaden skies of an overcast day, it forms one of the most striking objects to be seen anywhere in America. Nor, at any season of the year, does it give the impression of any incongruity in its presence in the view. Embowered amid the flowering trees and shrubs at its base in spring, standing out against the deep green foliage of midsum- mer, solemn above the brown and leafless forests of autumn or silently majestic across the great and quiet whiteness of winter's deepest snows, it has none of the frequent intrusiveness upon the eye of some others of man's works — ugly factories and smoke-streaming chim- neys — but seems as much in place as the hill it crowns and nobly significant of man's upward reach toward the firmament whose secrets it seeks to solve. Upon nearer approach it is, if possible, even more impressive and fasci- nating, with the striking Romanesque architecture of the great building, the smaller twin companion domes, and the rich beauty of the landscape setting of its grounds. [121] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA It was conceived in 1892 in the mind of Professor George E. Hale, of the Department of Astronomy of the University of Chicago, as a result of an opportunity to purchase the great glass which is its chief treasure. Mr. Charles T. Yerkes, of Chicago, generously made the financing of the undertaking possible, and the building was begun in 1895 and opened for its special lines of scientific pursuit in October, 1897. Its location was the result of a survey of more than twenty suggested places in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and was selected because of its freedom from the smoke, dust, and disturbance of cities, and because of the ascertained and notable clearness of the atmosphere during the greater portion of the year. Its site, with ^2 acres of surrounding land, was given by Mr. John Johnston, Jr. The Trustees of the University have since increased the property to 70 acres, with a lake frontage of 550 feet, where a pier for steamers is maintained in summer. The building stands 190 feet above the level of the Lake, and 1,050 feet above sea-level. Its geographical position, as determined by officers of the United States Coast and Geodetic Sur- vey is: Latitude, 42°34'i 2^.64; Longitude, 5'^54"i3!24 west of Greenwich. The grounds are 4 miles north of the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, a mile from the post- office of the beautiful little village of Williams Bay, and a mile and a quarter from the Chicago and North Western Railway station, the terminus of a branch, 76 miles from Chicago. The architect of the great building was Mr. Henry Ives Cobb, and the surrounding land- scape plan was designed by Olmstead Brothers of Brook- line, Massachusetts. [122] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The great telescope itself, which, by virtue of its famous 40-inch object glass, is the largest refracting telescope in the world, is of course housed beneath the great dome, 90 feet in diameter. The opening in the dome through which the sky is observed is 1 1 feet wide and is closed by shutters 85 feet long from the base of the dome to its top. The telescope is 61 feet long, its tube weighing 6 tons, or, with all its moving parts, 20 tons in all. For ready accessibility in its every possible position there is provided a rising floor, designed and constructed by Warner and Swazey, 75 feet in diameter and weighing 37I tons. Every part of the observing room, dome, shutters, telescope, and floor, is movable by hand and by powerful electric motors. The driving clock by which the telescope is made to follow the stars is of course unique in its size and keeps the cross-hairs of the great instrument in line with a particu- lar star under observation with an accuracy that seems to the lay mind the last degree of mechanical perfection. The telescope is in use in the study of the sun by day and of the stars by night during practically every clear hour of the entire year. Its chief use is for the photog- raphy, either of celestial objects themselves, or of their spectra, in the taking of those photographs from whose measurements, rather than by dependence on the eye of the observer alone, as formerly, the facts about the stellar universe are now chiefly determined. More than twenty-five thousand such photographs have been taken with the instrument since its erection. Next to the great dome itself, the two smaller domes attract the visitor's attention. Of these, that at the [123] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA southeast houses a reflecting telescope 2 feet in diam- eter, in some respects as powerful as the great 40-inch itself. Every part of this reflecting telescope was made in the Observatory itself. The northeast dome contains another refracting telescope, of 12 inches diameter, the gift of Messrs. William E. and George E. Hale, which was formerly at their residence and private observatory in Chicago. On the main roof is located a Brashear comet-seeker telescope of 6 inches aperture. Between the smaller domes, with suitable openings in the roof, is a transit instrument of 3 inches diameter. Many other instruments for observation or measurement purposes are housed within the main building and used in the processes of its astronomical and meteorological departments and studies. At the east of the Observa- tory grounds is located the complete power-house which furnishes light, heat, and power for the entire building and its varied needs and purposes, and which was a part of the original gift of Mr. Yerkes. South of the main building of the Observatory there stands a small dome-crowned building which houses a special instrument, the Bruce photographic telescope, given in 1897 by Miss Catherine W. Bruce, of New York, who presented the sum of $7,000 for the construction of a telescope especially designed for the photography of the large areas and extended objects in the sky, partic- ularly the Milky Way and comets. In this field Mr. Edward E. Barnard of the Observatory's staff has been the most successful pioneer, and by him the instrument is in constant use. The lo-inch telescope was designed by Brashear, and its special mounting was built by Warner [124] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and Swazey. It has also a 6J-inch Voigtlander "doub- let" and a 5-inch visual guiding glass. Many wonder- ful and beautiful photographs of the Milky Way have been obtained with this instrument by Mr. Barnard. Of the Morehouse Comet of 1908 he secured no less than 350 most valuable negatives. Visitors to the Observatory so often ask as to the cost of this, one of the most famous, and in its way unique, scientific institutions in the world, that a brief statement may be made. The land originally given was valued at $30,000. The cost of the completed object glass of the great reflector was |66,ooo; of the telescope mounting itself, $55,000; of the dome and rising floor, $45,000; and of the remainder of the Observatory building, includ- ing the southeast dome and the power-house and its equipment, about $150,000. The instrument and its equipment of the Kenwood Observatory, the mentioned gift of Mr. William E. Hale and his son, were valued at $38,000. The Bruce telescope and building cost about $8,000. To date something over $15,000 has been spent on grading, improving, and planting the grounds about the institution. It is interesting to note that in the scientific, especially of course the astronomical, world today, the great tele- scope of the Observatory is so widely known and recog- nized as the only instrument of its particular type, size, and power, that in scientific papers, reports, and com- parisons, it is often alluded to, not by its full name or that of its Observatory and its location, but simply as ''the 40-inch," it being understood that every informed reader will know what instrument is alluded to. [125] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Among the most notable achievements and discover- ies in astronomical science made possible by the equip- ment of the Observatory and effected by those who are or have been members of its staff are such definite addi- tions to the world's knowledge as, first in importance perhaps, the great development of the spectroheliograph, by George E. Hale and Ferdinand Ellerman, for use in the study of the surface of the sun. In 1901, Mr. G. W. Ritchey demonstrated that the great telescope, origi- nally designed solely for use with the eye, except as the spectroscope is concerned, could be made one of the most efficient instruments in the world for precise pho- tographic work. This was done by the use of a yellow filter, placed before the photographic plate, which trans- mitted only those rays to which the eye is most sensitive, and for which the object glass was figured. This dis- covery inaugurated a new use for the great telescope and opened a field of service for visual telescopes which had not been originally anticipated. Mr. Ritchey was also the constructor of the 2-foot reflecting telescope, with which he succeeded in taking many of the finest photographs of stellar nebulae that have ever been made. The great work of the late S. W. Burnham, in his collec- tion of notable photographs of the Milky Way, was begun at the Observatory and is continued today by Mr. Barnard. The remarkable achievement of measur- ing the amount of heat received from individual stars was first carried out here by Mr. E. F. Nichols in 1898 and 1900. For this purpose there was used a "radiometer," built at the Observatory especially for this work, of such sensitiveness that it measured the heat received at a [126] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA distance of 2,000 feet from a human face, and similarly- recorded the amount of heat received from a lighted candle placed at a distance of 4,500 feet from the instrument! The constant use of the telescopes for scientific purposes — for they are in use during practically every clear hour by day or by night throughout the entire year — makes it impossible for permission to be given to visitors to look through these. Indeed, were such per- mission to be extended, little time would remain for any other use of the instruments, for during the year, especi- ally of course during the summer and vacation seasons, there are often not less than twelve thousand visitors to the famous building. Opportunity is given, however, for all who wish to do so to inspect the Observatory and the great refractor, on Saturdays, from June i to Sep- tember 13, between half-past one and half-past four in the afternoon; and during the rest of the year between the hours of ten and twelve on Saturday mornings. On these occasions a member of the staff demonstrates the operation of the large telescope and explains the work of the Observatory. Many interesting and wonderful astronomical photographs are displayed in the corridors of the building for the benefit of visitors. Those who know most intimately the Observatory, whether they are in the profession of astronomical research or in other lines of life, have long since come to recognize that the spirit of the institution, in its scientific pursuits or its contact with the rest of the world, has become little other than the embodiment of the character of the present head of its staff. Originally conceived, as [127] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA has been said, by Professor George E. Hale, who was its director until becoming the head of the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1905, he was succeeded in office by Edwin B. Frost, then professor of astrophysics, who has been its director ever since. Of his accomplishments in the sphere of his own specialty it is a sufficient comment that in 191 2 he was invited to England by the Univer- sity of Cambridge, to receive in person the distinction of an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. With a mind that is an encyclopedia of scientific knowledge, of brilliant and accurate intellectual activity, interested in many lines of natural phenomena and life — perhaps especially in the practical aspects of American social progress — to a wide circle of American intellect he is as deeply loved for his geniality and friendship as he is admired for his wide information and his notable con- tributions to the world's treasury of modern scientific data. The staff of the Observatory is constituted as follows (1922): Edwin B. Frost, Professor of Astrophysics and Director. Edward E. Barnard, Professor of Practical Astronomy. John A. Parkhurst, Associate Professor of Practical Astronomy. Storrs B. Barrett, Assistant Professor of Astrophysics, also Sec- retary and Librarian of the Observatory. George Van Biesbroeck, Assistant Professor of Practical Astronomy. Oliver J. Lee, Instructor in Practical Astronomy. Otto Struve, Assistant in Stellar Spectroscopy. Mary R. Calvert, Computer. Florence B. Lee, Office Secretary. Margaret Van Biesbroeck, Assistant Librarian. George C. Blakslee, Photographer. [128] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Frank R. Sullivan, Engineer in charge of the 40-inch telescope. Stephen A. Stamm, Instrument-maker. Henry M. Foote, Carpenter and Supervisor of Building. Diedrich J. Oetjen, Engineer at Power-house. Among the thousands of interested visitors who every year enter the beautiful doors of the great Observatory, it sometimes happens that there are those of a particu- larly critical bent of mind, and who by virtue of its dubious possession consider themselves the strictly "practical" of the human race, who are not long in coming out with the question: "Of what use is all this ? Granted, that these instruments are all very wonder- ful — they are certainly costly enough! — but of what value are they ? How is mankind in general benefited by this great building and its contents, and this institu- tion and what is done here .^ It must be all very nice for these scientifically inclined and studious gentlemen to live here, and in similar institutions, the year 'round, and to enjoy themselves in the study of the stars; but to what extent, if any, does their work benefit the world without and their fellows and mankind at large ? Do they, as the saying is, 'pull more than their own weight in the boat,' in which all humanity may be said to ride, and upon whose progress by the joint labors of its occu- pants the advancement of the race depends ? To be blunt: Are there any sternly practical, tangible, earthly, doUars-and-cents values in these astronomical pursuits for the rest of the world of hard-working men and women ?" The cynic is tempted to reply, with more accuracy than courtesy, that if this type of mind had more educa- [129] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA tion, information, and a resultant wider grasp of the things open to the human mind on this mundane sphere, it would not be moved to this particular example of its favorite challenge of human pursuits other than its own, whatever that may be. Then, however, it would cease to be what it is, and would be less critical of its fellows and their ways, and mankind would be minus one strik- ing illustration of the proverb that "It takes all kinds of people to make a world." But it exists and it asks its questions, and perhaps to reply in kindly and accurate fashion and to lift it out of its status quo ante^ and to let it depart the richer for the new knowledge, is not the least of the educative privileges of the wise and kindly men who live and move and have their being in the great institution, and whose uplifted eyes and thoughts bring many a celestial reality down to bless and enrich the rest of us, and to lift our minds some little way along the upward path in which they are so often the pioneers of human progress. Among many other practicalities for whose possession mankind is the richer and the better off solely by virtue of our great astronomical institutions and the men who give their lives to the work conducted therein, three may be indicated. First is of course the one great pursuit of the entire world of science, the study of the laws governing the universe, and the endeavor to discover — "here a little and there a little, as saith the Prophet Isaiah" — what those laws are, and how they operate, and what is their added testimony to the great Source of all law, behind, and in, and through it all. [130] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A To which first comment our "sternly practical" interrogator may reply, impatiently: "That's all very well; and it may be so, and it sounds a good deal like our minister's sermons to me, but just how does a place like this, and costly instruments like these, and scientists who do what these men do — how do these benefit the rest of us hard-working chaps during our own particular busy and hustling six days in the week ?" Whereupon we may ask him plainly, and in phrase- ology that he can understand, if in his business, time is worth anything to him^ and knowing always exactly what time it is, and when the factory whistle should blow, and when trains go, and mails and shipments, and when appointments and engagements are to be kept, and when banks open or close, and when legal dates and hours and contract periods begin or end ? If so, then he, and with him the whole world of business and manu- facture and finance and law, would and could never know exactly what time it is, if it were not for our students of the stars. Somewhere some astronomer watches at the eyepiece of his telescope for a certain star to touch the cross-hairs of his instrument, when his waiting, trained, poised finger touches a button and correctly sets an automatic clock; and presently, at the appointed and expected hour, the message will be flashed the world around — by radio, nowadays — that it is exactly such and such an hour by the mighty, the eternal, the only infallible Clock of the Universe. And lo, every clock and watch on earth is, or may be, set accordingly, and trains run and whistles blow and banks open and close, and human affairs may run regularly and accurately and dependably [131] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA once more because everyone knows, or may know, exactly "what time it is"! Or perhaps location, somewhere on the earth's sur- face, is worth something to our "practical" brother. It may be of some importance and value in his affairs to know exactly where his farm is, or his city property, and the limits, corner stakes, and boundaries of rural acres, or the feet of frontage on the Avenue, or the all-but- priceless inches on Michigan Boulevard or Broadway itself. The chances are that it is of a degree of interest measurable in dollars and cents in his bank account to know where are the exact bounds of his coal mine prop- erty, or his oil leases, or what is the hourly position of the vessels sailing the seas with their freights for his warehouses. When the boundary line between the states of Illinois and Wisconsin was surveyed for the first time, in 1827, by the crude, perhaps magnetic- compass, perhaps rule-of-thumb methods common on the frontier in those days, instead of being laid out exactly east and west from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, as was the intention and the instruction of the Congress of the United States, the surveyors in charge actually got their work so "on the bias" that the state line is half a mile from where it ought to be at one end and three-quarters of a mile "off" at the other! Per- haps our practically inclined critic would approve of measurements of a greater exactness than that, in these modern times and conditions in which he and we live and buy and sell! The chances are, he would! And the only way in which the absolutely exact location of any spot on the surface of the earth may be determined [132] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA is by working out, from the data given us by the stars, the latitude and longitude of the ends of some earthly base line, and its relation to the true north, and then referring to that determined location the position of the area, acre, foot, or inch, the exact situation of which is worth something to someone! Q.E.D., my dear sir! Or, "in the language of the street," if Law and Time and Place are worth anything to you, Mr. Practical Man, then that is what places like the mighty Observatory on Geneva's hills are for, wherewith to benefit mankind. So stop your car, or at least slow down, the next time you drive that way, and give it a respectful and appreciative glance as you go by, and realize that such are the things that it means to yoiil [133] CHAPTER VIII MOTOR ROUTES TO LAKE GENEVA In an article on the scenic beauties of the United States, in one of the popular magazines, a recent writer com- ments: The three most beautiful highways between larger cities of the country are, first, the drive from Albany to New York along the east shore of the Hudson River; second, the almost uninterrupted suburban boulevard from Philadelphia to Baltimore and Washington; and third, the hundred miles along the western shore of Lake Michigan's inland sea, from Milwaukee to Chicago. This last notable route, its smooth concrete winding from Wisconsin's largest city through the residence and factory districts of Racine and Kenosha to the Illinois line, is continued southward by the largely fair and occasion- ally excellent boulevards of Chicago's famous residence suburbs, its "Gold Coast," and Lincoln Park. The motorist to Lake Geneva from either end of the line may allow himself a glimpse of its charms at the cost of per- haps another hour on the way and another gallon or so of gasoline. And what are a Uttle "gas" and a Httle time to the motorist who cares, not about the shortest route or the shortest time, but about the interesting cities, beautiful homes, long views of the blue lake beside the way, and good concrete to drive upon ? To go to Lake Geneva thus, the tourist from Milwaukee takes Wisconsin State Highway No. 17 to Racine, or on to Kenosha if he prefers. At Racine he turns west on No. 20, whose concrete takes him to Burlington, whence 12 miles THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA of hard gravel roads on Route 36 will put him in the town of Lake Geneva. If coming from Chicago, he keeps to Sheridan Road to Kenosha, or Racine, 5 miles farther north, if he likes. From Kenosha, Highway 50 will take him many- miles on his way, though as its western portion is under construction he will be forced to make a southward detour before reaching the Lake. For shorter routes from Milwaukee there are several choices, each growing more in favor every year as the amount of concrete is added to each season. High- way No. 36 leads past Forest Home Cemetery, taking the Loomis Road through Rochester and Waterford to Burlington, whence No. 2^ leads to Geneva. Just south of the little village of Rochester there are some par- ticularly beautiful views of the clear, mirroring, willow- shaded reaches of the Fox River, as it winds through the meadows beside the road, strikingly reminding one of the upper Thames, or of Tennyson's lines on "the brim- ming river." A second much traveled route from Milwaukee begins by following National Avenue to its western terminus, where it merges into the concrete of Highway 61. This leads over the lofty hill known as "Prospect," from which there is an unusually far view, of Muskego and Wind lakes, to the southward. It is 16 miles from Milwaukee to Mukwonago, with 5 miles of broad concrete thence to East Troy. From the village square of East Troy — one of the oldest villages in southern Wisconsin and a tiny metropolis of trade for its neighborhood as far back as the forties — [136] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A one has a choice of roads to Geneva, depending on whether one wishes to reach its eastern or western end. A good country road running southward for 14 miles, through Spring Prairie and Springfield, and over two real hills between these, puts one in the town of Lake Geneva, at the eastern end of the Lake. Out of the west side of the town square of East Troy, Highway 61 continues southwestward for 11 miles to Elkhorn, the county seat of Walworth County, in which Lake Geneva lies. From here one may reach in a few moments more either Williams Bay, 6 miles south, on the northwestern shore of the Lake; and thence Fontana, at the head of the Lake, 3 miles farther; or Delavan Lake, 4 miles; or the town of Dela- van, continuing on Highway 61 from Elkhorn, 4 miles. A route from Milwaukee that is some 6 or 8 miles longer than either of the above, but which is well worth the time, consists in going out Grand Avenue, the Blue Mound Road, and the new broad concrete to Waukesha. Leaving Waukesha by the bridge over the Fox River at the west end of College Avenue, one turns south, keeping on the excellent country road that runs along the sides of the low hills on the west side of the river valley, from which there are for many miles striking views of the fertile valley of the Fox and its low, bordering hills. The splendid farms and great herds of dairy cattle that one sees along this road lead one easily to credit the local boast that there are more pure-bred cattle in Waukesha County than in any other county in the United States! Many shady spots beneath the over-arching trees that border this road in places afford tempting spots for way- side luncheons before one reaches Mukwonago. From the [137] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA latter village one goes on concrete to East Troy, and from there southward, as described above. A road that is a favorite with many Milwaukeeans who love its oak-wooded hillsides, consists in turning, just after leaving Waukesha, on a diagonal road southwestward, at the point marked as Highway 59, and following the markers through Genesee, North Prairie, Eagle, and Little Prairie, to the pretty little Lauderdale Lakes. Here No. 59 joins No. 12, leading south to Elkhorn, with the above-mentioned alternatives from there. If there are half a dozen different or slightly varying routes from Milwaukee to Lake Geneva, from Chicago there are twice as many. But alas for some of the roads of lUinois, as compared with what the State Highway Commission of Wisconsin has done! The neglected condition and inadequate or makeshift improvements of all too many of the needed and even much traveled roads of Illinois are almost unbelievable in this age of modern road-making. It is, of course, a condition that is gradually being improved, and will be bettered as fast as the authorities can do the work under present conditions. But it will be carried on only to the extent and in the manner in which the neighboring state is doing such work — and many other states as well or even better, of course — when the people of Illinois let their authorities know in unmistakable manner that what they want is a good-roads system throughout the state, and that, not at the end of another generation, but within a decade at the longest! As to the really good roads of Illinois, there are, so to put it, three groups. The largest consists, of course, of [138] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A the roadways and boulevard system of the city of Chicago, all of which are as a rule excellent, though portions of Sheridan Road and some other arteries leave something to be desired and to be improved on. The second group of excellent modern highways con- sists of the two routes between Chicago and St. Louis. One, the Dixie Highway, runs southward near the Indiana line to Danville and Marshall, where it turns southwestward across the state to the metropolis on the Missouri. The other lies through Joliet, Ottawa, Peoria, and Springfield, and so to St. Louis. Both are now completely concreted with the exception of strips through such towns as have not completed the pavement within their own limits. With these exceptions, the motorist northward or southward across the state may keep his wheels on concrete or on pavements equally good. Indeed, he may do this for as much farther north of Chicago as Green Bay, in Wisconsin, a total distance from that city to St. Louis of 580 miles, one of the longest stretches of perfect roadway in the United States, and one which is becoming increasingly popular as the motor- ing public learns of its good qualities and attractive, direct route. A third, shorter but most notable and exceedingly popular and constantly traveled road is the Illinois por- tion of the Lincoln Highway, across the northern part of the state, through Oak Park, Geneva (Illinois), De Kalb, Dixon, and on westward to the Mississippi River at Ful- ton, opposite Clinton, Iowa, a total of about 160 miles across the state. This fine road, which conveys a perfect stream of cars eastward and westward on every fair- [139] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA weathered day of the year, is almost perfectly level over the greater part of its course, and traverses the great corn belt of northern Illinois. If a motorist wants to see corn "as is corn," with fields not less striking in their way than the immense stretches of the wheat fields of the Dakotas, the Lincoln Highway will show it to him as almost no other portion of the country can do. Incidentally, all the foregoing roads to Chicago from the west and southwest carry annually their quota of the summertime travel to Lake Geneva. The longest fine drive from Chicago to the Lake is via Sheridan Road, through Lincoln Park and the north- ern suburbs, Evanston, Highland Park, Fort Sheridan, Lake Forest, Waukegan, and Zion City, to Kenosha or Racine and westward from either of these cities, as pre- viously mentioned. This route will call for approximately loo miles at the wheel, according to one's choice of Ken- osha or Racine as a turning-point westward, and in view of the detours as one approaches Geneva, owing to con- crete construction under way. The shortest route between Chicago and Lake Geneva is found by going out through Lake Zurich, Wauconda, Volo, McHenry, Richmond, and Genoa Junction, to the town of Geneva. But while this road will eventually be excellent and popular, it is at present rough and undesir- able. Between these longest and shortest routes are several, each of which is followed, almost all the year around, and continuously in the summertime, by the big and speeding touring cars or sport-car roadsters, the slower middle-class sedans or coupes, and the domestic "flivvers" [140] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A of Chicagoans on their way to the Lake for their first or their hundredth time. One of these routes, and the easiest at this date (1922), is found by going via Lincoln Park to Diversey Boulevard, Diversey Boulevard to Elston Avenue, Elston Avenue to Lawrence Avenue, Lawrence Avenue west to Milwaukee Avenue, on Milwaukee Avenue to the fork of the cement roads near Half Day, taking the right-hand concrete road through the western edge of Lake Forest to Libertyville, and thence west to Volo, to McHenry, Richmond, Genoa Junction, and Lake Geneva. This road on entering Wis- consin becomes State Highway No. 12, just north of Rich- mond. Its distance to Geneva is about 90 miles. It is especially popular with motorists from Fort Sheridan, High- land Park, and Evanston, as the most direct and con- venient for these North Shore suburbs. A route followed by many going to the opposite end of the Lake leads via Algonquin and Crystal Lake. Here one can go either to the right (east) to McHenry, Rich- mond, and thence as above; or to the left (west) to Wood- stock and Harvard, and from Harvard straight north 14 miles to Walworth and east to Fontana, at the western end of the Lake. The cross-country motorist, from the northwest, from or through Minneapolis and St. Paul, to Lake Geneva, has a choice of several routes. One, well known and much traveled, keeps to the western side of the Missis- sippi, through Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Winona, in Minnesota, crossing into Wisconsin at La Crosse. From La Crosse the Wisconsin Highway No. 1 1 will take him at the end of 136 miles directly into Madison; and [141] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A from Madison, Highway lo will take him to Janes ville and No. 20 to Delavan, whence No. 50 leads to the town of Geneva, 74 miles east of Madison. Or, if he wishes to keep to Wisconsin roads, crossing into the state at Hudson, he should take Highway 45 to Ellsworth, 34 to Durand or on to Mondovi, No. 25 from Durand or No. 37 from Mondovi to Alma, No. 25 via Galesville, and thence No. 11 to La Crosse, Madison, Janesville, and so on, as before mentioned. Others, covering the concrete from Green Bay to Milwaukee and Chicago, go east across the state from Hudson by Highway No. 12 to Eau Claire, whence No. 16 will take them straight through Chippewa Falls, Abbots- ford, Wausau, and Shawano into Green Bay. This great road across Wisconsin follows almost exactly the present line of demarcation between the agricultural southern por- tion of the state, and the northern, wooded district, origi- nally the great "white pine country," long since stripped by the lumberman, its present dense second growth being increasingly homesteaded and farmed. With its literal thousands of lakes of the Chippewa and Flambeau and Manitowish drainage areas, the "north country" is becoming increasingly a summertime playground, vaca- tion place, and muskellunge-fishing resort of national repute, while with each fall it is the goal beloved of the partridge and deer hunters. Nor are these middle western starting-points for Lake Geneva the only ones whence its visitors come. Every year sees cars from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from Florida and California, roll into Geneva or Williams Bay in increasing numbers. These motorists, however, will [142] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA have their own long-distance route books in hand, and need only to know that, from the eastern states, they must go first to Chicago and thence the few miles farther north. Those coming from the western states, if by the southern route, should make for St. Louis and there take the excellent concrete highways to Chicago; if by the more northerly Lincoln Highway, they need only to keep on to the metropolis of Illinois. If the weather has been good for some days, or if they are willing to take their chances on the dirt roads of the state up to the Wisconsin line, they may shorten the trip by turning northward at Dixon through Rockford and Beloit, or at Geneva (Illinois) through Elgin to Crystal Lake, and thence by either McHenry to the eastern, or Harvard to the western, ends of the "beauty spot of the Middle West." A bit of road that ought not to be missed by anyone motoring around Lake Geneva lies between the foot of the Lake and Williams Bay and is interesting both for its wooded surroundings and for its forming the readiest access to the private homes and grounds along the north shore. From its many smooth turns and dips and rises it is locally known as the "Snake Road." One motoring westward from Geneva should turn to the left at the first four-corners, just after passing the "rustic" gateway of the Borden estate. Keeping to the road thus reached, one passes in the rear, and past the barns, gardens, and handsome entrances of more than a dozen of the most widely known of the residences on the Lake. This road will also bring him back to the main highway between Geneva and the Bay. If driving from the direction of the Bay, at a Httle over 4 miles of travel he will come [143] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA to a four-corners, with a neat brick schoolhouse, known as the "woods school," on his right. Turning south (to the right) here, the second road to the left will put him on the "Snake Road," which, again, will lead him back to the main highway near the town of Geneva. This chapter being written for motorists about Lake Geneva, it may assuredly voice the plaint they repeatedly utter on making the acquaintance of certain of the roads of its neighborhood. When will local road committees and road contractors learn that road funds and road labor are both practically thrown away when they result only in dumping loads of loose gravel in piles in the middle of a highway, leaving it thus, undistributed, unrolled, uncared for, to "let the traffic wear it down" ? The result is of course worthless, the sole possible advantage being that a few possible mudholes are filled up or prevented from forming. The main roads around Lake Geneva con- stitute some of the most constantly used highways in Wisconsin, and ought to be the finest in the state. Being used for several months in the year largely by "for- eign" motorists, tourists, visitors, and summer residents from outside the state, if kept in good condition or finely paved they would attract wide attention and reflect great credit on the state and on those responsible for it. As it is until given other treatment than that which it has until now (1922) received, some are the most uncom- fortable and least creditable pieces of public highway in the Badger State. [144] CHAPTER IX WALWORTH COUNTY The greatest impetus to the early and rapid entrance and settlement of southern Wisconsin was due to the spread throughout the eastern states of reports accom- panying the attention attracted thither during the Black Hawk War of 1832, commenting on the almost untouched richness, fertility, natural advantages, and attractiveness of this part of the Middle West. It is told of Sullivan's expedition against the hostile Iroquois of New York State in 1779, that on the march of his volunteers, almost wholly frontiersmen and pioneer farmers, into the new and to them unvisited country covered by the campaign, these infantrymen might be seen to thrust their bayonets into the earth as they marched, examining the bits of dirt thus picked up to determine the quality, richness, and desirability of the soil as the possible location of future farms. The dis- coveries thus made were followed, immediately on the close of the campaign and its termination of dangers of further savage hostilities, by a notable wave of immi- gration into the districts explored, resulting in the rapid settlement of all the fertile lands marched over by the troops during the war. In much the same way were inspired the first large movements of settlers into the hitherto little-known "frontier" territory of southern Wisconsin. The troops which did the most persistent and aggressive work in following Black Hawk's thousand Sauk warriors in their [145I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA retreat up the Rock River Valley into southeastern Wisconsin, to Lake Koshkonong and westward to the Mississippi River, were General Atkinson's army of three hundred regulars under Colonel Zachary Taylor and thirty-two hundred volunteers from the newly opened lead mines along the Illinois line and the front line of farm settlements in Michigan. It is difficult for us of this later day of a largely stable population and settled state of civilization to realize how widespread was the spirit of eager pushing ever westward into the reported new, rich, and desirable lands and natural surroundings continually announced from the ever advancing western frontier. Everyone had the fever for westward investigation, settlement, and residence. The motive was begotten in almost equal parts of the spirit of adventure, of a desire for improved circumstances quickly to be won, and of eagerness for the rich gains and money profits to be made by trade and business in supplying the needs of new communities. The eastern farmer wearied of his stony hillside acres when he heard of the stoneless loam of western river valleys. The ambitious merchant dreamed of open- ing warehouses beside the piers of Detroit and Chicago, their cargoes from the East to be quickly turned into profits by sale to the new towns and developing settle- ments. Not least eager of all to push still farther were the residents on the frontier itself, in many of whom no impulse was as irresistible as the conviction that, desirable as might be their present location, there were still richer soil, more game, new water powers to be developed for the taking, new communities springing up in which ability might find opportunity for leadership and promotion — and [146] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA these always just ahead! Accordingly, for the seventeen years from the Black Hawk War to the discovery of gold in California, it was not the Far West but southern Wisconsin that was the eagerly sought El Dorado of American ambition. It may be commented that the contagion was not confined to this side of the Atlantic; nor, alas, was its promotion always honest. Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit contains a sad, bitter, and exaggerated, but by no means wholly unwarranted description of the crudities, dis- honesties, and disappointments suffered by many a hopeful and trusting but ignorant and inexperienced English immigrant, who hastened to America's newer settlements only to lose his little all in deluded invest- ments or to find himself, perhaps at the best, amid frontier circumstances and peoples so foreign to his way of life that he returned to England, if able to return at all, disgusted and embittered against America and all her ways. The early German and Swiss immigrants of the forties, less ambitious of rapid gains and more inured to hard work, found things more to their liking, and became elements that quickly took root in the new soil and developed into communities noted for their industry, thrift, and devotion to liberty, education, and religion. It soon became a middle western proverb that "the six northern counties of Illinois and the six southern counties of Wisconsin" were the "richest country in the Mississippi Valley." The writer, then a resident of one of the Illinois counties in question, remembers often hearing the saying quoted in his boyhood, and the verdict remains largely true today. [147] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Walworth County, Wisconsin, lies in this favored district. Just east of the main line of march of the troops in the Black Hawk War, it was visited by their scouts and rangers, and after the suppression of the more restless Indian tribes the lands of its remaining groups of peaceful Pottawatomies were acquired by the govern- ment, and the splendid waters, woods, and fertile up- lands were eagerly sought by those who had heard of the richness, resources, and beauty of the whole area. These hastened to enter their claims, to erect their first log-cabin homes, to clear acres and break them with plow and ox team, or to grasp the great opportunity of the hour by erecting sawmills and gristmills wherever lake or river could be dammed. To such localities the new roads accordingly led, and near them gathered the new cabins, houses, farms, stores, schools, and churches, forming hamlets which presently grew into villages, towns, and cities. There is hardly a center in Walworth County today which had not an early water power and mill as its original attraction. The Territory of Wisconsin was created by act of Congress in 1836 out of what had been till then a part of the Territory of Michigan; and was fortunate enough to escape the awful names of "Michigania" and "Assen- sipia," suggested for portions of its area in Thomas Jefferson's plans of 1874 for the Northwest Territory! Becoming a state ten years later, its line of demarcation from Illinois was confirmed at 42^34'. This line lies 3I miles south of the southernmost point of Lake Geneva. Walworth County was set apart in 1839, having been before that date included in Racine County. It was [148] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA named in honor of Chancellor Reuben H. Walworth of New York State, then a nationally known figure. The town of Elkhorn, located at the exact geographical center of the county, was selected as the county seat. The county forms an exact square, 24 miles on a side, con- taining 576 square miles. It is divided, checkerboard- fashion, into sixteen townships of 1,6 square miles each — each a square, 6 miles on a side — named as below: White- water La Grange Troy East Troy Richmond Sugar Creek Lafayette Spring Prairie Darien Delavan Geneva Lyons Sharon Walworth Linn Bloom- field The western end of Lake Geneva lies in Walworth Township, its larger portion in Linn, and its extreme northeastern bay in Geneva. The townships of Sharon and Walworth were, in the earliest days of the settlement of the Lake country, organized as one, under the name of "Fontana," as voted at a meeting of the settlers at the head of the Lake, September 25, 1839. The gathering was held [149] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA in a small log house near the Lake and consisted of the seven pioneer heads of the families in the neighborhood. The name was suggested by one Mathias More, and was unanimously adopted by the company under the impres- sion that it was a French name! In the legislature of 1842, James A. Maxwell, the local representative, of his own accord effected the change to the name of Walworth. The original name continued in use for a year or more, being in the records of the first township meeting, in 1843. Happily, the old name has been retained as that of the settlement which has grown up on the site of the homes of those who first adopted it. Within the first half-dozen years of the separate existence of Walworth County, one corner of its soil became the scene of the rise of one of the most curious episodes — religious, political, or social, or, as in this case, all three combined — in the entire history of the United States. Now an almost completely forgotten incident of the long ago, having lasted for little over a dozen years in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was for a time none other than the only attempt ever made to establish a kingdom within the bounds of the Union. It is safe to say that few of the readers of this book, however well they may know the Lake Geneva country, have ever heard of the audacious and, for a time, largely successful enter- prise in question, despite the fact that in their grand- fathers' days it gained a wide notoriety and for a period numbered among its adherents, as so eminent an authority as Reuben G. Thwaites says, "several thousand" souls. The scheme was begotten in the brain of an ambitious young ex-schoolmaster, journalist, lawyer, office-holder, [150] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and temperance lecturer, from New York State, James Jesse Strang by name, who in 1843, at thirty years of age, came to the Httle village of Burlington and opened a law office. He presently married Mary Pierce, the daughter of a settler on a tract of land west of the ham- let. It was at the time of the Mormon activity at Nau- voo, Illinois, and itinerant Mormon preachers to the frontier settlements evidently suggested to the restless mind of the newcomer a possible channel for accom- plishing dreams of a rapid rise to prominence and power. Visiting Nauvoo, he made a favorable impression on the minds of the leaders of the sect, hastened through the preliminaries of conversion, baptism, and promotion, was empowered to "plant a stake of Zion" near his Wis- consin home, and within six months was aspiring to become a second Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. For his Wisconsin colony he selected the site of his wife's inherited property, a mile and a half west of Burlington, where the road to Spring Prairie — now State Highway 20 — crosses the White River. Here, in a lovely and fertile valley, in what is now Section 25, Spring Prairie Township, he established a town which he named Voree, and soon succeeded in gathering around him a colony of several hundred of the more credulous and easily led of the immigrants of the early forties. These colonists located on farms on both sides of the river, the majority of them within half a mile of where it was planned to raise an enormous "temple." This structure, reported as intended to cover not less than two acres of ground, was south of the present highway and west of the bridge over the White River. Here the [151] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA cornerstone was laid with imposing ceremonies, to which the colonists marched in procession, four abreast, their numbers forming a column half a mile long. During the active life of the colony at Voree, however, the building rose no higher than to a point where its thick basement walls were "up to a man's chin," as a contemporary- description puts it. The motorist who will stop his car, a few hundred yards west of the bridge, long enough to survey the splendid farms about the spot today, may note on the north side of the road one or two venerable stone houses of simple architecture. These have survived from the days when they stood among many that lined the highway and formed the once widely heralded "City of Voree," to quote the founder's words, "which is, being translated. Garden of Peace." The cemetery of the colony is still barely traceable, on the west side of the road from the bridge south to the Burlington-Lyons highway, on a knoll crossed by a fence near the barns of the Yanney farm. Here in a fence corner a few weed-grown depres- sions and crumbling fragments of headstones indicate the graves, in one of which eventually lay the founder of the settlement, after the curtain had fallen on his daring schemes, tragically brought to their close. On the death of Joseph and Hiram Smith at the hands of the mob at Carthage, Illinois, June 27, 1844, Strang hastened to Nauvoo and appeared before the remaining Mormon leaders with what purported to be a recent letter from the dead "prophet," prophesying his assassina- tion and appointing Strang his successor! This was too much for Brigham Young and his associates, who promptly [152] JAMES JESSE STRANG (From the only photograph known to be in existence. Reproduced from Henry E. Legler's Leading Events of Wisconsin History.) THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A denounced Strang as an impostor and a forger, and excommunicated him. Nothing daunted, he returned to Voree, began the mentioned huge central house of worship, and established a printing press, a weekly paper, the Voree Herald^ and a council of elders and priests. In September, 1845, Strang announced a revelation that there was an "ancient record" buried within the limits of the settlement, which he was to obtain and translate. He took several selected witnesses to the spot, on the low hillside south of the river, whence, from under an oak tree of considerable size, there were disinterred a number of copper plates whose mysterious hieroglyphic writings, when deciphered by Strang, went far in the minds of his followers to establish his claim to the right of succession of their martyred seer, whose original "golden plates" had laid the foundation for the whole subsequent structure of Mormonism. For his plates Strang claimed that their weird characters embodied laws originally and divinely given to Moses in addition to those contained in the Old Testament, and his transla- tion of their alleged contents formed the principal text of the "Book of the Law of the Lord," which he subse- quently gave out, and presently printed, for the govern- ment and discipline of the sect which he was rapidly forming. From the time of this announcement Strang was known to the "saints," of his own group at least, as the "Prophet James." The Mormon phrase, "planting a stake of Zion," was not a figure of speech only, as a symbolic "stake" was actually erected, being a great oaken post 8 feet high and 19 inches in diameter, set up in the center of the THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA highway where it crossed the county Hne. After the collapse of the colony it was removed by the authorities as an obstruction to traffic. The White River, the outlet of Lake Geneva, passing through the settlement, was the center of many of its principal activities. Here a dam for a water power was built, here converts were immersed, and the rising ground on the south bank formed an open-air auditorium for the services held on Saturdays, the "seventh-day" Sabbath of the faithful. There was no bridge across the river during the life of the colony, but a ferry was operated, with a charge of 25 cents for each passeng^er, the proceeds going to the treasury of the colony. The old stone house still standing on the north side of the road west of the river and nearest to it was the printing establishment whence the Voree Herald was issued and many other pamphlets were produced. (The name of the official paper was changed once or twice, as old specimens indicate.) On the removal of the colony this house was occupied by Strang's parents, who, though they joined his settlement here, never shared its faith. By 1847 ^^^ ^^^s than two thousand persons were residents of "Voree." Nevertheless, while the colony increased, a spirit of hostility to the spread of Mormonism grew among the fron- tier settlements. On the resultant migration of the Illinois Mormons to their eventual new home at Salt Lake City, Strang saw plainly that a new and more isolated location would be required for the development of his organization along his intended hnes and under his contemplated complete control over its members and their activities. From Voree he sent out missionaries — even to Europe! — [154] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA and among these recruiting agents some reported to him on the desirability of an almost unoccupied island in the northern end of Lake Michigan, known as Great Beaver Island. With others of his "apostles" he visited the island in May, 1847, and in 1849 he effected the removal of the great majority of his colonists by vessels from Racine to this and its neighboring islands. Here they were to support themselves chiefly by the fishing industry. The main settlement, on Great Beaver Island, was named in his honor, "St. James." Here again he built houses, roads, a school, fishing schooners, a printing-office which issued innumerable pamphlets and an ambitious news- paper, the Daily Northern Islander, Here again was begun another vast temple, the log walls of which had risen some 8 feet in height by the time that the last disaster overtook him and hio schemes for power. On July 8, 1850, in accordance with a new "rev- elation" found in the "Book of the Law of the Lord," Strang had himself formally crowned as king. An elaborate coronation procession and ceremonial was ar- ranged by an ex-actor among his followers, with a scarlet coronation robe and a crown consisting of a plain circlet with frontal stars. Thereafter widely known as "King Strang," he yet, probably very wisely, allowed himself to be mentioned in his own press only as "Mr. Strang." The annual recurrence of the date, however, was ordered to be observed as "King's Day," and during the remaining six years that the colony lasted was observed with ceremonials, burnt offerings, obeisances to the king, and feasting and dancing. The reality of his claims to royalty, in his own mind and doubtless much more in [1551 THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA the simple minds of his followers, may be known from the fact that the "Book of the Law of the Lord" bore on its title-page the authorization: "Printed by command of the King, at the Royal Press, St. James," and the letters "A.R.L," abbreviating, royal fashion, the Latin words meaning "First Year of the King." A bitter hatred of this rival and royal settlement soon developed among the other fishing villages of the northern shores of Lake Michigan, the feud attaining proportions that attracted the attention of newspapers of the eastern states and led Strang to arm his fishing schooners with cannon secured from Chicago. A federal investigation, instigated by President Millard Fillmore himself, having come to naught owing to Strang's influence with the Michigan courts and his plea of protection under American guaranties of religious liberty, he ventured on extensions of his absolutism and a more despotic rule. Strict tithes were exacted of all the colonists and sumptuary laws forbade the use of certain foods and liquors and tobacco. Strangely enough, however, and with a curious parallelism to Mr. Kipling's story of "The Man Who Would Be King," Strang's fatal step took the form of interference with the affairs of the women of his "king- dom." For these he first proclaimed a law that one and all must wear their hair tightly drawn back and fastened in a knot at the back of the head and must adopt a garb consisting of a most unattractive blouselike upper gar- ment with calico pantalettes or bloomers reaching to the ankles. He then discovered that the "Book of the Law of the Lord" sanctioned polygamy, and took five wives himself, his first wife having remained behind [156] THE Bool^ of tliB Law of tJB LoPd; CONSISTING OF An Inspired Translalion of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Law given to Moses, and a very few Additional Command- ments, with Brief Notes and References . PRINTKU BY COMMAND OF THE KING. AT THK ROYAL PRESS, ST. JAMES, A. K. I. FLYLEAF OF THE "BOOK OF THE LAW OF THE LORD," AS PRINTED AT JAMES J. STRANG'S GREAT BEAVER ISLAND COLONY THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A at Voree. The curious reader who may wish either verification or further elucidation along this line may find it in the mentioned laws in chapter xliv. Resentment of procedures such as these was not long in arising, abetted by the rival fisher settlements, and on June i6, 1856, Strang was assassinated, being shot by two rebellious subjects, the bullets from whose horse- pistol and revolver took effect in his head and back. The deed was done in the daytime and the men were well known, their names being immediately published in the local papers, one of them being a man who had been publicly whipped by Strang's orders for upholding his wife's refusal to wear the royally decreed bloomers! The murderers escaped on a steamer to Mackinac and were never brought to trial. Surviving his wounds several days, Strang issued his final orders for the future government of his "kingdom" and asked to be taken back to Voree. This was effected by a few devoted followers, and here his last hours were nursed by his first wife. The house into which he was borne on arrival at Voree is the mentioned old stone house north of the road and near the river, though before the end he was removed to another which has disappeared. He died on July 9 and was buried, as mentioned, in the nearby cemetery. Upon his death his disillusioned followers gradually wandered away from both colonies. The Beaver Island town was abandoned and was burned by its rivals, the foundations of the first temple at Voree were torn up, the very name of the place disappeared from the maps of Wisconsin, and the entire strange — indeed, the all-but-incredible — incident of a dozen years' [157] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA duration swiftly passed into the limbo of the many- curious but brief vagaries of human ambition and human delusion. In later years, on the sale for farm purposes of a portion of the old Mormon cemetery, including that containing the grave of Strang, a surviving daughter returned and effected the removal of his remains to the Protestant cemetery of the adjoining town of Burlington, where their resting-place, though unmarked, is well known to at least a few today. As lately as October, 1922, there still resided, in a little house embowered among the trees beside the main road that runs through the lovely valley of old Voree, a former follower and devotee of Strang, whose loyalty to his leader in the events of the long ago survived the passage of the years. It seems quite certain that this venerable man, Mr. Wingfield Watson by name, was the last sur- vivor of Strang's officers, he having been an "elder" in the island colony. Born in 1828, he went from his Michigan home to join the "saints," becoming the official "scribe" or recorder. At the hour of Strang's assassination he was working on the rising log walls of the "temple," and heard the fatal shots from the murderers' weapons. On the dissolution of the colony, after several sojourns, he came back to the site of Voree, where he resided for many years, a tireless student of the Book of Mormon and of the Book of the Law, and having among his humble possessions many interesting and valuable souvenirs, original newspapers, and the like, relating to an episode that has all but passed out of the knowledge of the rest of the world. To his documents, [158] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA his remarkable recollections, and his courtesy toward all who were interested in that past of which he was a part, the writer is indebted for many of the facts of the strange story. Another small Mormon group remains in Walworth County, though belonging to that split or branch of the original Mormons known as the "Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints" which was formed by Joseph Smith, Jr., in i860. Of considerable numbers throughout the country, they have no connection with the Salt Lake branch and sect. This group was formed in Delavan and Geneva townships in 1886, and a year later built a church near Delap's Corners, on the Williams Bay- Elkhorn Road, a mile and a half north of the Bay. There are about sixty nominal members of this organization. Their simple, little old white frame building bears upon its front only the mystic letters, "L.D.S.," a designation which leads many a passing motorist to wonder, "What kind of a church can that be .''" — a question which, so far as the knowledge of most of them goes, remains forever unanswered. One of the most interesting facts about the county, and one that has probably been more influential than any other in giving it its three-quarters of a century of unbroken prosperity and thrift, is that from the first its population has been more largely of Anglo-Saxon descent and of American lineage than has been the case with many other districts in the state. As Reuben G. Thwaites, Wisconsin's foremost historian, says of the whole southern portion of the state: "It is a significant fact that the conspicuous force in the formative period of statehood [159] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA was that inherited from New England and New York." This was especially true of Walworth County. The majority of its first settlers came from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, and these and their descend- ants, at election time and in town meeting and on village boards, adopted policies, and nominated and elected men, of American principles of property rights, conservative taxation, sound financial transactions, religious liberty, universal and progressive education, and the recognition and promotion of industry and thrift. As a result of the influence of such ideas, there is perhaps as large a proportion of Anglo-Saxon names among the owners of farms and industries throughout the county as may be found in any county in the state; a vastly larger propor- tion than is the case with many other counties, some of which were settled by whole immigrant colonies of Swiss, Germans, Poles, or Bohemians, migrating en bloc from their native towns to Wisconsin and establishing as nearly as possible complete duplicates of their European communities. There are not less than a score of such national groups throughout the state, the principal ones being the Swiss town of New Glarus, the German com- munistic settlement of St. Nanzianz in Manitowoc County, the Icelanders of Washington Island in Green Bay, the Cornishmen of the lead-mine district, and the Norwegians of Koshkonong, the wealthiest Norwegian community in America. All these were planted in the years when, as has been mentioned, Wisconsin was the Land of Promise for the ambitious of both sides of the Atlantic. By the time of the arrival of these, however, the advantages of Walworth County had been largely pre-empted by a [i6o] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA population of American birth. Next in number came the Germans, and in recent years a large number of farmers of Scandinavian origin have bought farms or entered business activities in several towns, reaping the rewards of their characteristic patience, industry, thrift, and clannishness for the mutual benefit of all concerned. The present general psychology of the rural districts has been described as being of the "Chautauqua Circle class," and the designation is not inapt, with its convey- ance of the idea of a middle-class conservatism coupled with a marked interest in good speaking, preaching, music, humor, and the neighborliness of such gatherings. The spirit, the dramatis personae, not less than the very dialect of Zona Gale's Friendship Village, can be found in many a Walworth County village today. The influences that have gone farthest to unify the population of the county along financial, educational, religious, and social lines have been the subject of one of the most remarkable and valuable studies ever conducted of so large a geographico-social unit. Some years ago a studious resident of Wisconsin was perusing a copy of the English scientific periodical and review. Nature, when he came upon a mention of an unusual work among American publications of the day. It has not been the fashion for English critics to praise contemporaneous American documents highly, and the laudatory comments on the treatise in question surprised the reader. The pamphlet reviewed was described as an elaborate analy- sis of the various social interests of an entire county in one of the states, and the practical relationships of y the rural population to the typical activities of the small [i6i] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA towns of its 500 square miles. Existing influences, mercantile, banking, educational, and religious, were indicated by charts based on an actual house-to-house or farm-to-farm survey of the entire county. The value of these influences and their adequacy or inadequacy to meet the needs of the population were estimated, and the needed and possible improvements in the advantages and facilities enjoyed by the rural population and its children and youth were pointed out. The English editor's comments on the work as a study of a community and a foundation for the betterment of its material, intellectual, and spiritual conditions, deeply impressed the Wisconsin reader. As he read he said to himself, **If I knew where in the entire United States there was a county which had been made the subject of so valuable, modern, and progressive a study as this, where existing facts and influences are so well known and the lines of progress so accurately pointed out, I should feel like deliberately going there to live!" Hastening through the review to find out in what state the county thus studied lay, he was amazed to discover that it was none other than Walworth County, Wisconsin, within whose bounds he himself lived, and had for a score of years! The work reviewed in the English magazine was a pamphlet published by the University of Wisconsin as its Research Bulletin No. 34, entitled. The Social Anatomy of a Rural Community ^ by Mr. C. J. Galpin, then a member of the university's staff, but since then called, largel]/ as a result of this notable piece of work, to "go up higher" and to serve the United States government and the entire nation along similar lines. Its thoroughness may [162] THE BOOK OF L A K E GENEVA be inferred from the fact that it contains— for it is still in print and may be obtained from the university — a map of the county on which is indicated every single home in the county, and a series of charts showing where the residents of these homes do their trading or banking, what local newspaper they take, where they market their dairy products, what churches they go to, what high schools their children attend, and the extent to which the offered public-library privileges of the towns of the county are used by the rural population. Coupled with a second related social study by the same author, entitled. The Country Church an Economic and Social Force, and similarly published by the state university, these offer to interested individuals and interests one of the most remarkable and valuable studies yet produced by modern sociological science. It is along lines like these that future years will see the scientifically determined prog- ress, material and spiritual, of rural America planned and carried out. Thus the very hills, valleys, and lake shores originally eagerly appropriated by the forefathers because of their offer of material reward shall yield to posterity a larger prosperity, intelligence, beauty, and spirituality than was ever dreamed by the pioneers whose courage and toil blazed the way to their Promised Land. Among the fifty churches of the county, two of those located in its rural centers deserve special recognition for the breadth of their spirit and their ministration to their respective districts. These are the community church of the village of Honey Creek, in Spring Prairie Township, and the Methodist church of La Grange, at almost the exact center of the township of that name. Wholly [163] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA undenominational in spirit, these churches have discovered that the Christian reHgion is rightly concerned for the highest possible development, attainment, and happiness of men, women, and children, here as well as hereafter. Accordingly, charities, men's "brotherhoods," women's societies, high schools, lecture courses, agricultural im- provements, social gatherings, and recreations have all been objects of the practical work of both. Happy they who live in a community which has discovered that such tasks flow directly from the words of the Master! Surely, this is to help that his Kingdom shall come and his will "be done on earth as it is in Heaven." The total resident population of Walworth County was, in 1920, 29,327 persons. Of these the more localized settlements contained respectively the indicated numbers: Whitewater 3>2i5 Walworth 757 Delavan 3>oi6 Genoa Junction 656 Lake Geneva 2,632 Darien 600 Elkhorn i>99i Williams Bay 436 Sharon 908 Lyons 400 East Troy 773 Honey Creek 200 These constitute the twelve principal trading zones for the population of the county. Among them are, naturally, the sources of the seven newspapers published in and supported by the county, the twelve banking centers, the nine high-school locations, and the four public libraries (Whitewater, Lake Geneva, Delavan, and Elkhorn); the latter, interestingly enough, are estimated to be patronized by not less than 31 per cent of all the farm homes within reach. They also form the twelve centers where the farming population worships which [164] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA prefers to "go to town to church" rather than to attend the rural churches. The county has more milk condenseries, nine in number, than any other county in the entire United States. With thirteen milk-shipping points and three creameries, there is marketed an annual dairy output of between $3,500,000 and $4,000,000 in value, the leading product of the county. The county ranks as the third in the state, next to Waukesha and Jeffer- son counties, in the average annual milk yield of each milch cow, with its figures of not less than 5,605 pounds of milk per cow per year. Its 2,779 farms, assessed in 1920 at a value of $51,695,371, contain 59,000 dairy cattle and 33,854 hogs. Of the cattle, 85 per cent are Holsteins. Of the sires of these, 71 per cent are pure- bred bulls. As elsewhere throughout the distinctly dairying areas of the country, the present tendency of the milk industry is to the establishment of con- denseries nearer the immediate source of supply, bringing these "milk factories," as they are often called, out of the larger cities to the towns and villages. Here the received milk is fully treated and bottled before shipment to metropolitan centers, instead of on arrival there in bulk. The number of whole carloads of bottled milk sent from these centers into Chicago alone, every day of the year, would greatly surprise anyone not fa- mihar with the size and constant growth of the milk industry in the Middle West today. Of the farms of Walworth County, more than two- thirds are owned by the families who live on them, less than one-third being operated by tenant farmers. [165] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA A feature of the farms of the county that invariably impresses itself on even the fastest-traveling motorist over its roadways is the remarkable number of the lofty cylindrical silo structures that catch the eye on any glance over the landscapes. These are so numerous and so noticeable — and incidentally their annual contents are so valuable — as to entitle them to a mention by themselves as a notable feature of modern agricultural methods and equipment. Of varying construction — cast concrete, lustrous brown vitrified brick, occasional re- maining older wooden constructions, and often hand- some brick erections with ornamental designs about their tops — their appearance in the landscape has been com- pared by travelers to that of the strange and puzzling ancient "round towers" of Ireland. It is safe to say, however, that the value of their contents would consider- ably astonish any member of the farming population of the Emerald Isle. It has been estimated that the ensilage annually gathered into these modern farm food-storage devices, in the state of Wisconsin alone, represents a value of over ^57,000,000, an amount equal to the com- bined capital of more than one hundred average country banks of the state. There are today more than thirty- five hundred such silos in Walworth County alone, and their number is materially increased every year. While on the subject of this brief sketch of the vocation, character, and spirit of the population of the county, it must not be forgotten that in the hour of their country's greatest need there went forth from the homes of farm and village not less than fourteen hundred of its sons, to take part in the world-war for the rights and liberties of man- [166] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA kind. Despite the repeated asseverations of a certain scion of Wisconsin, that "it was not our war" and that "we never ought to have gone into it," these went not against their will! Instead, they crowded the recruiting offices to enlist, in such numbers that on the occasion of the first draft there were required from Walworth County- less than twenty men; the rest of her entire quota of contribution to the country's forces having been filled by these volunteers of the flower of her youth! Their achievements are part of the history of the immortal Thirty-second Division, the awe of Europe in the hour of battle, to remain for all time the proudest boast of their posterity! The oldest single institution of the community life of the entire county is the "Annual Exhibition of the Walworth County Agricultural Society," commonly called the County Fair. There are county fairs galore in the United States, but few indeed that can boast an unbroken history of over seventy years. In Walworth County the annual fair, hke many other valuable features in its rural life, was due to the fact that its early population came largely from those sections of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, in which the yearly county display was an established feature. The first "exhibition" was in October of 1850, at East Troy. Even at that early date there was shown imported breeding stock in the form of French and German goats and Durham bulls. One exhibitor displayed not less than twenty-five varieties of apples, and a woman contributor had a remarkable display of homemade gloves of her own manufacture. In 1 85 1 the "fair" was held at Elkhorn, on the ground [167] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA now covered by the block southwest of the city park. In 1852 it was held at Delavan, but the next year returned to Elkhorn, where it has been held ever since. In 1855 the Agricultural Society purchased 6 acres of ground, included in the present "fair grounds," to be the site of the annual exhibition. This property has been increased to 54 acres, with all necessary buildings, stables, grand- stands, racetrack, and the like. From total receipts in 1850 reported as I45, its prosperity has increased to the figure of the more than $30,000 annually received today. Some of the finest live stock in the United States is always to be seen at its exhibitions — imported Flemish mares and stallions; Hereford, Guernsey, Holstein, and Swiss Brown cattle, Poland China hogs; and the famous, fashionable, and high-priced Toggen- burg goats. Here too is always to be heard at its best the local pride of Elkhorn, its famous brass band, descended in unbroken line from the original organi- zation formed in the tiny village of more than eighty years ago. Its outdoor concerts in the town square on summer evenings have won wide fame. Audiences of five thousand persons on occasion represent a sixth of the county population, while automobile parties often come from 30 to 40 miles distant. One of the great moving-picture companies, which endeavors to photograph the most representative features of modern American life and to furnish these among their "news films," has "filmed" the crowds on these occasions and sent the pictures far and wide as a remarkable instance of the united social interest of a rural com- munity. [168] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Lastly, a story, and a true one, of a glimpse of the spirit that makes the name of Walworth County significant wherever it is known. A certain farmer and his wife, both of foreign birth, had been by their industry and thrift well rewarded during the long years of their hard-working residence in the country of their adoption. Their broad acres were richly green each spring and more richly golden with each harvest time. Their herd of black and white Holsteins increased yearly. Their very plow horses were fat and sturdy. Their accounts at the village bank and milk condensery were as enviable as their credit at the "general store." Their neat brown house stood amid the towering lindens and catalpas on its green lawn, close beside a great white barn and a great red one and the implement shed and the garage for the Ford and the long poultry-house and the big pigsty. Scarcely the fastest car spun along the hard-graveled highway but its occupants could be seen to sweep with approving, if swift, glances the whole obviously prosperous and well-kept farmstead. But there were drawbacks to it all. They had no children, and therefore the less ties to the spot. They were no longer young, and it was undeniably hard and ceaseless work to keep the house immaculate and the farm going. It was often bitterly cold in winter and as often distressingly hot in midsummer. Why should they not escape it all — quit — sell out — ^and go to, well, say California.? Out there, they heard, it was always mild; no one had to shovel either snow or coal; and what they had in the bank, with what they ought to be able to sell [169] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA "the old place" for, would keep them in modest ease and comfort for the rest of their days. One day a big car stopped before the farm. Its occupant, a prosperous-looking man, scanned the place for a moment before he got out and walked to the front door. In businesslike fashion he came out with his errand without delay. "I like the looks of this place," he said. "I've often seen it, driving by, and if you'd like to talk about selling, I'd like to talk about buying it — right now. You would? Well, that's good. Would you consider anything like twenty-five thousand for it, as it stands } You would! That's better yet. Can't you meet me at Lawyer Hawkins' office in Delavan tomorrow afternoon, with your abstract, and start him making out the papers right away? You can? Well, that about settles it, I guess. See you tomorrow afternoon. So long!" and the big car rolled away from the front driveway, where it would so soon drive in to stay. They looked at one another. They could hardly believe what had happened, it had transpired so quickly. Of a sentimental but reticent race, they had not much to say, but each knew what the other was thinking. It had come! California was theirs! No more long and toiling days for people of their age. No more exposure to sun and rain and heat and cold. No more daily waiting on horses and cows and pigs and chickens, and calling that "making a living." Twenty-five thousand, with what they had, would more than take care of them — out in California's warmth and brightness and its big cities and beside its mountains and the sparkling sea! They could "take it easy," now. Their dream had come true! [170] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA In Lawyer Hawkins' office, the next day, their purchaser-benefactor was as prompt, brief, and business- like as before. He took the abstract of title and passed it to the man of law. "He'll get busy on it now," he said to the farmer and his wife. "Let's see, this is Friday. Suppose you come in on Monday afternoon; the papers'll be ready to sign then. But I want to bind this, and you'd probably like to see some money. So here's my suggestion. We'll each make out a check for three thousand, to bind this bargain, and we'll each give our check to Hawkins, and on Monday, when we sign, you will get your check back again, and mine, and twenty- two thousand more. It's just a deposit, you see, to keep either of us from backing out of the deal. Is that O.K. with you ? Here's my check now." The farmer ruminated over the proposition for a few moments, but could see nothing wrong with it. Hawkins told him it was all right, and he had known Hawkins for forty years, so presently he produced a checkbook and made out and handed over his check for $3,000. On the way home they stopped the Ford at the rail- road station and the farmer went in and with some embarassment but even more suppressed eagerness asked the agent for "a time-table to Californy." He received a couple of folders whose mere blue and green pictures of Long Beach and Mount Lowe were fascinating — how much more to people who could actually "go there 'most any day we get ready, now" ? At the farm driveway they looked with new eyes at the "old place" which they were so soon to leave. How queer it would seem to think of not coming back to it [171] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA any more ? Never again to glance it all over critically and see "what was needed" to be done. Never again to see the sun on the barnyard at dawn, or setting in scarlet and gold across the highway and the fields and disappearing behind Lake Delavan's distant trees. She only murmured, "It'll seem queer," but he understood. "Yep," he said, "but I reckon things'll look nice in Californy, too." At the kitchen breakfast table the next morning they each avoided meeting the other's eyes, and both knew it. At last the farmer hesitated: "Don't look to me like ye'd slept much last night ?" — interrogation in his tone. ''Me — I cried all night," she answered. He lit his pipe gloomily. "Sunset looked good last night when we come in," he went on. " I seen a lot of 'em, lookin ' that way, evenin's, we've been livin' here; an' I got to wonderin' what I'd do without 'em to look at an' see what the next day's goin' to be. An' last night I got to thinkin' about the horses an' cows an' pigs an' all, an' wonderin' who'd look after 'em like I've done — ^or if that feller'd just sell 'em all off to folks livin' 'round here. They's some ain't fur away I'd hate to have handlin' stock I've treated like they'd ought to be treated." He headed for the barn without more words. With Sunday's partial respite from farm work they sat out under the trees for a few moments and talked it over, after the fashion of their kind. "Out in Californy we might maybe wish we hadn't done it," the wife said. Presently she added, "An' if either of us was to die — an' — an' we ain't goin' to live forever, at our age — why what in the world 'd the other do then?'' with a final [172] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA desperate vehemence as the horror and loneliness of the imagined situation dawned vividly upon her for the first time. The farmer said nothing for a long time, but when he spoke it was obviously continuing his thought aloud. "Three thousan' 's three thousan','' he said. "But we've made it afore, an' we can make it again, give us a few years more. An ' if we let it go — why, we ain't lost the place, anyhow. An' if we ain't any children to keep it, why, there's my brother Ole's boys, to leave it to, when we get through. They've got farmin' sense an* they'd keep it like we've done. They soldiered too — didn't wait to be drafted, but just up an' went — remember how proud we was of 'em then? Somethin's due 'em from us old folks for that, too, I been thinkin'. Guess I forgot about 'em when I got to thinkin' how good Californy might feel." After a long silence it finally came out — the great question. "It's yours's much 's it's mine. You willin' we sh'd tell that man he c'n keep the money — and we keep the place ?" With a great sob she cried out, "O yes, yes^ and her hands went up to her face as she said it. At the appointed hour of Monday afternoon they stood in the door of the office in Delavan. "Come in — it's all ready," greeted the lawyer and his client together, pointing to papers spread out upon the table. The farmer stepped to the table and saw his abstract and picked it up. Putting it in a pocket he said, "We jus' come to say that we've thought it over an' we reckon we won't trade. Yes, I know about that check o' mine. [173] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA You keep it, jus' 's we agreed. It's all right with me — it's worth it!" And he was gone. The Ford lost no time in reaching the farm driveway once more. As it stopped its occupants looked, with new eyes again, at fields and barns and the big silo and the black and white Holsteins; though perhaps she looked chiefly and fixedly at the little brown house among the lindens and catalpas. He turned to look at the sun as it sank in scarlet and gold across the highway and the fields and the trees beyond Delavan Lake. "It's worth it," he said. [174] CHAPTER X INSTITUTIONS AND HOMES ON LAKE GENEVA Loria, the great Italian economist, has a sentence in his noted work, Analisi della Proprieta Capitalistay which reveals that he, like another De Tocqueville or Bryce, has seen deeply enough into American history to note the significance of the unique rapidity of the progress of civilization in the United States. "America," he says, "has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history." Upon this statement our own Professor Frederick Jackson Turner, of Harvard, formerly of the University of Wisconsin, in his fascinating book, The Frontier in American History^ makes a comment which is not less striking than its text. Quoting the sentence, he says: There is much truth in this. The United States Hes like a huge page in the history of society. Line by line, as we read this page from West to East we find the record of social evolution. It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civiliza- tion; we read the annals of the pastoral stage in ranch-life; the exploita- tion of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement; and finally the manufacturing organization with city and factory system. This page is familiar to the student of census statistics, but how little of it has been used by our historians. Particularly in eastern states this page is a palimpsest. What is now a manufacturing state was in an earlier decade an area of intensive farming. Earlier yet it had been a wheat area, and still earlier the "range" had attracted the cattle-herder. Thus Wisconsin, now [175] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A developing manufacture, is a state with varied agricultural interests. But earlier it was given over to almost exclusive grain-raising, like North Dakota at the present time. Some reader may like to know the meaning of the word "palimpsest" used by Professor Turner in his description of the successive scenes of civilization's progress of which the United States has been the stage. In early litera- ture, long before the invention of printing, when writing materials were none too abundant, the scribe who found himself without a fresh sheet of parchment or papyrus for letter or other document would frequently avail himself of a page on which something else had been written, and would write his composition directly over the previous writing. Such a page is called in scientific phraseology a "palimpsest," signifying two or more records written on the same surface. The comparison is particularly apt as Professor Turner uses it, to illustrate the successive stages of progress in civilization which have taken place in wonderfully rapid succession in many parts of America, compared with the far more gradual advance- ment from one such stage to the next on the older and slower areas of the other continents. As in a true literary "palimpsest," or twice- written page, the later records have not quite obliterated the earlier, and traces of the former are discernible side by side with the latter. The spinning wheel of a century ago and the modern sewing machine may be found in the same Tennessee mountain cabin. The motorist touring southern highways may still note the ox team at the plow, and perhaps a tractor at work in the next field. In remote Rocky Mountain creeks an occasional aged prospector still "pans" for gold- [176] A\ THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA dust as they did in '49, but now perhaps within sound of the pounding stamps of some famous mining plant equipped with the latest modern machinery driven by electricity generated by a turbine at some waterfall miles away. In Walworth County, while writing these pages, the writer saw a Scandinavian farmer mowing by hand with a straight-handled scythe with right-angled blade, such as the first Norwegian colonists brought with them to the same territory in the early fifties. The student of European history must peruse the records of centuries to discern the successive stages of social evolution through which mankind has slowly arrived at present conditions and equipment. In America the past was but of yester- day. Its conditions may be learned from the reminiscences of men and women still living. One may talk with men who walked across the continent beside the ox teams and the prairie schooner, and who in their old age revisit the scenes of their youth, making the return trip by rail in as many days as they spent months on the original journey. Owing to the comparatively late discovery of Lake Geneva by the white man, these traces of early conditions amid the accomplishments of a later civilization, the things which give the study of American history its peculiar fascination, are especially in evidence to the student of its neighborhood. The surveyor who in 1835 was probably the first white man to view the Lake from its eastern end lived to see, less than six decades later, its shores and waters the favorite summer resort of tens of thousands of visitors, and a flourishing and modern little city built along the very gravel beach which his was the [177] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A first white foot to tread. Payne, the hardy old frontiers- man who in 1836 spent two days in walking entirely around Geneva and Como, and found the surrounding country a primeval wilderness tenanted only by savages, saw before his death, thirty-five years later, the forests cleared, their areas converted into farms, the magically spreading system of American railways reaching the lake shore, steamboats plying the waters, and the beginning of the transformation of the unbroken forest into those palatial estates which have made Geneva famous as the middle western rival of Lake Champlain, Lake Placid, or Newport itself. Such rapidity of development of an uninhabited wilderness into an area of intensive modern agriculture, of a network of railways, of modern towns with every adjunct of civilization, and finally into a spot famous for its beauty and sought by thousands annually for residence or recreation, within the span of only about fifty years of human activity — all this could have hap- pened, and has happened, nowhere else on the surface of the globe. This it is that gives the swiftly moving panorama of American history its irresistible appeal. Alike beside the Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, the story of social progress from the cave dwelling to the chateau, from the savage to the savant, from the tribe to the empire, has occupied twenty centuries. But along the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Great Lakes, or even on the green hills and sparkling beaches of Lake Geneva, a similar record has required but from a tenth to a twentieth of that time for the narrative of a higher rise to a greater freedom. Less than 1 miles outside the eastern edge of Walworth County, in the town of Burlington, there stands one of [178] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA the beautiful residence estates of southeastern Wisconsin. Covering an entire city block, the grounds full of every variety of tree, shrub, and flower that will grow in its latitude, it testifies to the industry, thrift, and culture of the descendants of a German immigrant who in the forties began a business which is still carried on in the original quaint old brick building where it started. Amid the drives and pleasure grounds about the mansion, at one end of a superb vista of lofty pines, there stands one of the oldest remaining log cabins in the state. Its every timber square-hewn by the adze of some hardy frontiers- man, from the massive iron lock on its door, the first such lock made in the county, to the "pot hooks" still hang- ing in its fireplace and the many pairs of ancient deer's antlers still on its walls, it stands as it stood when its pioneer builder looked from its door upon the surrounding forest broken only by his rude clearing. The combina- tion and the contrast summarize the story of American progress, alike from the tallow dip to the electric light, from the ox team to the automobile, from poverty to prosperity, from the "little red schoolhouse" to the mod- ern university. Well may the world deem the country with such a history the Promised Land, and well might its citizens take as their national motto the devout exclama- tion, "He hath not dealt so with any other nation"! Nor are these reflections aside from the story of Lake Geneva. Similar and even higher, because more altruistic, records are written beside almost its every pier, for even the passengers on tourist steamers to read if they but will. Homes, estates, mansions, are to be seen, which, if they are eloquent of wealth, were not less made possible by [179] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA early toil and maintained by later industry. Magnifi- cent residences tell of the provision by fathers for their children, or again of the realization of the hopes of one generation by the affectionate memories of another. Acres, now of untouched forest and now of formal gar- dens, cared for by gardeners famous in their profession, evidence a love of nature and its beauty and its study. Side by side with these, the groups of summer homes or quaint little all-the-year-'round cottages manifest a simi- lar devotion to the same scenes of beauty unspoiled by the inevitable noise and dirt of factories or the worse din and dinginess of beer gardens and Coney Islands. And among these rise the white-columned porticos of educa- tional institutions, the long roofs that house noble phil- anthropies, or the summer camps of schools of that religion which "alone has made safe anywhere upon the surface of the globe the life of man or the honor of woman." The movement toward the erection of the many beauti- ful homes for which the Lake has long been famous began with the purchase in 1870 of 90 acres of land on the western shore of Geneva Bay by Mr. Shelton Sturges, of Chicago. Beside the summer villa erected the next year, there stood for many years the great Dutch windmill remembered by the oldest visitors to the Lake. On Mr. Sturges' death in 1887 the property passed into the hands of Mr. H. H. Porter, by whom and by the related families of Dr. R. N. Isham and his son. Dr. George S« Isham, the first beautiful estate has been maintained for fifty years in that slowly perfected charm which is the hallmark of years of care. fi8o] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The earliest years of the eighties saw the great devel- opment of the famous residences, at first near the town of Lake Geneva and later extending westward as the equal or superior beauty of the rest of the lake shore was realized. The R. T. Crane house of 1881, known as "Jerseyhurst," was the first of four handsome houses which adorn the enlarged grounds today. Among the later developments of the property are a remarkable grapery and the building that thousands of sightseers noted as the Russian tea house of Chicago World's Fair fame in 1893, which at the close of that exhibition was taken down, transported, and re-erected on the Crane estate. In the same year, 1881, Mr. George Sturges built "Snug Harbor," the place on the northern shore of Geneva Bay now owned by Mr. John Borden, who has retained its original name. The present beautiful adjoining Hubbard Carpenter house also occupies part of the ori- ginal George Sturges property. Other estates begun in the same year were "Alta Vista," the home of O. W. Potter; "Black Tofft," built by Mr. John T. Lester; and "Bonnie Brae," the premises of Judge T. F. Withrow, on the north shore of The Narrows, now the property of Mr. Martin A. Ryerson. Among the earliest of the noted families of Chicago to establish residence on the Lake was that of Mr. N. K. Fairbank, who began in 1875 ^^ influence that has been second to none in its variety of interests and the continued improvement of the family property. The first house was destroyed by fire within the year, but was replaced by an even handsomer structure. In later years the eastern [181] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA shore of Williams Bay, including Cedar Point, was pur- chased, and has remained in its original untouched wooded beauty. From the first Mr. Fairbank was interested in the improvement of the fish of the Lake and the earlier steps toward stocking the waters were of his initiation. A similar interest in the fish of Geneva was taken by the Leiter family, whose great house, "Linden Lodge," was long one of the most striking on its shores. Elaborate fish ponds were maintained for many years on a special property south of Fontana, at the head of the Lake, annually visited by many as one of the sights of the neighborhood. The Leiter family have not resided at the Lake recently, the home having been occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Morris for fifteen years. In 1885 Mr. Conrad Seipp purchased the beautiful headland known as Black Point and built the noble house from whose lofty observatory there may be seen almost the entire area of the Lake, the only point on its shores from which so extensive a view may be had. The sur- rounding grounds, originally rough and cut by ravines, have been modeled into graceful slopes and densely wooded with superb trees, all of which have been placed by Mr. Seipp's heirs, his daughters, Mrs. Otto Schmidt and Mrs. Henry Bartholomay, being the present owners. Another early and beautiful home is situated on the northern point of The Narrows, that of Mrs. S. W. Allerton, whose beautiful greenhouses have become widely famous for the roses to which the larger portion of their innumerable beds are devoted and from which not less than thirty thousand blooms have been cut in a single season ! [182] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA The most notable early development along the south- western shore of the Lake was that of the E. E. Ayer estate, "Fairoaks," begun in 1875 ^^^ continuously added to and beautified with each succeeding year. Extending from the shore of the Lake to the heights of the hills far to the southward, the resultant private park contains 8 miles of driveways, while the varied tastes and interests of its owner have made the residence the repository of one of the most wonderful and beautiful collections of objects of art and of historical interest in all America. Another private park, in this case including a most perfect little individual golf course, is the F. D. Countiss place on the south shore between Duck Hole and Buttons Bay. Amid the immense trees of this large property and near the South Shore Road stand the buildings which, when it was the property of the late James H. Moore, were famous throughout the Middle West for housing more than fifty splendid horses, whose quality and care formed their owner's hobby. A home eminent in the early days of the Lake Geneva colony for the brilliant qualities of its mistress, was that of Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth, on the south shore, adjoining the Countiss place on the west. Designed and built by her daughter, Mrs. Harold Ickes, its years of assiduous devotion to the preservation of its unusual natural sur- roundings have made it one of the beauty spots of the eastern half of the Lake. It was purchased in 1922 by Mr. Sydney Smith, the famous cartoonist. "The most artistic home on the Lake" is a descrip- tion often given of the residence of the late Mr. A. C. Bartlett, on the north shore, east of The Narrows, designed [183] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A by his son, Mr. Frederick C. Bartlett, the artist. Its inner court, with its fountain and flowers and the vistas from its windows, is one of the charming sights of the many beautiful homes along the shore. Among the dense trees on the high point that forms the southern corner of Geneva Bay stands the uniquely shaped building which has given the site its name of "Ceylon Point." This was the famous "Ceylon Court," a notable feature of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. At the close of the exposition it was brought to Lake Geneva by Mr. J. J. Mitchell, and made the nucleus of the residence built about it. Originally 1 50 feet long, with a central court octagonal in shape and 50 feet in diameter, composed of many varieties of Ceylonese woods, it has been enlarged and a second story added. The Mitchell farm is not less notable than the residence portion of the property, with its most modern stables and other buildings where live a herd of splendid cattle and some tremendous imported Belgian horses, all of which look as if always ready for exhibition. Another of the famous buildings of the Columbian Exposition of 1893 stands on the grounds of the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Wrigley, Jr., on the north shore, and is easily seen from passing steamers. This was the Norway Building, a reproduction of Norse architecture of the eleventh century, constructed of many varieties of wood and with four striking dragons' heads rising above the corners of the odd structure. The Wrigley estate was once the property of the late Mr. C. G. K. Billings. In Mr. Wrigley's hands it has become a great combination of summer home and fine stock farm, known as "Green [184] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Gables," with a most brilliant "formal garden" beside the elaborate entrance to the lake shore portion of the grounds. Quite the most stately residence on the same shore is that of Mr. W. W. Shaw, known as "Wadsworth Hall." Originally built by the late Mr. N. W. Harris, the grounds were laid out by the Olmstead Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts. Mr. A. W. Harris, of the same Chicago firm of bankers, is the owner of the striking red-roofed home in a Spanish style of architecture on the high ridge of ground between Lake Geneva and its neighboring Lake Como, commanding a view of both. Visible for several miles in every direction, it is well known to every motorist, as are its nearby farm properties with their beautiful saddle horses and herd of fat Hereford cattle. A recent publication dealing with the most notable private residences of America has singled out one of the homes on the shores of Lake Geneva as most worthy of de- tailed description and illustration. This is the Charles L. Hutchinson property, on the north shore, known as "Wychwood." Designed throughout by the Olmsteads, no place on the Lake has had more thought and care bestowed on its every detail, from the first inception of the home to the present perfection of maintained natural beauty. Unlike some more artifically arranged grounds, Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson have from the first kept almost unaltered the natural aspect of the forest which em- bowers the home. The very approach and driveway through the grounds is a perfect bit of woods road, sur- rounded by a wonderful development of wild flowers, on which both Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson are recognized authorities. Thousands of dafibdills, violets, hepaticas, [185] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A and anemones grow in superb color groups among the trees, while before the great house, almost concealed by its covering vines, masses of forsythia in the spring and of goldenrod in the later summer and early fall form a glorious setting. The natural denizens of the woods are given every encouragement to continue their occupation of these, with the result that every season a dozen nests are built close beside windows and doors, and the chipmunks play unafraid across the brick floors of the sunny verandas and apply to their human friends for seeds and grains that they know await them. The first of the beautiful Kentucky cardinals which in recent years have come to live on the Lake shores, as described in our chapter on its birds, having been seen on Mr. Hutchinson's grounds, he imported and released a female of the species, the pair promptly going to housekeeping. Their des- cendants are believed to be those who form their brilliant addition to the bird life of the surrounding countryside. One of the largest areas under any one ownership in the Lake country is composed of the properties of Mr. S. B. Chapin, of New York City, who spends much of the year in this western summer home. From near The Narrows his many acres run northward to include a considerable portion of the shore of Lake Como. Around the residence they form superb lawns, while their northern meadows and fruit orchards surround the great barns where live the beautiful Swiss Brown cattle which every passing motorist notes with admiration. One may not go on, however, to name still more of the nearly two hundred beautiful private estates which charm the eye of the visitor to the Lake, whether he makes [1 86] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A its rounds by steamer before their piers, by the "lake shore path" which crosses them all, or by motor on the roads that reach them from the landward side. Every one of them is dear to the true lover oi the Lake, not more for their beauty and their often lavish American magnificence than because each testifies that its residents have chosen Geneva's charms for the surroundings of their happiest days, and that they hope that their posterity after them may continue to do so — in saecula saeculorum. The aspect of the Lake in the height of the mid- summer season is enough to make one wish that one might add to these pages a description of the handsome private steam launches and splendid modern power boats which course its waters and add so much to the vividness of the gay and busy social life and scenes of the vacation months. Even more in number and of keener interest to their owners and crews are the scores of yachts whose annual joys and thrills find their climax in the August interlake regatta of the Inland Lake Yachting Associa- tion, for whose week of daily races many of the rival boats are regularly brought overland by "trailers" to whatever body of water is the scene of the competitions. In these contests there regularly meet the fastest craft of Geneva and lakes Winnebago, Oconomowoc, Pewaukee, Pine Lake, and even distant Minnetonka. The local annual sailing classic is, of course, the ancient and hon- orable race for the "Sheridan Cup," well known wherever American yachtsmen meet, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Instituted in 1874, it was named in honor of General Philip Sheridan, who was among the specta- tors at the time. Held in the last week in August of [187] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA each year, it is open to the local "Class A" boats. Its trophy, whose possession carries with it the champion- ship for the year, is really not a "cup" at all, but a beautiful silver model of a famous yacht, the "Nettie," the winner of the race for the first two years and in whose honor the design of the prize was chosen. The name of each year's winner is engraved on the silver base of the trophy, with the owner's name and the date. On the south shore of the Lake, near the southern point of The Narrows, lie the beautiful emerald stretches of the Lake Geneva Country Club, its broad golf links extending southward from the lakeside eminence where stands the architecturally exquisite clubhouse. More than any other one spot the Country Club is the center of the social life of the entire Lake, and its brilliant occasions are noted in the society events of the entire country. Nor are the long-established institutions of life beside Lake Geneva confined to individual homes and the sum- mer gaieties and pleasures of its fortunate residents. Several of its choicest locations are the sites of institu- tions of scientific pursuit, of education and culture, or devoted to giving good times and happy hours to those who otherwise might not have such opportunities. Of the first class the most justly famous is, of course, the great Yerkes Astronomical Observatory of the Uni- versity of Chicago, to whose description we give, as it deserves, a chapter of its own. Perhaps next to it in honor ought to stand its not far distant neighbor, the institution known to thousands of grateful Chicago fami- ihes as "Holiday Home." Begun in March, 1887, the [188] i THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA principal building was completed in the summer of the next year. Conceived by a group of philanthropic women of Chicago, its purpose has been from the first the pro- vision of several weeks of outdoor life for groups of chil- dren, of their mothers, of elderly women, and of younger women, who but for the gift of such outings might not be able to leave the heat and strain of the city in the summertime. Its affairs are now administered and its funds provided chiefly by the generosity of many of the women of the summer colony. An institution of somewhat similar object but different management is that of Olivet Camp, directly beside the Holiday Home, a large summer camp maintained for many years by the Olivet Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Of the institutions of education, culture, and recreation on Geneva's shores, undoubtedly the most widely known is that originally founded as the "Western Secretarial Institute" of the Young Men's Christian Association. While its name has changed it has never ceased its close connection with the great international association for the cultivation of the Christian life among young men and young women of many lands. Begun with the interesting and appropriate ceremony of a "dedicatory camp fire" on the evening of August 12, 1886, its interests, the de- mands upon its facilities, the extension of its properties, and the modernization of its equipment have continued for nearly forty years of sterling influence. Every summer sees successive groups of Y.M.C.A. workers, young people of the Young Men's and Young Women's Associations of the country, the cities, the colleges, and often other organ- izations, gathered here for regular instruction in religious [189] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A educational lines and for training in the physical culture and education which are rightly inseparable from these. Today an adjunct of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion College of Chicago, it is practically the summer session of that institution. Housing its hundreds of guests chiefly in tents, its many other buildings provide a great assembly hall, classrooms, a large reading-room and office building, a vast many-tabled dining-hall, and a huge modern kitchen. Its recreation advantages include swimming and boating facilities on the lake shore, many tennis courts and an athletic field and golf links. The last two are on the high ground above the lakeside and adjoin the famous grounds and structure of the Yerkes Observa- tory. To this great center there come every summer not only young men and women of earnest spirit from all over the country, but many delegates, teachers, and speakers from all over the globe, so that the influence of this institution on Geneva's shores is literally world-wide. Apropos of institutions of this nature, the older resi- dents of the Lake remember with affection the "plain living and high thinking" that for almost a score of years made beloved of many a simple resort known as " Camp Collie," which occupied the high and wooded promontory now called "Conference Point," the western point of Williams Bay. Owned and conducted by Rev. Joseph Collie, D.D., for forty years the pastor of the Congrega- tional church in the town of Delavan, it became the favorite resort of an unusual class of people of simple tastes and devotion to the intellectual and religious life. Its influence is today remembered by many as among the happiest experiences of the families who were accus- [190] OS ^ z < THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA tomed to spend their vacations on its heights and on the beaches and waters below. Among other movements which on these occasions had no small influence was the formation of the nation-wide affiliation of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the various states, whose united relation to one another was inaugurated here. Just west of the "West Beach" of "old Camp Collie" stands another notable institution, Eleanor Camp, the summer home every year of hundreds of the members of the Eleanor clubs for girls and young women. Other clubs, largely of groups of acquaintances or residents of individual towns, have long occupied points of natural charm around the Lake. These usually con- sist of groups of privately owned cottages grouped around central recreation halls, dining-rooms, club houses, hotels, and the like, according to the tastes and objects of the original association of friends and neighbors. Among the earliest of these were the Elgin Club on the north shore; the Harvard Club, Belvidere Camp, the Chicago Club, and Marengo Park on the south shore; and Congress Club on the west shore of Williams Bay. Each of these has had a history of over forty years of happy and inti- mate summer associations on the part of their members and component families. Later similar organizations have been Rockford Camp, between the Eleanor Club and the Y.M.C.A. grounds; the group at Glenwood Springs at the southwestern curve at the head of the Lake; and Buena Vista Park, just east of Fontana, whose site occu- pies that of the Pottawatomie Indian village of the earliest history of the Lake. [191] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA One of the earliest public institutions about the Lake was the famous " Kaye's Park," opened in the early- seventies and soon a popular resort for the visitors who sought the conveniences of a summer hotel, with its partic- ular variety of social life and gaiety. For many years it retained its distinctive popularity, being the scene of many conventions and other summer occasions, and its grounds even occupied at times by the summer encamp- ments of units of Illinois or Wisconsin militia, whose drills and sham battles drew great crowds to the scene. An interesting feature of "old Kaye's Park" was the Wyant Museum which stood on the grounds and whose unusual display of interesting and varied curiosities gave many a fascinated child its first taste of a love for such collections and the information they convey. In 191 1 a large part of the site of this famous old park was purchased by the Northwestern Military and Naval Academy, a secondary school for boys, then located at Highland Park, Illinois. After using the grounds for a number of years as the scene of unique outdoor sessions of the school each summer and fall, the present great white building with its lofty-pillared portico and wings became the permanent home of the institution. Facing across the wide, tree-surrounded parade ground toward the blue Lake, it is impressive and dignified even in the comparative tenantlessness of the summer season, when perhaps most tourists and visitors see it. But during the rest of the year, when its unusual surroundings of lawn and forest are the scene of the busy activities of more than two hundred brilliantly uniformed students and officers, it presents pictures of a training, spirit, and fun [192] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA which any virile boy would give anything within his power to be able to share. Ranked by the War Department in the highest class of the military schools under its inspec- tion, it has been lavishly equipped with governmental and other materials, including tanks, artillery, a fleet of automobiles for purposes of study and maneuver, machine guns, wireless outfits, ambulances, and the like. Through the natural woods that cover a large part of the grounds, and on either side of the winding roadway, the students themselves have constructed an elaborate system of trenches where corresponding tactics can be carried on. Essentially a school designed to prepare for college or university entrance, its honorable record of four hundred (80 per cent) of its alumni in their country's service during the world-war demonstrates what manner of men its influences have tended to make of those who have passed through its doors. The writer has watched its activities under Colonel Royal P. Davidson for many years, and the more he has noted the snap and spirit of the willing self-discipline of its young men, the more he has wished that every boy in the land could go to such a school as this, where one cannot but learn that it is only by "drilling one's self" — as St. Paul said long ago — that the honorable accomplishments of life are prepared for. The motor car and its development of cross-country touring and camping have had a marked effect on the summer population of the Lake, and one which is destined greatly to increase in the future. On a day in the summer of 1922 the County Highway Commission made a count of the traffic on State Route No. 50, between the towns of Geneva and Delavan, and discovered that not less than [193] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA thirty-two hundred cars passed a given point between the hours of six in the morning and eleven at night ! For many years without other railroad access than from Chicago, the Lake has now become a Mecca for motor tourists from every direction and every part of the country. Residents of the Gulf states on their annual escape from the mid- summer heat now make it their goal, as the cars from Florida and Louisiana testify. Especially from the south- west comes much of the new migration, due to the com- pletion of the concrete highways from St. Louis to Chicago, by which route the 360 miles between the cities are often covered in a day. Transcontinental touring parties include a visit to Geneva's shores in their itinerary. Especially the motor campers come in ever increasing numbers. Every day from the first of June to the first of October sees cars, big and little, laden with camping outfits and khaki-clad and sunburned folk, pausing to scan the road- sides around the Lake for likely camping spots. On "week-ends" their numbers double; over legal holidays — Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day — they increase tenfold. The opening of the wooded eastern shore of Williams Bay for camping purposes has drawn these traveling visitors in surprising numbers. Over the Fourth of July week-end of 1921 not less than eleven hundred such campers filled the half-mile of forested shore along the blue waters of the Bay! The automobile has literally created a new epoch in the history of civilization in America. In greater ease and speed of local and interurban transportation, in extending the suburbs of cities by the facility with which the bus- iness district may be reached from distant homes, in [194] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA affording the farming population a new and ready access to markets or shipping points, in bringing formerly isolated communities into touch with the conveniences of towns and cities, its effect upon the business and social relation- ships of the entire country is increasingly amounting to nothing less than a new age of an undreamed-of contact of every part of the nation with every other. Students of life in the southern states testify to the transforming effect of the readiness with which former remote and unprogressive neighborhoods may now reach centers of financial, social, educational, and religious benefits and influences. It "works both ways," bringing the country to the city, and the city to the country. The wife of a farmer in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, in the northern part of the state, living fifteen miles from the nearest village, said to the writer: "Thank God for Henry Ford! In the twenty years that we have lived here we have never been able to go to church once; and now we can go every Sunday!" Everywhere the intelligence of youth and older years is discovering anew the beauty of the country, its rural charms and attractions, and the book of nature is being read for the first time by many who in other years have been more or less neces- sarily confined to city streets for their livelihood and to city parks for their recreations. During an enlist- ment at one of the great army training camps for civilian soldiers, in 191 6, the writer met another "rookie" whose unrestrainable astonishment at every revelation of the countrysides traversed on the line of march revealed that he actually did not know the name of a single kind of tree, of a single variety of flower, or of a single species of [195] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A bird, as these were seen en route! Born in a city apart- ment and brought up wholly amid huge city-street canyons, his mind was devoid of the slightest knowledge of anything outside such conditions! The more than ten million automobiles of America are today eliminating the possibility of such a mental state for any city dweller in the land. Of the new day of our national culture. Lake Geneva and its neighborhood is destined to become one of the most charming and informing of all scenes through which this emancipation shall conduct those of the seeing eye and the hearing ear. The stage of enlarged industrial opportunities to one generation, of a fascinating beauty and recreation to the next, to the third it will be one of the beautiful schools for the awakening of the new mind of the nation. :i96] CHAPTER XI AROUND THE YEAR ON LAKE GENEVA What is the message of Lake Geneva? What is its great contribution to the life of its devotees? What charm do some find in its aspects of water and earth and sky, throughout the changing year or at the season with which they are most famihar, which draws them back to it ever and again ? What spell moves others to plan to spend as much as possible of their very lifetimes within sight of its blue, its wooded hills and pebbled beaches, and beneath its skies, now azure as Italy's own, now gray with promise of autumn's gold and winter's snow ? First answers are prompt and varied. The "kids" come "for fun," for their own "days of real sport," for the delights of getting out of doors all day long and wearing clothes that they do not have to worry about, for wading and sailing boats of all sorts and fishing off the piers and going in swimming several times a day and going on trips on the steamers and going with the grown- ups in rowboats or in the family car and playing with "all the other kids" at the resorts or in the parks or on the beach and — "an' oh! an' ever'thing!" We know: we were one of them once; and perhaps are still! The motor camper comes for the fun of camping out, and for all the informal experiences that go with it, from loafing and having nothing to do, to having no end of things to do, in catching the fish for the next meal, or getting out of one's outfit all it is supposed to provide for convenience or fun. He comes in ever increasing [197] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A numbers, too. More than one hundred such parties — cars, tents, and all — occupied one camping site along the shore over a single week-end in the summer of 1922. The fisherman comes for the fishing, and if he knows the place and the game he rarely comes in vain. He may be the small boy with bamboo pole and worm can who knows that a little patience is certain to enable him to march proudly home with a long string of perch and rock bass "to show the folks." Or he may be the skilled wielder of a favorite casting rod and its many lures — fly or spoon or big live minnow, the last the best of all for Geneva's finest fish. If he knows where to go for his casts or his trolling, he will not go home empty-handed. There are brook trout in Lake Geneva, remember! — and, only occasionally taken as yet, their numbers are increas- ing every year. There are bass of every size, and pickerel, and huge pike which are capable of making their captor think he has hooked a northern "muskie"! Many visitors come just to do nothing, save what the mood of the moment or the events of the days may move them to do. Some come just to rest, and to be glad to be able to do it. Some come to dash to places and things in their big new cars, to meet other folks of their own tastes, to make new acquaintances, and to feel that this, after all, is the way to live. The swimmers come to show their skill, and to acquire more intimacy with the water and its conquest. Marvels of amphibian ability some of them are, powerful young fellows and splendid, half-mermaid girls. Some, one fancies, come to display "the latest thing" in smart bathing suits; and, incidentally, quite a little of their shapely selves more or less inside the same [198] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A suits, too; or so one would infer from a survey of any hundred of them on any beach, on hot July afternoons. The amateur navigators come to delight in their water craft. These range all the way. from the latest brand-new rowboat with its "putt-putt" attachment to the brightly colored canoes that drift lazily beneath the shade trees along the shore, or from the big power boats that tear foaming from end to end of the Lake in record time to the splendid white-sailed sloops of regatta week or the race for the Sheridan Trophy and the local cham- pionship. Naturalists come to indulge themselves to their hearts' content in whatever their particular nature hobby may be. Some wander through the woods, notebook, birdbook, field glass, and pencil in hand, wherewith to swell their season's list to as near as possible the hundred-and-fifty- odd varieties of birds that perhaps constitute the "record" of the keenest and most assiduous — and generally the earliest riser — of them all. Or it may be only mushrooms that they are studying; and there are plenty of them, from the giant puffball or the rare, pale, and lovely "Indian pipe" to the worse-than-a-skunk kind whose horrid odor leads the thirty-second-degree mycologist eagerly to follow its scent to its origin — and drives every- one else to flee the fetid neighborhood! Or it may be — no one can say what major or minor department of the infinite variety of Nature's aspects that tempt her truest and best-informed and most expert devotees. One man came wholly to study the parasites to be found in the "innards" of fish, coming equipped with special government license that allowed him to do, in the name of science, many [199I THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA things forbidden to less famous fishermen, and with seines and gill nets and microscopes and specimen jars and dissecting knives — aye, and with a diving outfit wherewith to go down and walk around on the bottom and study the finny inhabitants at the closest possible range! Verily, de gustibus nil disputandum! Astronomers come — famous men, from all over the world, looking as if they knew all that man has yet learned about the stars, as many of them do, indeed. The Yerkes Observatory is the magnet for them, of course. They have been known to strike straight cross-country with its great dome as their goal, with no delay to go around by the roads, in their eagerness to reach the marvels they have long hoped to see. A Catholic priest broke through some bushes bordering a woodland and emerged upon a roadway to startle the first passer-by with the question: "Which way to the Observatory ?" — and on receiving a gestured indication dived anew into the woods like a rabbit, on the shortest line to his destination. An eminent star specialist from the East, who had doubtless noted on his map that the great institution was near Kenosha but who had failed to note the scale of "magnificent distances" of the middle western states, sprang from a train at Kenosha and into a taxicab, shouting to the driver, "To the Yerkes Observatory!" He got there, but the memory of the bill he paid for the trip will doubtless cause him to examine the map with more care the next time he goes anywhere in the West! Everyone else goes to the Observatory, too, during the season, arriving in summer-garbed crowds of hundreds at a time, every summer Saturday afternoon, to crowd [200] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A up the marble steps into the gallery around the inside of the great dome and listen and marvel while the spectacled and endlessly patient men of science explain to the average mind what is done there, and why, and how. But all this is during the "season," from June i to September i of each year. During this time a hundred thousand people alight from the trains at Lake Geneva village or motor in from everywhere between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Eleven thousand of them are more or less "summer residents" of the village for the period of their vacations, where for the time they outnumber the citizens of the place forty to one. Forty thousand reach Williams Bay and its cottages, homes, resorts, or camps, by car or train. Nineteen hundred left the Bay on a single train on the last Sunday night of the vacation season in 1922. Ten thousand stream in and out of the noble doors of the Observatory on the twenty most crowded Saturday afternoons of the summertime. An annual total of several thousand stay at the various conference periods of the Y.M.C.A. grounds alone, many a famous track athlete among them, putting in his summer study- ing, working, and keeping in condition by daily work-outs on the athletic grounds on the hilltop. A Chicago football team begins its annual training by a week of assiduous practice there — and went through its last season without a defeat, in consequence! And so they come, and go, and plan to come again next summer, and in the meantime retell their particular version of Geneva's offered delights and pleasures and profits and fun. And annually their number swells by no small proportion of those who have heard the tale and [201] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A resolve that for their next vacation they, too, will plan for Lake Geneva's joys. But what about the rest of the year, before and after the "season" and the midsummer months ? Is it a case of "nothing doing," as a girl clerk in one of Geneva's stores assured us ? When the motor boats are housed for the winter, and the sails of the sloops are furled and the masts unshipped, and the water grows too cold for any swimmers save the great flocks of Canada geese and the bluebills and the mud hens and the solitary, diving, "laughing" loons, and the summer houses have the shutters put up, and the tents are all down — what of Lake Geneva then ? For one thing, if you are interested in knowing — and many there are who will be — the weather "isn't half bad," the whole year around. As a matter of fact, it is often as largely fair and beautiful and fascinating in January as it was the August before. There are figures to prove it, too, for the big Observatory keeps a record of it, twice in every twenty-four hours. This record is given in Table L And the "precipitation" — scientific style for rain or melted snow — is given on Table II, page 203. Nor do they stop with these strictly meteorological records. They recognize that it is not quite enough to be able to inform us as to just how hot or how cold it has been and therefore will be again, or how wet or how dry, and what the farmer and the picnicker may anticipate in the way of rainfall or clear skies. They keep a record also of what they call the "human" aspect and estimate of the days, the character of the weather as ordinary human [202] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A TABLE I Monthly Average Temperature on Lake Geneva Recorded at the Yerkes Observatory, Fifteen Years, 1903-18 Temperature Month (Degrees - Fahrenheit) January 19.-7 February 19. g March ZZ-'^ April 45.1 May 55.8 June 65.0 July 70.7 August 67 . 8 September 62.1 October 49-7 November 37-7 December 23,9 Annual average 45-86 TABLE II Monthly Average Precipitation at Lake Geneva, Recorded at the Yerkes Observatory, Fifteen Years, 1903-18 (Rainfall or melted snow) Month Inches January 1,50 February i . 19 March i.yy April a. 48 May 3.90 June 3.16 July 3-48 August 4.01 September 3-72 October 2.43 November 1.64 December 1.38 Annual average 30-67 [203] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A beings delight in it and call it "fine," or shiver or broil in it and call it "rotten." For this purpose they group every day as it comes and goes, in one or another of four classes. An "A day" represents for its season what would be called a perfect day, an A day in January naturally representing a very different state as to temper- ature from that of an A day in July. On each such day the sun must shine, practically without clouds, during the entire day, and no annoyingly high wind may disturb its serenity. B presents the next grade of "pleasant" day, characterized by a large amount of sunshine, though there may be some clouds, and perhaps a tiny, passing shower. This class includes the greatest number of days, here, as perhaps everywhere. C represents a day that is practically cloudy throughout, and may be accompanied by considerable rain or snow. The lowest grade of all, the designation D, is reserved for what we call wretched weather — as bad as could be expected for any particular season, simply, "vile weather" in fact. What kind of weather, then, will the Lake Geneva region give you, a whole year around? The exact record for a full year, 1921, is given in Table III on page 205. Thus it will appear that even in January there were eleven perfect days. B days were commonly called fine days, so that if we combine the A and B days, it will appear that 265 days throughout the entire year were pleasant, or almost three out of four. Face to face with an actual record like that, let Floridians and Californians boast as they may! Granted that wintertime is delightful on the sandy peninsula where the oranges and grapefruit hang big and golden [204] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A and the strawberry beds ripen from October to July; where the mocking birds, like Moore's nightingale "beside Bendemeer's stream," sing all the day long. But what of the rest of the year, when the Florida auto-license plates are early seen and linger late along Geneva's roads? And southern California's famous "chief asset** is charmingly semitropical, of course, where one never TABLE III A Year's Weather at Lake Geneva, Recorded at the Yerkes Observatory Year 192 i January. . February . March ... April May June July August. . . September October . . November December . Total . Kend or Days 7 4 8 15 10 16 12 4 3 "3 15 15 16 13 10 14 13 15 9 16 152 16 9 14 has to shovel either snow or coal and where palms and fruit groves and mountain sides and beach surf combine for the tourist's delight — and to assault his pocket-book assiduously the while! But can these be counted upon to be wholly charming for not less than 75 per cent of all the hours of all the year, as Lake Geneva's hours can be ? It is cold in midwinter, of course. At express-train speed the white-winged ice boats glide over the gleaming [205] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA expanse. Acres of ice are crowded with men and teams cutting the big glittering cubes for your next summer's ice box. The astronomers at the Yerkes Observatory have been known to have to go to their tasks in the big building over the great snowdrifts on skis or snowshoes. But let the city dweller, who spends his winter between the apartment house and the office or department-store skyscraper, have one look at one of those landscapes of marvelous, unbroken, unspotted whiteness stretching over hill and vale from horizon to horizon, with the lakes gleaming diamond-like in the hollows, and he will think it a new and more glorious world than he has ever seen! And the spring! Words are poor things wherewith to try to describe the scarlet-flushing tree tips that with the returning sap turn the hills red beyond belief. Presently this gives way to a hundred shades of green, from palest jade to gleaming emerald, as the elm buds mass themselves in the forest tops and amid them the "red maples" come out in glowing, new-cast bronze before turning into the familiar deep green of June. And for color — wait till you have seen the white and red trilHums, snow white or deep Pompeiian red, that form solid beds through the waking forests, here and there among them masses of velvety anemones and hepaticas and great patches of big violets looking up at the passer-by with eyes blue as the sky itself! The birds ^. We have spoken of those in their own chapter. But after you have sat at a breakfast table on the porch, on some gentle and charming spring morning, and listened to the ceaseless chorus from every treetop [206] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA around you, and perhaps tossed your breakfast crumbs to the robins and grackles on the lawn, from that hour all birds will have a place and a contribution in your life that you were never so fortunate as to share with them before. The fall? The autumn on Lake Geneva has the Midas-touch that turns everything to gold, a gold that "neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal " ! It comes with August's first gleaming wayside banners of all the nearly fifty different varieties of the goldenrod, turns the very stubble fields to shining acres, spreads till every forest tree stands in gold to its topmost twig, and when it falls, does so only to pave with gold the country roadways before the motorist's wheels. A single autumn morning stands out in the writer's experience as one of the literally golden days of a life's experience of all out-of-doors, half the world over. It was on a day in the first week of October, on a motor trip from the Lake to Milwaukee, when it seemed as if every single tree in the world had overnight turned to fresh, gleaming, new-minted gold. The Lake itself at dawn was a great sapphire in a golden rim, the rural roads miles of gold-arched avenues, holding us breathless and silent as we drove along, through a series of landscapes turned more uniformly to one solid glory of color than any we could remember ever having seen. Nor do the shades of color constitute all the beauties of the fall. In its earlier weeks the birds resume their singing for a brief period before starting on their south- ward journey. Then they begin to gather in flocks after their kind, bluebirds by the dozens twittering along the [207] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A roads, robins by the score fattening for the long trip to the Gulf, blackbirds massing in flocks which often string out for a mile or more, or turn black the reed tops of some swamp as they descend in their foraging armies. The smaller birds, the warblers and vireos, are the first to leave. Their chirps and calls are heard continually on the first cool nights as they pass overhead. During the daytime they are found in numbers in the same haunts where they were first seen in the spring, winging or hopping among the bushes and shrubs on the sunny slopes of hillsides and ravines, calling to one another, and working their united way more or less southward as they feed along. Oddly enough, the smallest of all, the humming-bird, often lingers till the last of Sep- tember. One wonders if he, too, foregathers with his kind for the long trip. What a sight a flock of humming birds would be, if one could see them together on their way. Occasionally a family of belated nestlings turns out barely in time to learn how to use their wings before joining the southbound swarms. A pair of mourning doves on the Observatory hill raised their last brood — doubtless their second or third of the season — so late one year that during the first sharply chill days the nesting; parent would refuse to leave the young birds uncovered, even for food, and it was not until the morning of the twenty-fourth of September that they made their first flight, and doubtless headed southward as fast as the older ones could hurry their children along. With the first days of the fall comes the vanguard of the water fowl. Companies of killdeer plover flash their scores of white wings along every beach or beside every [208] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA upland pond as they sweep here and there with that unanimity of curve and rise that so astonished the poet Wordsworth. The coots gather in dark-gray flocks to bob along the reedy shores of every inlet, to rise with a roar of splashing feet as some hidden gunner bags his reward for having waited through the darkness and chill before sunrise for just such a chance. The blue-winged teal are the first of the ducks to pass on their southward way, and not a few of them are dropped by the hunter who knows their preference for the shallows of creeks and inlets and posts himself there for the morning of that sixteenth of September which is as eagerly awaited, and by thousands more, than ever is England's or Scotland's historic twelfth of August on moor and brae. The larger ducks come as late as possible, waiting till the freezing of the northern waters forces them on, lingering beside each favorite feeding ground till the first "skim" of shore ice or the first whifFs of snow from graying skies sends their silhouetted string or V-shaped flock against the early sunset, southward bound. The great Canada geese arrive in November and remain, undaunted by any weather that still leaves open water for their nightly gatherings, betaking themselves by day to distant corn- fields and uplands for food. So alert are they, and so constant their change of feeding places, that the gunner who brings one to bag for his Thanksgiving dinner will have thoroughly earned it by many hours of half- benumbed motionlessness in his pit-blind, or by more than one half-the-night-long trip to some discovered feeding ground, only to have the big birds refuse to come to it that day. [209] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA A nature lover whose favorite study for many years has been the aspect of Lake Michigan's inland sea as seen from one of the majestic heights of its western shore, has commented that it is like nothing as much as a mighty kaleidescope. Moved by the innumerable influences of sun and cloud and wind and wave, no two periods of five minutes together are exactly alike, even on the stillest day. Before one's eyes the colors change and come and go with smooth shiftings from one sweep of beauty into another, from the dazzling whiteness of the horizon beneath the just rising sun, to the deep turquoise of half- past four in the afternoon, with a western wind to turn the backs of the waves up in a purple-blue that Lydia of Thyatira never matched with her dyes. But if Lake Michigan's vastness can so shift and change, what of Geneva's quick alternations from the delicate opal-green of a hot summer afternoon on her "lineless, level floors," to the silken, lilac ripples that quiver across from shore to shore before some vagrant breeze, and the rolling, white-capped blue that rises swift and thrilling on a windy day ? A kaleidescope is nothing for comparison ! That is to compare natural beauty with the stiffly patterned handiwork of some human workshop. But to watch Geneva for an hour on an "A day" is to see Him still at work who "hath made everything beautiful in its time" — whether that time be the uncounted years of a geological epoch or but a radiant minute on a swiftly passing summer afternoon! To be familiar with the Lake's innumerable landscape aspects under varying atmospheric conditions is to realize the correctness of the technique of all the great landscape [210] D O t« X t- r W 9 ^ Pi o - o — CO — : o _ < THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A painters in their endeavors to preserve such hours of pecuhar beauty. The color masses of an Inness, the pale grays and greens of a Puvis des Chavannes, the blending shades of a Birge Harrison, the startlingly mirror-like landscapes of a Claude Lorrain, the deliciously rich vividness of Maxfield Parrish, the translucent green of breaking shore waves as Alexander Harrison caught them — all these may be seen on one day or another by whosoever will watch for them. Almost above all these, there is, occasionally, an especial magnificence which is at once so rare and so wonderful as to richly reward the observer who watches for it. Perhaps not unknown in almost any landscape, it is at its best in an atmosphere so especially transparent as that which largely decided the selection of the hills about the Lake for the great glass of the Yerkes Observatory. This is the occurrence of a day — sometimes of but a few hours during the day — of an absolutely unsurpassable clearness, without the slight- est trace of dimming or haziness in even the very farthest vista. If the scientists have their mentioned class of "A days" as "perfect days," these periods of absolutely sharp clearness of every object and detail, near or far, to the very horizon, ought to be classed as "A plus" days. In their highest perfection they are not common. Over Lake Michigan, for instance, with the faint haziness almost invariable over its large body of water, there may not be more than a half-dozen days of such absolute clarity throughout the whole year. On Lake Geneva there may be one or two a month, chiefly in the months of the clearest skies and the least moisture in the air. On such a day the individual trees of the woods on the [211] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Opposite shore stand out with striking distinctness. Distant objects, colors, and picturesque effects are seen with a telescopic brilliance. A view across country over the farm lands of the Lake neighborhood seems unbeliev- able in the distances at which one can see, with startling clearness, the sunlit shoulders of hills, masses of woods, village roofs, farmsteads with their red barns and the clean white towers of the ever present silos, or, from some elevation, the appealing blue of the lakes embowered amid these. Even Keats' climax note: Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know is inadequate to contain or to express all the charm and the message of Lake Geneva, in sun or storm. The single sentence of John Burroughs, the mystic-naturalist, comes near it when he wrote: "I have no words wherewith to express the feelings which move me at the mere aspects of earth and sky and sea .... and perhaps these are the great helps, after all." They are, indeed! And there are "no words" for them, unless it be such words as William Herbert Carruth's enchanted line: And some of us call it Autumn — and some of us call it God! Perhaps the most wholly thrilling and unforgettable views of the Lake's majesty of beauty and surroundings is to be obtained only in the literal "bird's-eye view" of it from an airplane. To afford the most varied and colorful aspect the trip should be made at harvest time. Then, from a height of two or three thousand feet, one's [212] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A breath is literally taken away, hardly more by the swift rush of the machine than by the glories of the brilliant landscape spread out below — a vast map in the loveliest of natural colors. The lakes are seen all in one great vista, looking strangely near together, and then they may be studied separately as the great machine wheels above them. Como's blue is seen dotted with tiniest fishing boats near the stretch of verdant marshes at either end; Delavan's sapphire is found to have irregular outlines and green peninsulas and marked bayous of inlet and outlet; Geneva's glorious deep ultramarine becomes sud- denly transparent to its depths, where pebbled shallows and rock-strewn bottoms gleam like topaz. Seen thus on a quiet day one thinks that nothing could be more entrancing to the eye than its motionless turquoise sur- face, shot through everywhere with radiant sunlight to the very bottom. But seen on a windy day it is even a deeper blue, dotted everywhere with gleaming "white- caps" and its every leeward shore outlined with white where the surf breaks upon the beaches. And then one looks beyond the lakes, and lo! everywhere the deep amber or glowing gold of the grain fields, the curious patterned deep green of the standing corn over vast areas, the unexpectedly numerous dark-green stretches of wood- lands and forests. Through it all there run straight and arrowy the fine white lines of the roads, converging, one sees, where clustered roofs amid the trees show the hamlets and villages. Tiny farms are made out, wee red barns and little white silos beside them, and along the white highways that make it such a living map, the eye makes out the speeding specks of the automobiles on business or pleasure [213] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA bent. It may be but a few minutes that one spends in the ascending or descending spirals or the level flight of such a trip, but that vast and glorious marvel-view once seen remains one of the treasures of the memory- forever. The writer has often wondered that there are no records of any hermit having chosen to come and live alone, in tiny cabin or little house, about Geneva's shores; no more fortunate Thoreau, finding Walden's charms sur- passed on Geneva's larger amphitheater, pausing in his hoeing a Walworth County bean patch to jot down the doings of the loons on Geneva Bay in the spring or of the woodchucks of Fontana's gravel hills and clover acres. We have known other hermits galore, simple- minded nature lovers, some wise and others not so wise. Many of them have been as inarticulate of the wilderness they have loved as Gray's "mute, inglorious Miltons," but loving it none the less for their inability to express what it has meant to them. Others have even set their surroundings to music, like that strange, self-exiled ex-organist of one of London's cathedrals, who "toted" a whole pipe organ in pieces and in a dozen arduous trips from Telegraph Creek to his 30-miles-distant cabin in a Canadian wild, and set it up where no ears but his own, or those of the moose and bears who inhabited the forest about his "shack," could hear him pouring out his soul in expression of what that deliberately sought soli- tude came to mean to him. Surely Geneva is not too crowded, even at the "season's" height, for some latest philosopher-poet- naturalist to find places and hours where he might still [214] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A watch, with raptured eyes, the coming day or the passing storm or the painted sunset, and tell the rest of the world of the deeper meaning of these. The very swimmers who make the beaches ring with shouting and laughter as they flash, white-limbed, in and out of the water on an August afternoon, would have their own place in any modern estimate of the Lake's contributions to the gaiety of one nation, at least. The great Observatory itself, as upon its "heaven-seeking hill" it slowly, solemnly, almost silently revolves its great dome toward the sun and points toward that life-giving mystery the single eye of its mighty telescope, introduces into the whole what another Hawthorne might make the keynote of an added awe found in man's choice of the height of natural beauty from which to reach upward to the secret ways of the Architect of All. The majestic homes amid their "pleachM gardens" have their charm, too, of civilization's finest taste com- bined with Nature's most lavish bestowals. So have the innumerable motors, of even the well-to-do, who lean out behind their dusty chaufi^eurs to exclaim at this swift- passing scene or that; or the humbler little cars whose drivers and passengers prefer slower travel, and stop on every hilltop or beside every wave-sparkling beach, to feast eyes and mind on beauty and peacefulness. But if I were to seek for those who most appreciate the message of Lake Geneva, I would walk the old, deep-worn, one-time Indian trail, now the "lake path," till I came to one or another of the dainty, simple lakeside cottages where dwell the men and women, with perhaps a touch of the years upon them, who, as they will tell you, "have known [215] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A the Lake for many a year, and don't seem to find any other place that so-kind of satisfies one the year 'round — that's all!" One there was, once, who, with all the Holy Land about Him from which to choose, above all the rest — even above the Holy City and its gold and ivory Temple — loved one blue lake, its waters, its beaches, and its hills. The fact is so evident from its repeated mentions in the accounts of His life that it can be analyzed, and the analysis is full of significance. He must have loved it for what it brought into His life, of beauty and peace and vision and inspiration and sense of the Presence of the Beyond. His hands must often have drawn His food from its waters. Its boats continually bore Him here and there upon its waters and to and from its landing- places. Whenever He was free to be there, His was one of the familiar faces upon its shores. He loved the simple, around-the-camp-fire meals upon its shores, for on one marvel-dawn He invited His hard-working, tired, and hungry fishermen friends to the picnic breakfast whose firewood His scarred hands had gathered and whose broiling fish They had caught. Of all earth's wondrous banquets none could begin to compare with that hour of a sunrise breakfast beside a lake shore with One already in the Great Beyond! He loved the kind of people whom He met beside that Lake, for from among them He chose His life's inti- mates. Its natural beauty must have appealed beyond words to Him, who always spoke of beautiful things as evi- dence in themselves of the love and care of Him whose every work is symmetry and beauty, from the lacy hexa- [2l6] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA gon of the brief snowflake to the millions of suns of His en- during Universe. He loved the heights of the hills about its shores, for ever and again He climbed them for the joys of meditation and prayer beneath their silent but revealing stars. He loved the memories of all these, and the con- tinual refreshment of looking again upon their scenes, for from His first public appearance to His last Victorious Presence, He was continually returning for one more sojourn where every lovely prospect rejoiced the eye and every deep influence thrilled the heart. Above its every other contribution to His life, He must have been charmed by its continual revelation of Him who is above all things and in all. And now that He and His Spirit are mankind's universal and priceless possession, may there not be something of Him and His joyousness, His conscious- ness, and His perceptions, to be had by whosoever will, wherever some beloved lake is eloquent of past, of present, and of future, and through these all, of God ? [217] INDEX Agassiz, Louis, 98 Agricultural Society, Annual Exhibition, 167-68 Allerton, Mrs. S. W., estate, 182 "Alta Vista," O. W. Potter estate, 181 Animals: and birds, 101-20 Badger, 102 Beaver, 102 Bear, black, 102, 103 Buffalo, 4, 86, loi, 102 Cattle, 168 Chipmunk, 105 Coyote, 102 Deer, 86, 102, 103, 104; white-tail, 102 Elephant, 5 Elk, 4, 102 Ermine, 102 Fox, 102 Gopher, 105 Horse, 4, 20, 168 Lynx, 102 Mammoth, 4 Marten, 102 Mastodon, 4, 5, 86 Mink, 102, 105, 106 Muskox, 78 Muskrat, 102, 105, 106 Otter, 102 Porcupine, 102 Pre-historic, 5 Rabbit: cotton-tail, 102, 105; "snow- shoe," 102 Raccoon, 102, 105, 106 Reindeer, 78 Skunk, 102, 105 Squirrel: gray, 102, 105, 108; fox, 102, 105, 108 Weasel, 102, 105, 106 Wildcat, 86, 102 Wolf: prairie, 102; timber, 102 Wolverine, 102 Woodchuck, 102, 105, 106, 107; climbs trees, 108 Antioch, 111., 86 A. R. L, 156 Arrowheads, Indian: distribution, 38-43; manufacture, 40-42; materials, 40-42; use, 43 "Assensipia," 148 Atkinson, General Henry, 28, 146 "Atlanta, The," 72 Ayer, E. E., estate, 183 Bad Axe River, 28 Baird, Mrs. Elizabeth Therese, 62 n. Barbour, M. T., 30 Barnard, Edwin E., 124, 126, 128 Barrett, Storrs B., 46 Bartholomay, Mrs. Henry, estate, 182 Bartlett, A. C., residence, 183 Bartlett, Frederick G., 184 Bear's claws, 103 Beloit, 62; Indian mounds, loi; stage route to, 67 Belvidere, 111., 65 Bloomfield Township, 79, 149, 164 Big Foot Lake, 1 5, 57, 62, 65 Big Foot, 14, 23, 28, 37, 58; villages of, 29-33, 62, 63; see Maunk-suck Bird Act, Federal Migratory, 109, 119 Birds: game, 1 18; no mocking birds, 109; song, 109, 114, 119; song period of, 115; water fowl, 109, 117; varieties of, iio- 12 Birds: Bittern: American, 11 1; least, iii Blackbird: redwinged, ni; yellow- headed, III Bluebird, in, 114 Bluejay, iii Bobolink, in, 117 Cardinal, Kentucky, 109, no, 186 Catbird, in, 114 Chewink, in Chickadee, in, 114 Chimney swift, in Coot, no Cowbird, in Cormorant, in, 113 Crane, sand-hill, 118 Creeper, brown, in Crow, III Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 112 Dickcissel, 112 Dove, mourning, in Duck, 109; bluebill, no; canvas- back, no; mallard, no; pintail, no; redheaded, no [219] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Finch, purple, iii Flycatcher: great-creasted, iii; Traill's, III Goldfinch, American, 1 1 1 Goose: Canada, 109, no, 113; white, no Graclde, purple, iii, 117 Grebe, pied, no Grosbeak: cardinal, 1 12; rose-breasted, 112 Gull: Franklin's, no; large white, no Hawk: Cooper's, in; red-tailed, in; sparrow, in Heron : blue, in; little green, in Humming bird, 112 Indigo bunting, in Jacksnipe, in Junco, III Kingbird, in Kingfisher, in Kinglet: golden-crowned, in; ruby- crowned, in Lark: horned, 112, 114, 117; meadow, 112; Western meadow, 112 Loggerhead shrike, in Loon, 1 1 1 Martin, in Maryland yellowthroat, in Merganser, American, no Nighthawk, 112 Nuthatch, white-bellied, in, 114 Oriole, Baltimore, in, 116; orchard, in Ovenbird, 112 Partridge, 119 Passenger pigeons, 118 Pewee, wood, in Phoebe, in Plover, killdeer, in Quail, 112 Rail: Carolina, in; Virginia, no; yellow, in Redstart, in Robin, in, 114, 117 Sandpiper: least, in; pectoral, in; spotted, in Scarlet tanager, in Screech owl, in Sparrow: English, 112; field, 112; fox, 112; grasshopper, 112; song, 112; swamp, 112; vesper, 112; white- crowned, 112; white-throated, 112 Swallow: bank, ill; barn, in; eaves, ni Swan, 109, no Teal, blue-winged, no Tern: black, no; common, no; least, no Thrasher, brown, 114 Thrush: brown, in; hermit, in; olive-backed, in; wood, in Turkey, wild, 119 Vireo: blue-headed, n I; red-eyed, in; yellow-throated, in Warbler: Blackburnian, in; black- throated, in; green, in; black, in; white, in; myrtle, in; yellow, in Waxwing: Bohemian, 112; cedar, 112 Whippoorwill, 112 Woodpecker, 114, 116; downy, in; golden-winged, in; hairy, in; red- beaded, in; yellow-bellied, in Wren: house, in; long-billed marsh, in Black Hawk, 25-26, 28-29 Black Hawk War, 25-29, 62, 65, 145, 147, 148 Black Point, Seipp estate, 182 "Black Tofft," John T. Lester estate, 181 Blakslee, George C, xi, 128 "Bonnie Brae," T. F. Withrow estate, 181 " Book of the Law of the Lord," 1 53, 155, 156, 158 "Book of Mormon," 158 Borden, John, estate, 143, 181 Brewster, F. E., 72 Brink, John, 19, 30, 50, 63, 65, 66, 177 Bruce, Miss Catherine W., 124 Bryce, Lord James, 175 Buena Vista Park, 62, 68 Burroughs, John, y), i\l Butte des Morts, 25, 109 Buttons Bay, 96, 186 Cabins, pioneer, 179 Cahokia, Treaty of, 14 Caldwell, Billy ("The Sauganash"), 23- 25,58 Calvert, Mary R., 128 Camp Collie, 190, 191 Canoes, Indian: birch-bark, 80; hollowed logs, 20, 21, 80; paddles, 85 Carruth, William H., 212 Cass, Governor, 22, 25 Cattle, 168; Guernsey, 168; Hereford, 168, 185; Holstein, 165, 168, 169, 174; statistics, 165; Swiss Brown, 168, 186; Walworth County, 168 [220] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Cedar Point, 73 "Ceylon Court," 184 "Ceylon Point," J. J. Mitchell estate, 184 Chambley (also Shabbona), 24-28, 58 Chambley, Captain Jacques de, 24 Chapin, S. B., 186 Chautauqua Circuit, 161 Chicago, see Dearborn, Fort; fish market, 93.97 Chicago Club, 191 Chicago and Northwestern Railway, 72 Children, 197 Chippewa River, 22 Choteau, P., 42 Churches: Baptist, 73; Catholic, 73; Congregational, 72; country, study of, C. J. Galpin, 163; early Lake Geneva, 72-73; Olivet Presbyterian, 189; Pres- byterian, 72 Clark, George Rogers, 14 "Clear Water" (Kishwauketoe"), 14 Club: Belvidere, 191; Chicago, 191 ; Congress, 191; Country, Lake Geneva, 188; Eleanor, 191 ; Elgin, 191 ; Har- vard, 191 ; Marengo, 191 Collie, Camp, 190 Collie, Rev. Joseph, D.D., 190 Como, Lake, i, 3, 65, 66, 109 Conference Point, 96, 116, 119, 190 Congress Club, 191 Cornishmen, 160 "Council pole," Big Foot's, 30, 79 Countiss, F. D., estate, 183 County Fair, 167-68 Country Church an Economic and Social Force, 163 Country Club, Lake Geneva, 188 Crane, R. T., estate, 181 Crystal Lake, 56, 64 Daily Northern Islander, 155 Darien, 62; Township, 149 Davidson, Colonel Royal P., 193 Davis, Jefferson, 29 Dearborn, Fort, 52, 53, 62 n., 65, 103 Delap's Corners, 159 Delavan Inlet, no Delavan: Lake, 1,2, 10, 62, 106; village, 104, 168; Township, 149 "Delavan lobe," 3 Diamonds, 10 Dixon, 111., 55 Door County, 78 De Tocqueville, 175 Drainage areas, Chippewa, Flambeau, Manitowish, 142 Dunkley's Grove, 56 Dwinnell, Rev. A. S., 30 Eagle, 10, 138 East Troy, 106, 136, 167, 149 "Effigy mounds," 15, 16, loi Eleanor Club, 191 Elgin Club, 191 Elgin, 111., 71 Elkhorn, 118; band, 168; county seat, 6, 67, 102, 137, 138, 167, 168; library, 164; musical center, 168; population, 164; scene of county fair, 168 Ellerman, Professor Ferdinand, 1 26 Fairbank, N. K., estate, 181 "Fairoaks," E. E. Ayer estate, 183 Federal Migratory Bird Act, 109, 119 Fenneman, N. M., 8 Ferguson, Mr., tavern of, 67 Field Museum of Natural History, loi Fish: bait for, 100; depth for, 95, 97; Distribution and Food, 94; food, 97; free from parasites, 99; "gamy," 96; imported, 93; laws, 93, 97; of Lake Geneva, 93-100; not common in Lake Geneva, 95, 97, 100; "planting," 182 Fish: Bass: large-mouth black, 95; rock, 94; small-mouth black, 94, 100; silver, 94 Bluegill, 95 Cisco, 94, 97, 98 Herring, lake, 98 Perch, yellow, 94, 95, 96 Pickerel, 95, 99 Pike, wall-eyed, 94, 99, 100 Pumpkinseed, 95 Salmon, California, 94 Shadwater, 98 Sucker, common, 94 Trout: brook, 94, 95, 98, 198; lake, 93; salmon, 94 Whitefish, 93, 98 Whiting, 98 Fontana, 6, 62, 67, 149; township name, 150 Foote, Henry M., 129 Forests, 104 Fort Howard, 56, 62 n. "Fossil ivory," 5 Fox River, 50, 136 [221] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Frontier in American History, The, F. J. Turner, 175 Frost, Edwin B., xi, 108, 128 Fur trade, 68, 102, 104 Galpin, C. J., 162, 163 Gardens: private, 180; Allerton, 182; Hutchinson, 185-86; Wrigley, 185 Geneva Bay, 93, 96 Geneva, 111., 139 Geneva, N.Y., 63 Geneva, Switzerland, 73 Geneva Township, 149 Geology, 75 German settlers, 147, 160 Glenwood Springs, 61, 191 Goats, Toggenburg, 168 "Golden plates," 153 Grant, General Ulysses S., 73 Grass Lake, 86 Great Beaver Island colony, Mormon, 158 Green Bay, i, 11, 13, 50, 139 "Green Gables," William Wrigley estate, 184 Green Lake, 8, 97 Greenville, Treaty of, 14 Gringnon, Petaille, 55, 60 Grinnell, George B., 42 Gros-pied, Lac, 1 5, 57 Hale, George E., 122, 125, 126, 128 Hale, William E., 124, 125 Hall, Rev. Lemuel, 72 Harris, A. W., estate, 185 Harris, N. W., residence, 185 Harvard Club, 191 Healy, Mark, estate, 44 Helm, Edwin, 55 Helm, Mrs. L. T., 55 Henry, General James D., 28 Hereford cattle, 168, 185 Heron, 100 Highways, three most beautiful, 135; see Motor routes Hobbs, William H., 10 Hogs, 168 Holiday Home, 188-89 Hollister, C. B.,31 HoUister, E. H., 32 Hollister, Mrs. E. H., :^2 Holstein cattle, 165, 168, 169, 174 Hunting: Indian, 39, 43; modern, 209 Hutchinson, Charles L., 185 Hutchinson, Mrs. Charles L., 185 Hutchinson estate, 43, 185, 186 Ice sheet, i, 3, 4, 75; recession of, 4, 76 Ickes, Mrs. Harold, estate, 183 Immigrants: Bohemians, 160; Cornish, 160; German, 147, 160; Icelanders, 160; Norwegian, 160, 177; Poles, 160; Scandinavian, 177; Swiss, 147 Indian: burial customs, 31-33; councils, 14, 26, 33-36; departure of, 36-37; food, 17-18; implements, 19-21,38-45; lodges, 63; mounds, 15-17, loi, 103; relics, 5, 30, 32, 38, 103; villages on Lake, 14, 30, 34, 58 Indian tribes: Algonquins, ii; Chippe- was, II, 18; Foxes, 12; Menomonee, 12; "Mound Builders," 15-16; Ot- tawas, II; Pottawatomies, 11-48; Pottawatomies, Wabash, 23; Sauks, 12; Sioux, 12; Winnebagoes, 12 Indiana, lakes of, 97 Inland Lake Yachting Association, 187 Isham, Dr. George S., 180 Isham, Dr. R. N., 180 Jackson Creek, 106 "Jerseyhurst," R. T. Crane estate, 181 Johnson, Michael, 4 Johnston, John T., Jr., 122 Joliet, expedition, 51 Juneau, Solomon, 19, 50; trading post of, 49 Kaye's Park, 73, 192 Kenosha: city of, 135; County, 2; first stage route, 67; opening of lands, 69 Kentucky cardinal, 109, no "King's Day," 155 Kinzie, John, 52; called Shawneeawkee, Kinzie, John H., 52, 59; sub-Indian agent, 53 Kinzie, Mrs. John H., 52, 54, 62, 103 Kinzie family, 20, 23 Kinzie party, 55, 62; "Harry" (negro boy), 55; visit of, 50; route of, 63 "Kishwauketoe" ("Clear Water"), 14 Koshkonong, Lake, 62, 146 "Lady of the Lake, The," 72 Lafayette Township, 149, 164 LaGrange Township, 149, 164 [222] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Lake Geneva: Annals of, 6211., 71; animals and birds, 101-20; area, 8; Big Foot Lake, 57; "bird paradise," 108, 120; clearness of water, 8; depth for fish, 95, 97; diamonds found at, 10; in 1831, 63; fauna, 108; fish, 93-100; first steamboat, 72; glacial origin, i, 2, 75; great storm, 73; "hunter's para- dise," loi; Kinzie party at, 55; Kish- wauketoe, 9; level, 8; location, 3; money, 68; motor routes, 135-44; named, 64; outlet, 6; temperature, stratified, 9; topography, 1,3, 75; true brook trout, 94; vegetation, 76, 77; water supply, 6, 7; wild life today, 105 Lake Geneva, city of, 67; epidemic, 73; first church, 72; first permanent settle- ment, 67; first railroad, 71; first school, 67; first stage route, 67; first store, 67; first train, 72; first visit of whites, 51, 61, 62 n.; land claims, 69; New England settlers, 69; population, 73; visitors, 73; "Whiting House," 73 Lakes: Butte des Morts, 25, 109; Como, I, 3, 65, 66, 109; Crystal, 56, 64; Delavan, i, 2, 10, 62, 106; Geneva, see Lake Geneva; Green, 8, 97; Kosh- konong, 62, 146; Mendota, 8; Mich- igan, 93, 95; Minnetonka, 187; Muk- wonago, 103, 136; Muskego, 136; Oconomowoc, 187; Pepin, 95; Pe- waukee, 102, 187; Poygan, 109; Wind, 136; Wingra, 95; Winnebago, i, 50 Land: early claims, 69; first govern- mental sale, 69; see John Brink and Christopher Payne Landor, Walter Savage, 21 La Salle, at Chicago, 51 "Late Wisconsin," 2 Latter Day Saints, Reorganized Church of, 159 Lauderdale Lakes, 138 Lecuyer, Simon, 55 Lee, Florence B., 128 Lee, Oliver J., 128 Leiter: estate, 182; fish-hatchery, 182 Le Mai, 53 Lester, John T., estate, 181 Lincoln, Abraham, 29 Linden, tree, 21, 84 Lindquist, Lambert, 38 Linn Township, 149, 164 Little Prairie, 138 "Loon Tavern," 67 Loria, Italian economist, quoted, 175 "Lucius Newberry," 72 Lyons, i; Township, I49, 164 McHenry, 135; County, 57 McKillip, Mrs. Eleanor, 52 Mackinac, 51 Manitowoc County, 2 Maple sugar, 83 Marengo Club, 191 Marquette, Father, loi; expedition of, 51 Maumee River, 24, 52 Maunk-suck (Big Foot), 37, 57, 58 Maxwell, James A., 150 Mendota Lake, 8 "Merry Mount," 47 Michigan: Lake, 93, 95; Territory of, 148 "Michigania," 148 Milk statistics, Walworth County, 165 Milwaukee: city of, 64, 135; County, 2; opening of lands, 69; Public Museum, I02; River, 69 Missionaries, early, 12, 51, 72; to Big Foot village, 29; Strang, 155 Mitchell, J. J., estate, 184 More, Mathias, 150 "Mormon, Book of," 158 Mormons: Delap's Corners church, 159; migration to Salt Lake City, 154; at Nauvoo, 151, 152; Salt Lake branch, 159; Joseph Smith, Jr., branch, 159; Strang branch, 150-58 Morris, 111., 27 Morris, Seymour, 182 Motor cars, numbers of, 193 Motor camping, 193-94, 197 Motor routes, 135-44; from Atlantic and Pacific, 142; Blue Mound Road, 137; cross-country, 141; Dixie Highway, 139; easiest route, 141; Lincoln High- way, 139, 143; longest fine drive, 139; Loomis Road, 136; Snake Road, 143, I44; Wisconsin State Highway No. 11, 141, 142; No. 12, 138, 141, 142; No. 16, 142; No.i7,i2S\ A^o. .?o, 135, 142, 151; No. 25, 142; No. 34, 142; No. 36, 136; No. 37, 142; No. 45, 142; No. 50, 136, 142; No. sg, 138; No. 6r, 136, 137 Mound Builders, 15-16, 103; see "Effigy mounds" Mounds, Indian, 15-17, loi, 103 Naperville, 111., 65 Nauvoo, 111., 151 [223] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA New England influence, 69-70, 160, 167 Nicolet, Jean, 1 1 Northwestern Military and Naval Acad- emy, 192-93 Northwest Territory, I48 Norwegians, 177, 160 Oak openings, 81 Observatory, Yerkes, see Yerkes Observa- tory Oetjen, Diedrich J., 129 Olivet Camp, 189 Olivet Presbyterian Church, 189 Osage orange, 76 Ottawa, 111., 27 Ouilmette, Josette, 55 Owen, Thomas J. V., 34 "Owl Tavern," 67 Payne, Christopher, 64, 65, 66 Pearse, Professor A. S., 94, 97, 99 Peps, son of Shabbona, 26, 27 Pewaukee Lake, 102 "Pickerelville," 93 Pierce, Mary, 151 Pioneer conditions, 175-79 "Pleistocene," 4; animals, 5 Poison ivy, 89-90 Poland China hogs, 168 Poles, 160 Polygamy, Mormon, 156-57 Pontiac, 14, 24 Portage, 50, 103 Porter, Governor George B., 34 Porter, H. H., 180 Pottawatomie: canoes, 20, 85; dress, 59; lodges, 19; name of Lake Geneva in, 8, 14; three settlements, 14; terms of land cession, 35; transportation, 20; The Sauganash, 23, 29; Shabbona, 23, 29 Pottawatomies, 23, 55; Big Foot, chief of, 79; council of, 26; at Fort Dear- born, 22; with French, 14; headman of, 15; last to move, 36; at Lawrence, Kan., 36; moved to new reservation, 27; peaceful, 21; peace chief of, 24; at treaty council, 47; from the Wabash, 23 Potter, O. W., estate, 181 Prairie du Chien, 22 Precipitation, annual, 203 Princeton, 111., 26 Private gardens, 91 Prospect Hill, 136 Quaife, Milo M., 26, 34, 45, 46 Racine: city of, 135; County, 2, 66; opening of lands, 69 Rainfall, see Precipitation Richmond Township, 149 Robinson (Indian), 58 Rock County, 69 Rockford Camp, 191 Rock River Valley, 27 Rollins, Philip Ashton, 71 Ryerson, Martin A., estate, 181 "St. James," 155 Salt Lake City, 154 "Sauganash, The" ("Billy Caldwell"), 23-25, 58 Sault Ste. Marie, 13 Scandinavians, 177 Schmidt, Dr. O. L., xi Schmidt, Mrs. O. L., 182 Scott, General Winfield, 29 Scott, Wis., 66 Seipp, Conrad, 182 Seneca, 111., 27 Shabbona (also Chambley), 24-28, 58 Sharon Township, 1 49 Shaw, W. W., estate, 185 Shaw-bee-nay, see Shabbona "Shawneeawkee," 53; see Kinzie "Shawnee Prophet," 45 Sheboygan County, 2 Sheridan, General Philip, 73 Sheridan Cup, The: founded, 187; race, 187, 199; trophy, 188 Shrubs and plants: Anemone, 88 Aster, 87 Barberry, Japanese, 90 Beans, 86 Blackberry, 85 Bloodroot, 89 Buttercup, 89 Cardinal flower, 87 Cat-tail, 88 Chrysanthemum, 90 Columbine, 89 Corn, 86 Dogwood, 85 Elderberry, 85, 90 Fern: brake, 88; maidenhair, 88 Gentian, fringed, 88 Geranium, 90; wild, 89 Goldenrod, 87, 89 [224] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Gooseberry, 85 Grape, wild, 85 Hepatica, 88 Honeysuckle, 89 Indian pipe, 88 Ivy, poison, 8g; remedy for, 90 Jack-in-the-pulpit, 88 Lettuce, blue, 89 Lilacs, 90 Lobelia, blue, 89 Lotus beds, 86 Marsh marigold, 88 Melons, 86 Milkweed, 89 Moccasin, yellow, 87, 88 Phlox, blue, 89 Raspberry, wild, 85 Redbud, 85 Rose, wild, 89 Shadbush, 88 Solomon's seal: giant, 85; star- flowered, 89 Squash, 86 Sumac, 87 Tiger lily, 88 Trillium, 88 Tubers, 86 Viburnum, sweet, 85 Violet, 87 Witchhazel, 85 Woodbine, 89 Silos: appearance, 213; contents, 166; materials, 166; number, 166 Simmons, James, 62, 71 Smith, Joseph, 151; death of, 152 Smith, Sydney, 183 "Snug Harbor," George Sturges' estate, 181 Social Anatomy 0/ a Rural Community, 162-63 Spring Prairie, 119, 137, 149, 151, 164 Stamm, Stephen A., 129 Stone Age, 13 Stone work, Indian, 16-17, 38-44 Strang, James Jesse: assassination, 157; burial places, 157, 158; converted to Mormonism, 151; crowned "King," 155; death, 157; established colonies, Voree, 151-57; excommunicated, 152; feud with other communities, 156; Great Beaver Island, 155; investigated, 156; law, 156; missionaries, 155; at Nauvoo, 152; origin, 151; "Prophet James," 153; "revelations," 153; sanctioned polygamy, 156; sumptuary laws, 156; tithes, 156; wives, 151 Struve, Otto, 128 Sturges, George, estate, 181 Sturges, Shelton, 1 80 "Sugar bushes," 83 Sugar Creek Towiiship, 149, 164 Sullivan, Frank R., 129 Sullivan's expedition, I45 Swiss, 147 Swiss Brown cattle, 168, 186 Taylor, Zachary, 29, 146 Temperature, annual, 203 Thames, Battle of the, 23, 24 Thwaites, Reuben G., 150, 159 Toggenburg goats, 168 Township map, 1 49 "Tree burial," 63 Trees: ages of, 87; conifers, 76, 79; for fire wood, 82; nut-bearing, 77; useful, 84 Trees: Alder, 85 Apple, 88 Ash, white, 85 Basswood, 84 Birch, 85 Bitter nut, 85 Butternut, 84 Cedar: red, 78; white, 76, 79 Cherry, wild black, 85 Chokecherry, 85 ColTee, 85 Cottonwood, 85 Crabapple, wild, 85 Dogwood, 85 Elm: slippery, 85; winged, 85 Fir, 78 Ginkgo, 90 Hickory, 84 Ironwood, 85 Larch, 76 Linden, 84, 87 Locust, 85 Maple: hard, 82; red, 82, 87; silver (soft or river), 82, 87; sugar, 82, 83, 87 Oak: bur, 80; chinquapin, 81; jack, 81; mossy cup, 81; red, 8i; swamp white, 81; white, 80; yellow, 81 Osage orange, 76 Pawpaw, 76 Pine, 78, 90 Plum, wild, 85 [225] THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A Poplar, 85 Scarlet haw, 85 Spruce, 78, 90 Tamarack, 78, 79 Thornapple, 85 Wahoo, 85 Walnut, 84 Willow, 84 Trematode worm, 99, 100 Troy Township, 149 "Troy Valley," i Turner, Frederick J., 175, 176 Turtle Creek, 60, 62 Van Biesbroeck, George, 128 Van Slyke, James, 37, 68 Van Slyke, Mrs. James, 37, 68 Vegetation era, 75 Vegetation, see Shrubs and Plants, also Trees " Voree," colony, 151-57; building temple, 152; cemetery, 152; established, 151; Herald,\Cj2)'i missionaries, 154; popula- tion, 154 Voree Herald, newspaper, 1 53 "Wadsworth Hall," W. W. Shaw estate, 185 Walworth, Reuben H., 148 Walworth County, 2, 66, 103, 145; agri- culture, 166; Agricultural Society, 164- 68; birds, 118; churches, 163; County Fair, 167-68; county seat, 102; history of, 145-74; location, 148; milk prod- ucts, 165; motor routes, 137; name, 1 50; opening of lands, 69; population, 164, 166; Strang episode, 150; towns and cities, 148; water power, 148; in the world-war, 166-67 Walworth Township, 149, 164 Warner and Swazey, 123 Washington: County, 2; Island, 160 Waterford, 136 Water power, 63, 66, 148 Watertown, Wis., 102 Watson, Wingfield, xi, 158-59 Wau Bun, 53 Waukesha: city of, 137; County, 2, 102, 137; pure-bred cattle, 137 Weather, annual, 205 Weatherford, William, 35 " WesternSecretarial Institute," Y.M.C.A., 189 Whiskey, 20, 46, 47 White pine country, I42 White River, 6, d^ "Whiting House," 73 Whitewater Township, 149, 164 Williams, Captain Israel, 37, 67 Williams, Royal, 67 Williams Bay, 4, 137; birds, 110-12; first permanent settlement, 67; first railway, 72; fish, 99; mastodon, 5; peat bed, 6; population, 164; remains, 4 Williston, S. W., 5 Wilmarth, Mrs. H. M., 183 Wilmot, Wis., 72 Windmill, old Dutch, 180 Winnebago Lake, i , 50 Winnebago, Fort, 52, 53, 54, 62 n., 103 Winnebago War, 22-25, 59 Winnepesaukee Lake, N.H., 98 Wisconsin: became state, 148; birds, 109; buffalo, loi; lakes of, 97; motor routes, 135; roads, 144; Territory of, 148; trading posts, 102; triangle, 51; State Highway Commission, 138 Wisconsin, University of, 94; Studies, 94 Withrow, T. F., estate, 181 Wolf River, 109 Wood, Dr., 31 Wrigley, William, Jr., estate, 184 Wyants Museum, 192 "Wychwood," Hutchinson estate, 185 Yerkes, Charles T., 122, 124 Yerkes Observatory, 121; architect, 122; cost, 125; founding, 122; grounds, 106, 122, 125; location, 122; opening, 122; staff, 128. Telescopes: Bruce photo- graphic, 124; 12-inch, 124; 40-inch, 123; reflecting, 124, 126. Use, 123, 127; visitors, 127, 201; visiting periods, 127; wide reputation, 125; woodchuck at, 108 Young, Brigham, 151, 152 Young Men's Christian Association Col- lege, 189-90 Young Women's Christian Association, 189, 191 "Zion, plant a stake of," 151, 153 FKINTED IN THE TJ.S.A. K 18 8 THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA Poplar, 85 Scarlet haw, 85 Snrnrp ''Q -" "Western Secretarial Institute," Y.M.C.A., PRINTED IN THK U.S.A. K 18 8 / O. •^^n-? ;♦ <^^' v" ..i:^'* q 1* c<>"«# "^^ iN «' '' '^^MrS ^°-n^. V /% -.IP' /\ °'^^'\ .^% •,^° /\ m •^A co4;^>°o'"" /.i^-X co^'t-;;^>4 ^^ o»-»* ">, c°^ /. •» 01 Sf: '''^-'o^ -^t-o^ "^o ^ :\ >* .«,efi5».'. \./ ..^■. ^^^^^* :^., \J^ y. ■^^.r .0' V *iv;-* ,^'*' ^o. ' HECKMAN BINDERY INC. «s^ DEC 89 N. MANCHESTER, !^^ INDIANA 46962 m^ - •?*». «■% 'J'^ ^-^ oV '**^C^