On Lake Pepin.
By Epes Sargent.
The excursion of June, 1854, up the Northern Mississippi, in honor of the completion of the Rock-Island and Chicago Railroad, and by invitation of the contractors of that road, was on a scale quite unparalleled in the history of similar celebrations. Some seven hundred guests, chiefly from the Atlantic States, were freely transported an immense distance to view the last railroad link between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, and to enjoy an excursion by steamboat from the point of termination on the river up to the new and wondrous city of St. Paul, in Minnesota, and thence to Fort Snelling, and by land to the Falls of St. Anthony.
The river trip was accomplished between Monday evening and the next Saturday morning; the boats stopping at Galena and Dubuque on the upward passage. Above Dubuque the scenery begins to open upon the voyager in forms of singular beauty. The bluffs grow higher and more precipitous; and the remarkable sand-stone protrusions, so characteristic of the banks of the Upper Mississippi, begin to appear.
At one point it requires no exaggeration of fancy to trace the outlines of a ruined castle; while, at another, you see a solitary tower, and then the serrated embrasures of a deserted battlement. The boat glides on, and now from the steep slope of a bluff, clothed in richest verdure, as if it had been kept under careful cultivation, you see the sand-stone bare in a single central spot, and taking the form of an ancient cenotaph, as if there reposed the ashes of some ante-diluvian monarch. A mile or two farther on, and the broken entablature of a Grecian temple, with architrave, frieze, and cornice, and resting on
