For a hot and weary hour the deck hands were busy taking on freight: first barrels from a warehouse on the Levee at Dubuque; then at Dunleith, a number of reapers and mowers, very heavy and cumbersome to be moved. As soon as the boat was in motion Captain Gray asked Mrs. Lester if she would go to the pilot-house, as that was the coolest part of the boat. Very kindly he escorted her thither across the hurricane-deck. It was a delightful change from the heated atmosphere below to the cool refreshing breezes above. “Two eagles at once,” said the captain. “There is something for you to look at, my boy.” There was the Grey Eagle, her paddles both in motion, and the War Eagle following her in her northward course; a great sight for Norman. The banks are well wooded, and of some elevation, and there are pretty islands; but the scenery is more monotonous and not so grand as that of the Upper Mississippi. The river is much more shallow, and can be navigated only by a smaller class of steamboats. The captain pointed out to them, on the banks of the river, the entrance to a lead mine, and a hill-top called Pilot Knob. At two o’clock they approached Fulton, and the captain courteously took them on shore. Fulton, the terminus of an air-line road from Chicago, is rather an uninviting looking place, with a grand hotel, suitable for a great city; a destiny Fulton does not seem likely to achieve. Seated in the cars, Norman saw the sun set for the last time on the great river that had become to him a familiar friend; saw the Rock River gleam in the moonlight; and soon after the welcome lights of his uncle’s home. Norman had a great deal to tell his uncle and aunt about the Mississippi, and Minnehaha, and the boats, and the little incidents of their journey, and the week he was to spend at Dixon passed rapidly away. One day Norman’s aunt took Mrs. Lester to see Father Dixon, the patriarch of the place to which his name is given. The hotel also bears the name given to him by the Indians, Nachusah, or the White Haired. His long flowing white hair makes him look very venerable; and there is an expression of gentleness in his delicate features that wins the love of the children of the town, who all call him Grandpapa. He established a ferry over the Rock River thirty years ago, when there were no white people in all the country round, and lived here in his solitary dwelling by the river side. He lives there still; and Mrs. Lester was very much interested in her visit to him, and in his accounts of the Indians who formerly roamed over these prairies, now the fruitful farms of the white men.