“There is a real artificial river, hundreds o’ miles long, hand made of the best material, water tight, no snags or rocks or other imperfections, durability guaranteed,” said Samson.  “It has made the name of DeWitt Clinton known everywhere.”

“I wonder what next!” Sarah exclaimed.

They met many teams and passed other movers going west, and some prosperous farms on a road wider and smoother than any they had traveled.  They camped that night, close by the river, with a Connecticut family on its way to Ohio with a great load of household furniture on one wagon and seven children in another.  There were merry hours for the young, and pleasant visiting between the older folk that evening at the fireside.  There was much talk among the latter about the great Erie Canal.

So they fared along through Canandaigua and across the Genesee to the village of Rochester and on through Lewiston and up the Niagara River to the Falls, and camped where they could see the great water flood and hear its muffled thunder.  When nearing the latter they overtook a family of poor Irish emigrants, of the name of Flanagan, who shared their camp site at the Falls.  The Flanagans were on their way to Michigan and had come from the old country three years before and settled in Broome County, New York.  They, too, were on their way to a land of better promise.  Among them was a rugged, freckled, red-headed lad, well along in his teens, of the name of Dennis, who wore a tall beaver hat, tilted saucily on one side of his head, and a ragged blue coat with brass buttons, as he walked beside the oxen, whip in hand, with trousers tucked in the tops of his big cowhide boots.  There was also a handsome young man in this party of the name of John McNeil, who wore a ruffled shirt and swallow-tail coat, now much soiled by the journey.  He listened to Samson’s account of the Sangamon country and said that he thought he would go there.  He had traded hats on the way with Dennis, who had been deeply impressed by the majestic look of the beaver and had given a silver breast pin and fifteen shillings to boot.

A jolly lad was Dennis, who danced jigs, on a flat rock by the riverside, as Samson played The Irish Washerman and The Fisher’s Hornpipe.  In the midst of the fun a puff of wind snatched the tall beaver hat from his head and whirled it over the side of the cliff into the foliage of a clump of cedars growing out of the steep cliff-side, ten feet or so below its top.  Before any one could stop him the brave Irish lad had scrambled down the steep to the cedars—­a place of some peril, for they hung over a precipice more than a hundred feet deep above the river.  He got his treasure, but Samson had to help him back with a rope.

The latter told of the veiled bear, and when the story was finished he said to the Irish lad:  “It will not do you any harm to remember that it is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it.  In my opinion one clean-hearted Irish boy is worth more than all the beaver hats in creation.”