CHAPTER X.
Does It Pay to Rest on Sunday?
"With what a feeling deep
Does Nature speak to us! Oh, how divine
The flame that glows on her eternal shrine!
What knowledge can we reap
From her great pages if we read aright!
Through her God shows His wisdom and His might."
It was in the summer of 1872, while I was at the United States land office at Bayfield, Wisconsin, and was having some township plats corrected previous to going into the woods in that district to hunt for pine timber, that John Buffalo, chief of the Red Cliff band of Chippewa Indians, a friend of the United States land officers, made his quiet appearance at the land office. I had asked where I could find a reliable, trustworthy, and capable man to accompany me on this cruise, planned to cover a period of not less than two weeks. Captain Wing, receiver of the land office, asked the Indian chief, "John, wouldn't you like to earn a little money by going into the woods to help this man for a couple of weeks or more?" To this the chief gave his consent with the usual Indian "Ugh."
During that day provisions were bought and placed in individual cloth sacks. A strong rowboat was secured and the journey begun. Camp was made the first night on one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The day following, our destination was reached at the mouth of the Cranberry River, where our boat was carefully cached.
It rained for several days, in consequence of which the underbrush was wet most of the time, and in passing through it we became wet to the skin. Before leaving home I had bought for use on the trip what I believed to be a fine pair of corduroy trousers. They looked well, and the brush did not cling to them, a desirable condition when traveling through thickets often encountered in the woods. It rained the first day that we were out. At night we pitched our tent, prepared the evening meal, and at an early hour retired. On retiring, it is usually the custom for men camping, to remove their outer garments and put them out of the way at one side of the tent. Both were very tired and soon fell asleep. I was awakened by a very disagreeable odor within the tent and walked out into the fresh air. Returning, I lay down and remained thus until early daylight, experiencing only a disturbed sleep during the night. My feeling was that I had chosen an undesirable bedfellow, and, as later developments proved, it would have been reasonable if the Indian chief had arrived at the same conclusion.
"We started out with two birch canoes". (Page [148].)
During the next day it again rained. After the rain the sun came out bright and warm, causing a rapid evaporation to take place on our wet garments. It was under these circumstances that the discovery was made that the very disagreeable odor experienced during the preceding night was again present, and was emanating from the wet coloring matter that had been used in the manufacture of the corduroy trousers. The best possible defense—which I felt it was necessary to make—was to call attention to the fact that the strong odor was coming forth from the corduroy cloth. On reaching camp that evening, the new corduroys were hung out on the limb of a tree where they were last seen by our small camping party.
It is not customary for land hunters to work less on Sunday than on other days, for the principal reason that all of their provisions must be carried with them on their backs, and, that by resting on Sunday, the provisions would disappear as rapidly, or more so, than they would if work continued on that day. However, toward the end of our trip which had been a very successful one in point of finding desirable government timber lands to enter, we decided that we would rest on the next day, which was Sunday, just previous to our taking our boat to make our return trip on Lake Superior waters to the land office at Bayfield. As a precaution, lest other land lookers should discover our presence, our camping ground was selected in the interior of the section. We had eaten our dinner, and were enjoying a siesta when we heard voices. Listening, we heard men discussing the most direct line to take to reach their boat, hidden somewhere on the shore of the lake. Time sufficient was given to allow them to get so far in our advance, that any movement on our part would not be heard by them. Soon, thereafter, we packed our tent and all of our belongings and started for our boat. We did not reach it until nine o'clock the following morning. We were then forty-five miles from Bayfield by water.
Soon after we had rowed out into the lake, a northeasterly wind began to blow and did not cease blowing during the entire day. The sandstone bluffs around that portion of the south shore of Lake Superior in many places are nearly vertical and rise to very considerable heights, preventing any possible way of escape from the water's edge for miles in extent. It was with the greatest effort that we, pulling with all our might, could keep the boat out into the lake, so powerful was the wind, and so increasingly great were the waves. Besides, it was not possible to take a rest from our labors for, the moment we ceased rowing, our boat began rapidly drifting toward the rocks on the south shore. Thus we labored until near the middle of the afternoon, when we got under cover of the first of the friendly Apostle Islands. After resting awhile, before dark we were able to reach the Red Cliff Indian Agency, where we spent the night at the chief's wigwam.
The next morning early, we resumed our boat and rowed into Bayfield, arriving in time to be present at the opening of the land office. With much anxiety, I made application to enter the vacant lands that had been selected on this trip, fearing that the men whom we had overheard talking in the woods two days before, might have arrived in advance of me and have secured at least a part of the same descriptions. With great satisfaction, however, I found the lands to be still vacant, and all of the minutes chosen while on this strenuous cruise, I bought.
A little before noon of this same day, two well-known land hunters from Chippewa Falls came in, in their boat, off the lake, and, on going to the land office, applied to enter nearly all of the lands which I had secured a few hours before.
The moralist might point with justification to the fact that had we not rested on Sunday, more than likely we should not have known of the presence of any competitors in the field, and should not, therefore, have worked so many long hours in our boat on that windy day, nor should we likely have reached the land office in advance of the two men who arrived there only a few hours later than ourselves.
"By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water."