Although I have had camp-life before, and have fried flapjacks on an old iron shovel, I am subject to mishaps. There goes my pork into the ashes; never mind! I shall need less pepper. I job my trident into the slice,—flaming now, and turning to crisp,—hold it a moment before the coals, and slap it on my bread in season to save a little of the drip.
Do I hear some one exclaim, How can he eat it? Ah! you who never have had experience on the prairies don't know the pleasures of such a lunch.
Now, because we are all as jolly as we can be, because I have praised salt pork, I wouldn't have everybody rushing out here to try it, as they have rushed to the Adirondacks, fired to a high pitch of enthusiasm by the spirited descriptions of the pleasures of the wilderness by the pastor of the Boston Park Street Church. What is sweet to me may be sour to somebody else. I should not like this manner of life all the time, nor salt pork for a steady diet.
Wooded prairies, oak openings, hills and vales, watered by lakes and ponds,—such is the character of the region lying south of Otter-Tail. Over all this section the water is as pure as that gurgling from the hillsides of New Hampshire.
Minnesota is one of the best-watered States of the Union. The thousands of lakes and ponds dotting its surface are fed by never-failing springs. This one feature adds immeasurably to its value as an agricultural State. In Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska the farmer is compelled to pump water for his stock, and in those States we see windmills erected for that purpose; but here the ponds are so numerous and the springs so abundant that far less pumping will be required than in the other prairie States of the Union.
We fall in with a Dutchman, where we camp for the night, who has taken up a hundred and sixty acres under the Pre-emption Act. He has put up a log-hut, turned a few acres of the sod, and is getting ready to live. His thrifty wife has a flock of hens, which supply us with fresh eggs. This pioneer has recently come from Montana. He had a beautiful farm in the Deer Lodge Pass of the Rocky Mountains, within seven miles of the summit.
"I raised as good wheat there as I can here," he says,—"thirty bushels to the acre."
"Why did you leave it?"