CHAPTER XIV
A PUZZLE
Thus far the three travellers had enjoyed a long spell of that perfect fair weather, which during some seasons is common in the North Country, while at other seasons summer comes near missing the great wilderness which lies between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay.
By the time Ganawa and the lads had each finished a pink-fleshed broiled trout for supper the western sky was overcast and they could see the reflection of distant lightning on the far-away clouds, although above them the stars were shining, and a westerly wind soughed somewhat uncannily through the tops of spruces and birches and played about the crowns of old white pines which far overtopped the dense mixed forest of spruce, birch, balsam, fir, and white cedar, which campers and fishermen may find over [[114]]much of the great North Shore country to this day.
“My father,” Ray had asked, “why are there only a few big pines in the forest?”
Ganawa thought a few moments before he answered. “I cannot tell you, my son. As long as I remember, and during the time of my father, this was always a country of a few big pine-trees, but south of the Big Lake, where there was for a long time the country of the Chippewas, there are large forests of very big pine-trees.”
The question which Ray asked of Ganawa is somewhat of a puzzle even to the scientific foresters and naturalists of to-day. If one asks the oldest present-day Indians for information, he receives about the same answer which Ganawa gave to Ray. As long as the oldest of them remembers and far back into the time of their grandfathers, isolated giant white pines have towered over the other forest trees that do not grow to the size of giants.
In some regions, as those in the poplar [[115]]forests of the Big Fork country in Minnesota, and in the Itasca Forest, the big pines are probably the only trees that survived a destructive fire between seventy-five or a hundred years ago. Of the time of these fires neither white men nor Indians have now any definite recollection, but unfortunately forest fires have not been rare in this great region of variable rainfall and much wind.
North of Lake Superior and in the Michipicoten country, the big pines may really tell another story. Perhaps they are an advance guard in the northward spread of the forest trees, after all that vast region had been covered by ice. Some of these big white pines are very old. They have been slow growers. Three hundred narrow rings of growth are not rare, and if one could carefully examine the rings close to the ground he might find four hundred. These rings mean that the trees are between three hundred and four hundred years old. There is no doubt that many of these lone giants [[116]]were struggling seedlings or even lustily growing youths when John Smith was saved by Pocahontas and when the Pilgrims landed on the coast of Massachusetts. Careful investigation might even show that some of these lone sentinels were already beginning to reach up to the sunlight when Columbus landed on San Salvador.