On the township plat which one buys at the local United States land office, are designated by some character, the lands belonging to the United States, and, by a different character, the lands owned by the State.
The country presented an unbroken forest of the various kinds of trees and underbrush indigenous to this northern climate. The deer, bear, lynx, porcupine, and wolf were the rightful and principal occupants. Crossing occasionally, the trail of the first named, served only to remind us of our complete isolation from the outside, busy world.
The provisions yet remaining were sufficient to feed our party for less than three weeks. In the meantime two of the Indians had gone down the river in a canoe with Mr. Patrick to the mouth of the Flambeau, to await the arrival of fresh supplies which he was to send up to that point from Eau Claire by team. The experienced and skilled woodsmen had divided the working force into small crews, which began subdividing the sections within the townships where there were government or state lands, to ascertain whether there were any forty acre tracts that contained enough valuable pine to make the land profitable to purchase at the land offices. Two thousand acres were thus selected during the first cruise, but, on our agent reaching the land office where the lands had to be entered, only twelve hundred acres were still vacant (unentered), other land lookers having preceded our representative and arrived first at the land office with eight hundred acres of the same descriptions as our own.
As there were many land lookers at this time in the woods, all anxious to buy the good pine lands from the government and the state, conflicts like the above were not unusual.
Through a misunderstanding of orders, our working party, now nearly out of everything to eat, assembled at The Forks, a point forty-five miles above the mouth of the Flambeau, and waited for the Indians to bring up fresh supplies. They did not come, and, after waiting three days, while each man subsisted on rations of three small baking powder biscuits per day, all hands pushed down to the mouth of the river where the Indians were awaiting us with plenty of raw materials, some of which were soon converted into cooked food of which all partook most heartily.
Corrected plats, showing the unentered lands of each township which we were directed to examine, were sent to us.
CHAPTER V.
Gaining Experience—Getting Wet.