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."