CHAPTER XIX.
Six Hundred Miles in a Birch Canoe.
The following summer, I hired a number of men to pack some supplies from Duluth to the shores of Lake Vermilion. I had with me one white man to assist me in a reestimate of the pine timber that I had bought at the land sale in December. Canoes were purchased of the Indians, and I employed some of them to go as packers and canoemen.
The work first took the party eastward a distance of fifty miles. Not only was the timber reexamined, but the character of the streams was carefully noted, with reference to their feasibility for floating out the timber, whenever the time should come for it to be cut and brought to market. All of that country is very rugged and much broken. The shores of the lakes are bold and rock-bound. Islands exist in nearly all of the lakes, and at that time they were thoroughly wooded, many of them containing fine bunches of pine timber. The country was picturesque and the scenery most enchanting. Aquatic birds of various species were frequently startled from the water as our canoes came in sight of them. Fish were abundant and could be taken in almost any one of the lakes, by throwing out a line. There were caribou and moose in the country, but no deer at that time.
Bands of Indians were living along these waters, most of them belonging to the United States, but, as we turned and went westward, on the waters of Lake La Croix we met many Canadian Indians. They all spoke the same language, though sometimes with great difference in accent. There were many waterfalls, and around these, in every instance, a portage had to be made of all our supplies and of our canoes. One day's experience was much like that of its predecessor or like that of the one to follow. On the whole, the work was less arduous than that in a country which is mostly land and not cut up by numerous lakes, as is the condition in all of the northern woods in Minnesota. A camping ground would be selected on a shore of a lake, and, from this one camp, it was often our experience that several days' work could be economically accomplished before it was necessary to again move. The timber that we wished to examine often lay on either side of the lake on the shore of which the camping ground had been selected. Thus the work continued until the party reached Rainy Lake. This lake is fifty-five miles long, and at its foot, at that time, on the Canadian side, was Fort Francis. Much of this water route was then known as the Dawson Route. It had been used by the Canadian government to reach the Canadian Northwest with its soldiers, at the time of the Riel Rebellion. The shattered remains of a number of French batteaus were seen on the rapids between different lakes, where an attempt had been made to navigate the waters, which had disastrously failed.
"We have seen the moose standing out in the bays of the lakes". (Page [172].)
Just below Fort Francis, which is at the beginning of the Rainy River which flows into Lake of the Woods, we found a Canadian farmer. He had been an engineer on board a Canadian steamer that plied from Rat Portage to Fort Francis. When the rebellion was over, and there was no longer use for steamboating, this man determined to take a homestead under the Canadian land laws. This was at the latter end of July. While our party was preparing dinner on the bank of the river at the edge of the settler's meadow, he came down to see us. It was seldom that he saw any of the white race, and, when one chanced to pass by, he was always glad, he said, to see him and learn something of the outside world. He invited us to go back into his meadow where, he assured us, we should find an abundance of ripe, wild strawberries. This we found to be true, and the berries were indeed a luxury to a lot of men who had been living on nothing better than dried peaches or dried apples, stewed and made into sauce.