In the latter part of the season of 1905, my son and I, accompanied by James O'Neill, a frontiersman and trusty employee, made a canoe trip from Winton down the chain of lakes on the boundary line between Minnesota and Canada, as far as Lake La Croix. We camped at night and traveled by day, being always in Minnesota. We saw racks in Minnesota made by the Indians, on which to smoke the meat of the moose they had killed. We counted twenty-one moose hides hung up to dry. The moose had doubtless been killed as they came to the lakes to get away from flies and mosquitoes. All these animals were unlawfully killed.
A more pleasant sight than the one just related was once accorded us while working in this same country. We were quietly pushing our canoes up a sluggish stream that had found its bed in a spruce swamp. There, in many places, pond lilies were growing, their wide leaves resting on the surface of the water. The roots of the lilies are much relished as a food by the moose. We have seen the moose standing out in the bays of the lakes, and in the almost currentless streams, where the water was up to the animal's flanks, or where its body was half immersed, and poking its head deep below the surface in search of the succulent roots of the lilies. On this day, a mother moose and her twin calves had come to this stream to feed. She was in the act of reaching down under the water for a lily root, as we pushed our canoes quietly over the surface of the water into her very presence. The first to observe us was one of the young calves not more than two days old, that rose to its feet, close by on the shore. The mother looked toward her calf before she saw us; then, without undue haste, waded ashore. At this moment the second calf arose, shook itself, then, with the other twin, joined its mother. The three moved off into the spruce swamp as we sat quietly in our canoes, enjoying to the fullest this most unusual opportunity of the experienced woodsman, accustomed as he is to surprises. Our only regret on this occasion was, that we had no camera with us.
"Here he brings his family and friends to fish". (Page [180].)
CHAPTER XXII.
White Pine—What of Our Future Supply?
It is claimed that where Dartmouth College is, in the town of Hanover, New Hampshire, on the bank of the Connecticut River, there once stood a white pine tree two hundred and seventy feet in height. That is said to have been the tallest white pine of which there is a record.