TAKING WATER, WILD RICE LAKE.
Supper over, we filled the pipes of the Indians with fine tobacco and asked for a council. We all sat around a bright fire, and soon effected a bargain with the Indians to drag our canoes on up the little river, leaving us to walk across the country with the guide. Early the following morning we started, four of our party with the canoes, and we on foot with Kewashawkonce. The guide was pantomimed by our fat man for a conservative pace becoming the hot morning and the difficult route. Ke, as we abbreviated him, strode into an unbroken forest, grown with dense underbrush, strewn with fallen trees at almost every step, diversified by swamps and thickets through which he beat his way by main strength, and now and then traversed by rivers—all streams are rivers there—into which he plunged with never an interrogation-mark, and so on briskly, up hill and down, till, with three miles of walking, wading, climbing and struggling, we were brought to bay, tired out. Half an hour's rest and some refreshing wild strawberries prepared us for such another stage. Then an hour more of this terrible strain made us drop again for rest. Another hour, and before noon, hot and jaded, we came out upon a low bluff overhanging the river, and stopped for lunch. The guide, apparently fresh and unwearied, cut a sheet of birch bark for tinder, lit a fire as defence against mosquitos, and in sixty seconds was snoring. We were not slow in following his example, and the sun was dropping over into the west when we awoke. The guide examined the river, and informed us that our wading section was yet below. Standing in mid-stream drinking from his hands, he saw a fine pickerel's graceful movements a rod away, reached out for a half-sunken bit of a tree's branch, plunged it dexterously at the fish, struck it fairly in the back, and brought it up to us with a satisfied grunt. We lounged the afternoon away, and at six o'clock Metagooe came wearily to our camp with the Fritz at his heels. Half an hour later his comrades came with the other Rob Roys, their camp-traps loaded upon the decks and upon the interpreter's back. Our inquiry as to what had become of their birch canoe brought from Henry, as he dropped his pack, the sententious answer, "Busted." Over the evening's pipes and camp-fire, less than eight miles of actual distance accomplished, we resolved to abandon the shallow river and to portage directly to Upper Wild Rice Lake. The skipper of the Betsy proposed for the three of us a joint bed: Cincinnati feet have a troublesome time under a Rob Roy's low deck. We assented, stretched our rubber blankets, spread our woollens, adjusted the Betsy's long mosquito-bar and crawled carefully under it in expectation of a glorious sleep under the stars and the pines; but the dreams of the Hattie's captain, the trombonings of the Betsy's nose, the tossings of the Fritz and the savage industry of the mosquitos drove anything but troubled sleep from our eyelids, and we welcomed the early "Ho! ho! ho!" and improvised gong of the irrepressible Kawaybawgo.
MINNESOTA MOSQUITOS.
Before we had done with our coffee, venison and slap-jacks the Indians had made yokes for carrying the canoes on their heads and shoulders, and had reduced the camp to packs. Soon we were off upon the first pose of a regular Indian portage. Each of three Indians had upon his shoulders one of the canoes, his head within its hot and darkening sides, its bow pointing forward high in the air and its stern hanging low behind his heels. The other two squatted upon heel and toe, drew the broad strap of their carrying-thongs over their foreheads, and with a plunge and a grunt sprang to their feet, each with a great hump of six score pounds. Then we plunged, in Indian file, into a trackless forest, and jogtrotted our way for three miles, when in a clump of pines, without a word or a signal, down came the boats and the packs. Three of the splendid fellows loosed their pack-thongs and took their rest in tramping back unloaded to camp for what had been left. The others, with us, rested a few moments: then we pushed on till two miles brought us out upon the low, jungled shore of a beautiful lake about one mile by two in extent. The guide, without a word, laid down his load, but not his clothes, and with a swift rush sprang far out into the lake, swam up and down, splashing, shouting and laughing, came dripping to shore, lit his smudge-fire, lay down in a sunny place, snored an hour, awoke dry and vigorous, and with a whoop he and Waisonbekton dashed into the woods to go back for their share of the luggage left behind. While they were gone we enjoyed our lunch and gave a name to the lovely lake which had rippled so long, far away from the haunts of men, without identity. We christened it Rob Roy Lake, in honor of our fleet. It lies half a mile to the south-west of Upper Wild Rice Lake, into which its waters flow, and is set down on Colton's sectional map in the township range numbered thirty-seven. Our entire party reunited, we canoeists paddled across to the lake's outlet, a narrow, miry stream which loses itself in a swamp, and that in turn merges into the Upper Wild Rice Lake. We paddled and poled down to the end of the little river, and came to a dead stand in the matted roots of the swamp-grass: then waded waist-deep in the mire and slime, each dragging his canoe with the aid of an Indian, until we came out upon the open water. Thence a paddle of two miles along the coast brought us to another little stream flowing into the lake. As we came to its mouth Kawaybawgo was feasting upon a duck he had killed and broiled, of which he offered me a portion with a smile and interrogative grunt which seemed to compassionate my wet, weary and forlorn appearance. A splendid pike, two feet long, came gracefully out of the stream and hung motionless in the clear water. I pointed him out to the Indian and the Hattie's captain, both of whom were standing near him. At the instant their eyes fell upon him he moved: then, as they started for him, he darted like a flash for deep water, pursued by the two men at the top of their speed through a sheet of water six inches deep for nearly a hundred feet out. It was a fair race, and the six-feet-three Indian made a splendid spurt, but the pike won.
THE MISSISSIPPI AT LAST!
The stream bore us upward to the floating bog out of which it flowed. We drew the canoes out upon a meadow which undulated in graceful billows at our every movement. A step would shake all the surface for a rod about us, while our combined tread sent waves of grassy earth in every direction. A sudden leap so shook the cup of cold coffee sitting by one of the Indians, six or seven yards away, that the liquid spilled over the cup's edge. The whole meadow, solid to the eye, is but one of those monster sponges that hold in abeyance waters which otherwise would sweep like a flood down the great rivers. Beyond this billowy field we came to the open water of another unnamed lake, about one mile long, fringed about with green pines, to which we gave the name of Longworth, in honor of Cincinnati's distinguished judge, and to a lovely little green island thickly grown with trees we gave the name of another canoeist left behind, Mr. Empson of Louisville. At the head of Longworth Lake, and in plain view of Empson Island, within a space cleared out of a dense jungle, we made our last camp before reaching the coveted Mississippi. Our stay here was marked in red by the most vindictive attack from mosquitos in all the cruise. No one unacquainted with the Northern Minnesota wilderness in midsummer, or with a region having a similar insect population, can at all imagine the number and fierceness of the ravenous aërial hosts that had beset us all the way from White Earth. In mid-day they keep one constantly alert, while at night they are beyond credible report. They are small, shrewd and persistent. As I lay awake their myriad voices about and above me made a great chorus, really grand and impressive, out of which for a few seconds at a time there came bursts of harmony which I could hardly separate from the idea of a vast, distant chorus of human voices. Against their voracity no ordinary bar is a bar at all. We had gone to their haunts provided with netting which at home gave immunity, but through its meshes these mosquitos inserted their bills, then their heads, then struggled through bodily, and came down upon us like demons. We were dressed in woollens, our hands were in dogskin gloves and our heads and necks in thick calico hoods and capes, but all such protections were naught when those screaming villains had a mind for blood. At one onslaught they would go into the shrinking flesh through two thicknesses of wool and two of cotton, or through a heavy dogskin glove, or through the thick and hardened skin of the hand's palm or the foot's ball, or through a buckskin moccasin and cotton hose—through any protection at our command except a cotton canopy hung wide of our heads and bodies.
Sung and stung out of all endurance by the very centre of that army of the wilderness, we were astir in the grayest of our second Thursday's dawn, and were soon in readiness for our final portage over the crests of the Heights of Land to the river, which out of our long and severe march had become to us a veritable Mecca. Our way was up a gentle range of hills, whose tops, but a few yards wide, divide the waters which flow southward to the great Gulf from those which seek their far northward trend through the Red River of the North. The first division of our party reached the Mississippi before noon with a joy born out of a week's toil and hardship, and in a trice I was drinking of and laving in its swift, bright water. We could hardly realize that in this deep, rushing brook, not more than four or five paces wide, we saw the beginnings of that majestic current which drains half a continent. Soon our second division came up, we ate our last lunch in company, and the Indians, each shaking us by the hand with a grunt and a smile, then going off into the forest with a cheer, left us alone in that vast and uninhabited wilderness. Late in the afternoon we launched our canoes into the little river, and loaded them for our journey to its head, camping about three miles above our point of embarkation.