HEAD OF THE MISSISSIPPI.
The next morning we started with light hearts upon what we supposed would be but a short journey to the river's source, to meet an exasperating disappointment. We had made a bargain for transportation from the railway to Itasca Lake or to a point five miles below, all fully diagrammed and understood by correspondence, but found ourselves set down by the employés of the rascally half-breed—who had been careful to leave us at Wild Rice Lake—in an unknown land, six days from civilization, at a point nearly or quite thirty miles below the lake, below a region of rapids and obstructions against which we had especially stipulated, and up which no craft had ever travelled. A mile's work brought us to the beginning of this second series of troubles. Lying across the river at all heights, depths and angles were the tough pine logs we had dreaded, and at every mile or two were tumbling rapids. All that long Friday we took our turns with the axe, lopping off branches that we might squeeze under or shunt over logs; climbing with our stores and boats over great log-drifts held by the grip of the rocky defiles; wading through shoals and dragging our canoes through mud and sand; plunging suddenly into holes that engulfed us to our armpits; paddling astride our decks over pools too deep for wading; chopping and wrenching logs that forbade other means of passage; fighting inch by inch up plunging gorges, down which and over whose rugged boulders the narrowed waters foamed in almost resistless fury and milky foam—on and up, rod by rod, half a mile in the hour, till we came to a weary and desolate camp not two leagues from our breakfasts. There we cooked our suppers and ate in hoods and gloves, fighting mosquitos and black flies for every morsel, speculating as to the morrow's probabilities and discussing the question of victory or defeat. We rose from the night's sleep resolved upon seeing Itasca, and until mid-afternoon fought over again the battles of yesterday, and at last came out upon a smooth, placid stream, up which we paddled with easy swing some nine miles. Then the river narrowed and shallowed, and we again took to our feet upon a beautiful gravelly bottom. At times the way was closed to sight by rushes and wild rice, and we could only beat our way through. At last the water, thickly grown with reeds, broadened and deepened, and a score of paddle-strokes carried us through the green curtain out upon Itasca's beautiful surface, over which we glided, under the shadows of the setting sun, up to Schoolcraft's Island for a Sunday's quiet.
Our heavy and restful sleep was not broken till long after the sun was glinting upon us through the trees. Our first work was given to building a lodge of underbrush and making preparations for two days' stay on the lonely island, completed by unfurling the signal of the New York Canoe Club from a high stump hard by the camp-fire. Barring the mosquitos, Sunday's rest was a pleasant and refreshing sequence to ten days of toil and struggle, and Monday found us in hearty readiness for a thorough exploration of Itasca Lake and its feeders. We took a lunch, our guns and scientific instruments, and paddled up the south-west arm of the lake to find and explore the leading tributary. We found the outlets of five small streams, two having well-defined mouths and three filtering into the lake through bogs. Selecting the larger of the two open streams, we paddled into its sluggish waters, ten feet wide and one foot deep where they enter the lake. Slow and sinuous progress of two hundred yards brought us to a blockade of logs and to shallow water. We landed, fastened the canoes, took our bearings by compass and started for a tramp through thicket and forest to Elk Lake, which we reached after a rapid walk of thirty-five minutes. This lake is an oval of about one mile in its longest diameter. It lies about half a mile in a straight line south from Itasca. Its shores are marshy, bordered by hills densely timbered. Its sources are boggy streams having little or no clearly-defined course. To all appearance, these bogs and this small lake are the uttermost tributaries to Itasca Lake, and the latter, concentrating these minor streams and sending them out as one, is the true head of the Father of Waters.
Elk Lake was a place of misadventure to us. Our struggle through the thicket and dense forest was hot and exhausting. Our scientist left there a fine aneroid barometer, which a second hot walk failed to recover. Our photographer, arrived at the lake with a grievous burden of camera, plates, tripod, etc., found that he had forgotten his lens tubes, and was compelled to double his tracks back to the canoes, then wade out into the swampy borders of the lake, waist-deep in slime, to secure a view of this highest Mississippi water, only to have his plate light-struck and ruined by an accident on the homeward journey.
While the artist was gone for his forgotten lenses our Nimrod missed a fine eagle which swept over our heads at long range. So we returned to our island camp in no very good mood, but a successful troll for lake-trout, and a good supper off two fine fellows baked under the coals in birch jackets, sent us to bed in good spirits and with no regrets save for the lost barometer.
A.H. Siegfried.