Lower Chute of the Grand Calumet Fall.
A good deal has been written lately about the hardships and dangers of camp life. For years I have spent a considerable time each season in the woods, sometimes depending for days on the resources of the country, and I can truthfully say I never had one uncomfortable hour there.
"Where shall we go after a moose, Joe?" I asked.
Joe said: "Well, it's bes' to go where we sure to find 'em. Dese fellers aroun' here don't like de place where I go, because it takes most all day to get dere. But I never failed yet to see moose." So we threw our luggage into the canoe, and departed, in a gentle rain-storm.
It was nearly a year since I had had a paddle in my hand, but it was only a short distance between portages. I know of no form of severe muscular exertion which is so little irksome as paddling a canoe. Rowing is galley-slavery in comparison. With the paddle there are not less than three variations of position on each side, which bring new muscles into play and relieve the weary ones; and a shift from one hand to the other is a complete rest. So it was not long, during the succeeding month of canoeing, before I came, at daylight, to look forward to a long day's paddling with positive delight.
If any one wishes to know just where we went on that little side issue of a moose hunt let him get a good map of the Kippewa region, and locate the space between Lake Ostoboining and Hay Bay. It is a blank space on a Crown Land Office map, but there are at least fifty small lakes in it. It took six hours' canoeing and carrying, from Mr. Hunter's house, till we came to the lake Joe had chosen.
That moose hunt was too easy. We got to the lake, put up the tent, chopped some wood, and just at dusk, when Joe was baking biscuits in the frying-pan, suddenly he set the pan down and made a rush for the canoe. At the same moment I saw a big bull moose wading out of his depth, from the opposite shore, into the deep water, about the length of a city block from the tent. He did not see us at all, and went right on, swimming leisurely across. The lake was narrow, and the moose did not hurry. His broad yellow antlers were so heavy that he barely kept his nose above the water. It was a great sight to see the ripple spread in a diagonal behind him, while Joe urged the little canoe right up close astern. What a pity it was too dark for the camera! When he was forty rods from shore and we were close to him, Joe asked, loudly and pleasantly, "Jack, where you goin' to-day?" Jack turned his big head, and the expression in his ox-like eye was that of pained surprise. He began to swim so hard that he half climbed out of the water.
On Lake Kippewa.