Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

Our faces were turned homeward, but there were yet many miles of the Ekoniah country running to northward on the east of the Ridge, and lakes and lakes and lakes among the scrub-clothed hills. A new feature had become apparent in many of them: a low reef of marsh entirely encircling the inner waters and separating them from a still outer lagoon, reminding us, with a difference, of coral-reefs encircling lakes in mid-ocean. The shores of these lakes were not marshy, but firm and hard, like the lakes of the hilltops, with the same smooth forest-slope surrounding. Is a reverse process going on here, we wondered, from that we have seen in the prairies, and are these sheets of water to change slowly into marsh, and so to firm land again? There are a number of such lakes as these, and on the heights above one of the largest, which they have called Bethel, a family of Canadian emigrants have recently "taken up a homestead."

There was still another chain of prairie-lakes, the "Old Field Ponds," stretching north and south on our right, and as we wound around them, plashing now and again through the slowly-encroaching water, we had 'Gator-bone Pond upon our right. The loneliness of the scene was indescribable: for hours we had been winding in and out among the still lagoons or climbing and descending the ever-steeper, darker hills. Night was drawing on; stealthy mists came creeping grayly up from the endless Old Field Ponds; fireflies and glow-worms and will-o'-the-wisps danced and glowered amid the intense blackness; frogs croaked, mosquitos shrilled, owls hooted; Barney's usual deliberate progress became a snail's pace, which hinted plainly at blankets and the oat-sack,—when, all at once, a bonfire flamed up from a distant height, and the sagacious quadruped quickened his pace along the steep hill-road.

A very pandemonium of sounds saluted our ears as we emerged from the forest—lowings and roarings and shriekings of fighting cattle, wild hoots from hoarse masculine throats, the shrill tones of a woman's angry voice, the discordant notes of an accordion, the shuffle of heavy dancing feet. We had but happened upon a band of cow-hunters returning homeward with their spoils, and the fightings of their imprisoned cattle were only less frightful than their own wild orgies. If we had often before been reminded of Italian skies and of the freshness and brightness of Swiss mountain-air, now thoughts of the Black Forest, with all of weird or horrible that we had ever read of that storied country, rushed to our minds—robber-haunted mills, murderous inns, treacherous hosts, "terribly-strange beds." Not that we apprehended real danger, but to our unfranchised and infant minds the chills and fevers which mayhap lurked in the mist-clothed forest, or even a wandering "cat," seemed less to be dreaded than the wild bacchanals who surrounded us. We would fain have returned, but it was too late. Barney was already in the power of unseen hands, which had seized upon him in the darkness; an old virago had ordered us into the house; and when we had declined to partake of the relics of a feast which strewed the table, we were ignominiously consigned to a den of a lean-to opening upon the piazza. A "terribly-strange bed" indeed was the old four-poster, which swayed and shrieked at the slightest touch, and myriad the enemies which there lay in wait for our blood. We were not murdered, however, nor did our unseen foes—as had once been predicted by a Cracker friend—quite "eat us plum up, bodaciously alive." In the early morning we fled, though not until we had seen how beautiful a home the old plantation once had been. These were not Crackers among whom we had passed the night, but the "native and best." Not a fair specimen of this class, surely, but such as here and there, in the remoter corners of the South, are breeding such troubles as may well become a grave problem to the statesman—the legitimate outgrowth of the old régime. War-orphaned, untutored, unrestrained, contemning legitimate authority, spending the intervals of jail-life in wild revels and wilder crimes,—such were the men in whose ruined home we had passed the night.

There was yet one more morning among the gorgeous-foliaged "scrub-hills," one more gypsy meal by a lakeside, one more genial welcome to a hospitable Cracker board, and we were at home again in the wide sea of pines which stretches to the St. John's. In the ten days of our journey we had seen, within a tract of land some thirty miles long by forty in breadth, more than fifty isolated lakes and three prairie-chains; had visited four enterprising Northern colonies and numerous thrifty Southern farms; had found an air clear and invigorating as that of Switzerland, soft and balmy as in the tropics, while the gorgeous colorings of tree and flower, of water and sky, were like a dream of the Orient.

"But there!" said the Small Boy, stopping suddenly with a half-unbuckled strap of Barney's harness in his hand: "we forgot one thing, after all: never found William Townsend!"—LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.

CANOEING ON THE HIGH MISSISSIPPI

CONCLUDING PAPER

Itasca Lake was first seen of white men by William Morrison, an old trader, in 1804. Several expeditions attempted to find the source of the Great River, but the region was not explored till 1832—by Schoolcraft, who regarded himself as the discoverer of Itasca. Much interesting matter concerning the lake and its vicinity has been written by Schoolcraft, Beltrami and Nicollet, but the exceeding difficulty of reaching it, and the absence of any other inducements thither than a spirit of adventure and curiosity, make visitors to its solitudes few and far between. Itasca is fed in all by six small streams, each too insignificant to be called the river's source. It has three arms—one to the south-east, about three and a half miles long, fed by a small brook of clear and lively water; one to the south-west, about two miles and a half long, fed by the five small streams already described; and one reaching northward to the outlet, about two and a half miles. These unite in a central portion about one mile square. The arms are from one-fourth of a mile to one mile wide, and the lake's extreme length is about seven miles. Its water is clear and warm. July thirteenth, when the temperature of the air was 76°, the water in the largest arm of the lake varied between 74° and 80°. We saw no springs nor evidences of them, and the water's temperature indicates that it receives nothing from below. Still, it is sweet and pure to the taste and bright and sparkling to the eye. Careful soundings gave a depth varying between fourteen and a half and twenty-six feet. The only island is that named by Schoolcraft after himself in 1832. It is in the central body of the lake, and commands a partial view of each arm. It is about one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred feet long, varying in height from its water-line to twenty-five feet, and is thickly timbered with maple, elm, oak and a thicket of bushes.

On Tuesday morning, July 14, at six o'clock, we paddled away from the island to the foot of the lake. The outlet is entirely obscured by reeds and wild rice, through which the water converges in almost imperceptible current toward the river's first definite banks. This screen penetrated, I stopped the Kleiner Fritz in mid-stream and accurately measured width, depth and current. I found the width twenty feet, the depth on either side of my canoe as she pointed down the stream thirty-one inches, and the speed of the current two and one-tenth miles to the hour. The first four miles of the infant's course is swift and crooked, over a bed of red sand and gravel, thickly interspersed with mussel and other small shells, and bordered with reeds. Through these, at two points, we beat our way on foot, dragging the canoes through unmade channels. Indeed, nearly all of these first four miles demanded frequent leaps from the boats to direct their swift and crooked course, until we came to a stretch of savanna country, through which the river washes its way in serpentine windings for nine miles with a gentle current from thirty to sixty feet wide, bordered by high grass, bearing the appearance and having the even depth of a canal. An easy, monotonous paddle through these broad meadows brought us to the head of the first rapids, the scene of our two days' upward struggle. These rapids extend about twelve miles as the river runs, alternating between rattling, rocky plunges and swift, smooth water, for the most part through a densely-wooded ravine cleft through low but abrupt hills, and as lonely and cheerless as the heart of Africa. The solitude is of that sort which takes hold upon the very soul and weaves about it hues of the sombrest cast. From our parting with the Indians on first reaching the river we had neither seen nor heard a human being, nor were there save here and there remote traces of man's hand. No men dwell there: nothing invites men there. A few birds and fewer animals hold absolute dominion. Wandering there, one's senses become intensely alert. But for the hoot of the owl, the caw of the crow, the scream of the eagle, the infrequent twitter of small birds, the mighty but subdued roar of insects, the rush of water over the rocks and the sigh and sough of the wind among the pines, the lonely wanderer has no sign of aught but the rank and dank vegetation and a gloomy, oppressive plodding on and on, without an instant's relief in the sights and sounds of human life. We entered upon the descent of the rapids in no very cheerful mood.

The downward way was easier, and we had cleared away, in the upward struggle, such obstructions as were within our control. Still, we travelled slowly and wearily, and came out of our first day's homeward work wet and worn into a camp in the high grass a good twenty miles from the start of the morning. We drew the canoes from the water, made our beds of blankets inside, lashed our paddles to the masts for ridge-poles, thatched our little cabins with our rubber blankets, hung our mosquito-bars beneath, then cooked and ate under the flare of our camp-fire, and sought our canoe-beds for that sweet sleep which comes of weariness of body, but not of mind, under the bright stars and broad-faced moon shining with unwonted clearness in that clear air.

The night proved very cool. Our outer garments, wet from so much leaping in and out of the canoes, and rolled up for storage on the decks over night, were found in the early morning frozen stiff, and had to be thawed before we could unroll them. The thermometer registered 33° after six o'clock, and frost lay upon all our surroundings.

For two and a half days our course was down a stream winding gracefully through a broad region of savanna country, occasionally varied by the crossing of low sandy ridges beautifully graved by lofty yellow pines. In the savannas the shores are made of black soil drifted in, and forming, with the dense mass of grass-roots, a tough compound in which the earthy and vegetable parts are about equal, while the tall grass, growing perpendicularly from the shore, makes a stretch of walls on either side, the monotony of which becomes at last so tiresome that a twenty-feet hill, a boulder as large as a bushel basket or a tree of unusual size or kind becomes specially interesting. Standing on tiptoe in the canoes, we could see nothing before or around us but a boundless meadow, with here and there a clump of pines, and before and behind the serpent-like creepings of the river. The only physical life to be seen was in the countless ducks, chiefly of the teal and mallard varieties, a few small birds and the fish—lake-trout, grass-bass, pickerel and sturgeon—constantly darting under and around us or poised motionless in water so clear that every fin and scale was seen at depths of six and eight feet. The ducks were exceedingly wild—something not easily accounted for in that untroubled and uninhabited country; but we were readily able to reinforce our staple supplies with juicy birds and flaky fish broiled over a lively fire or baked under the glowing coals.

By noon of Friday, the 18th, we had come to an average width in the river of eighty feet and a sluggish flow of six feet in depth. We halted for our lunch at the mouth of the South (or Plantagenian) Fork of the Mississippi, up which Schoolcraft's party pursued its way to Itasca Lake. Thence a short run brought us suddenly upon Lake Marquette, a lovely sheet of water with clearly-defined and solid shores, about one mile by two in extent, exactly across the centre of which the river has entrance and exit. Beyond this, a short mile brought us to the sandy beaches of Bemidji Lake, the first considerable body of water in our downward travel, and about one hundred and twenty-five miles, as the river winds, from Itasca. The real name of the lake, as used by the Indians and whites adjacent, is Benidjigemah, meaning "across the lake," and Bemidji is frequently known as Traverse Lake. It is a lovely, unbroken expanse, about seven miles long and four miles wide. Its shores are of beautiful white sand, gravel and boulders, reaching back to open pine-groved bluffs. Our shore-searchers found agate, topaz, carnelian, etc. Our approach to Bemidji had been invested with special interest as the first unmistakable landmark in our lonely wanderings, and as the home of one man—a half-breed—the only human being who has a home above Cass Lake. We found his hut, but not himself, at the river's outlet. The lodge is neatly built of bark. It was surrounded by good patches of corn, potatoes, wheat, beans and wild raspberries. There is a stable for a horse and a cow, and all about were the conventional traps of a civilized biped who lives upon a blending of wit, woodcraft and industry. We greatly wished to see this hermit, whose nearest neighbors are thirty miles away. His dog welcomed us with all the passion of canine hunger and days of isolation, but the master was gone to Leech Lake, as we afterward found from his Cass Lake neighbors. The wind favored a sail across the lake—a welcome variation from our hitherto entirely muscular propulsion—so we rigged our spars and canvas, drifted smoothly out into the trough of the lively but not angry waves, and swept swiftly across the clear, bright little sea. The white caps dashed over our decks and a few sharp puffs half careened our little ships, but the crossing was safely and quickly made. It was yet only mid-afternoon, but we had paddled steadily and made good progress nearly four days; so we went into early camp on a bluff overlooking the entire lake, did our first washing of travel-stained garments, brought up epistolary arrearages, caught two fine lake-trout for our next breakfast and went to sound sleep in the nine-and-a-half-o'clock twilight.

We had been advised that we should need guides in finding our exits from the lakes, which were obscured by reeds and wild rice. But no guide was to be had, and we easily found our own way. The river at the outlet of Bemidji Lake is about one hundred and fifty feet wide, very shallow, and runs swiftly over a bed of large gravel and boulders thickly grown with aquatic grass and weeds. We had gone but a little way when a rattling ahead told of near proximity to swift and rough water, down which we danced at a speed perilous to the boats, but not to our personal safety. The river was unusually low, so that the many bouldery rapids which otherwise would have been welcome were now only the vexatious hints of what might have been. The shallow foam dashed down each rocky ledge without channel or choice, and whichever way we went we soon wished we had gone another. The rocks were too many for evasion, and the swift current caught our keels upon their half-sunken heads, which held us fast in imminent peril of a swamp or a capsize, our only safety lying in open eyes, quick and skilful use of the paddle or a sudden leap overboard at a critical instant. Added to these difficulties, a gusty head wind and lively showers obscured the boulders and the few open channels. So we went on all the forenoon, hampered by our ponchos, poling, drifting, paddling and peering our way, blinded by wind and rain, till we came to the last of these labyrinths, liveliest and most treacherous of all. We were soaked, and only dreaded an upset for our provisions and equipments. The rapid was long, rough, swift, crooked. The Kleiner Fritz led the way into the swirl, and was caught, a hundred feet down, hard and fast by her bow-keel, swung around against another boulder at her stern, and was pinned fast in no sort of danger, the water boiling under and around her, while her captain sat at his leisure as under the inevitable, with a don't-care-a-dash-ative procrastination of the not-to-be-avoided jump overboard and wade for deeper water. The Betsy D., following closely, passed the Fritz with a rush which narrowly escaped the impalement of the one by the other's sharp nose, struck, hung for a moment, while the water dashed over her decks and around her manhole, then washed loose and went onward safely to still water. The Fritz, solid as the Pyramids, beckoned the Hattie to come on without awaiting the questionable time of the latter's release; so the namesake of the hazel-eyed and brown-haired Indiana girl came into the boil and bubble, sailed gayly by the troubles of the others, was gliding on toward quiet seas under her skipper's gleeful whoops, when, bang! went her bow upon a rock, from which a moment's work freed her: tz-z-z-z-z-zip crunched her copper nails over another just under water, whence she went bumping and crunching, her captain's prudent and energetic guidance knocking his flag one way and his wooden hatch the other, till finally his troubles were behind him. Then the Fritz began to stir. Her commander went overboard and released her, then leaped astride her deck and paddled cautiously down the rift and slowly down the quieter water below, howling through the pelting rain,

"Then let the world wag along as it will:
We'll be gay and happy still,"

until he came upon his comrades—one stumbling about over the blackened roots of grass and underbrush from a recent fire in search of wood for our needed noon-day blaze; the other with wet matches and birch bark, and imprecations for which there was ample justification, vainly seeking that without which hot coffee and broiled bacon cannot be. The Kleiner Fritz's haversack supplied dry matches, fire began to snap, coffee boiled, bacon sputtered on the ends of willow rods, hard tack was set out for each man, and we sat upon our heels for lunch under the weeping skies and willows, comparing notes and experiences.

Thence, three hours through monotonous savanna and steady rain brought us to the uppermost bay of Cass Lake, and unexpectedly upon a straggling Indian village. We bore down upon it with yells, and there came tumbling out from birch lodges and bark cabins the first human beings we had seen for more than ten days, in all the ages, sizes, tints, costumes and shades of filth known to the Chippewas of the interior wilderness. At first they were a little shy of us, but we got into a stumbling conversation with the only man of the whole lot who wore breeches or could compass a little English, and soon the dirty, laughing, wondering, chattering gang came down to inspect us and our, to them, marvellous craft, and to fully enjoy what was perhaps the most interesting event in many a long month of their uneventful lives. Then we paddled across the bay, or upper lake, out into the broader swells of Cass Lake itself, pulled four miles across to the northernmost point of Colcaspi, or Grand Island, and made our second Saturday night's camp upon its white sands at or very near the spot where Schoolcraft and his party had encamped in July, forty-seven years before. The landward side of the beautiful beach is skirted by an almost impenetrable jungle. We had frequently seen traces, old and new, of deer, moose, bears and smaller animals, but had seen none of the animals themselves save one fine deer, and our sleep had been wholly undisturbed by prowlers; so we sank to rest on Grand Island with no fears of invasion. At midnight the occupant of the Kleiner Fritz was aroused by a scratching upon the side of the canoe and low, whining howls. He partially arose, confused and half asleep, in doubt as to the character of his disturber, which went forward, climbed upon the deck and confronted him through the narrow gable of his rubber roof with a pair of fiery eyes, which to his startled imagination seemed like the blazing of a comet in duplicate. The owner of the eyes was at arm's length, with nothing but a mosquito-bar intervening. Then the eyes suddenly disappeared, and the scratching and howling were renewed in a determined and partially successful effort to get between the overlapping rubber blankets to the captain of the Fritz. This movement was defeated by a quick grasp of the edges of the blankets, and while the animal was snarling and pawing at the shielded fist of his intended victim lusty shouts went out for the camp to arouse and see what the enemy might be, as the Fritz was unwilling to uncover to his unknown assailant. The Hattie's skipper, hard by, saw that something unusual was on hand, peered out, and so increased the uproar as to draw the adversary's attack. Then the Betsy bore down upon us all just as the hungry and persistent beast was crouching for a leap at the Hattie's jugular, the loud bang of a Parker rifle rang out upon the stillness, and a fine, muscular lynx lay dead at the Cincinnati Nimrod's feet. The animal's trail showed that he had prowled around our bacon and hard tack in contempt, had inspected the Betsy's commander as he lay on the sand in his blanket and under a huge yellow mosquito-bar, but had evidently concluded that any man who could snore as that man usually did was not a good subject for attack, and so came on down the beach in search of blood less formidably defended. We renewed our fire, examined our dead disturber, and turned in again to sound sleep under the assuring suggestion of the Cincinnati man that, whatever else the jungle might hide, two cannon-balls rarely enter the same hole.

Our heavy and late slumber was broken by the laugh and chatter of two Indian women and a child, who in a bark canoe a little way from shore were regarding our camp in noisy curiosity. My blanket suddenly thrown aside and a good-morning in English took them by surprise, and they paddled away vigorously toward a group of lodges some four miles across the lake. In the glorious sunset of a restful Sunday we crossed the glassy lake to its outlet, taking two fine lake-trout of four pounds as we went, and glided out of as beautiful a lake as sun and moon shine upon into the swift, steady, deep current of what for the first time in its long way Gulfward bears the full dignity of a river. Its green banks are some two hundred feet apart. The water has a regular depth of from five to six feet, and all the way to Lake Winnibegoshish affords an unbroken channel for a medium-sized Western steamer. The shores, alternating between low, firm, grass-grown earth and benches of luxuriant green twenty feet high, grown over with open groves of fine yellow pines, were so beautiful and regular that we could hardly persuade ourselves that we should not see, as we rounded the graceful curves, some fine old mansion of which these turfed knolls and charming groves seemed the elegant lawns and parks. Our fleet unanimously voted the river between Cass and Winnibegoshish Lakes the most beautiful of all its upper course.

We began our second week upon the Mississippi with a breakfast of baked lake-trout, slapjacks, maple syrup and coffee, which embodied the culinary skill of the entire fleet: then started for Winnibegoshish in the height of good spirits and physical vigor. In one of our easy, five-miles-an-hour swings around the graceful curves we were met by a duck flying close over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the determined set of his dirty face, we had small room to doubt the ultimate fate of the flying mallard. Another curve brought us in sight of the home of the little savage, where a dozen Indians, in all stages of nudity, were encamped upon a high bluff. A concerted whoop from our fleet brought all of them from their smoky lodges, and we swept by under their wondering eyes and exclamations. Then the high land was left behind, and half an hour between low meadows brought us out upon the yellow sands and heaving swells of Lake Winnibegoshish, the largest in the Mississippi chain, the dimensions of which, including its lovely north-eastern bay, are about eleven by thirteen miles. The name signifies "miserable dirty water lake," but save a faint tinge of brown its waters are as pure and sparkling as those of any of the upper lakes. Our entrance upon Winnibegoshish was under a driving storm of wind and mist, against which we paddled three miles to Duck Point, a slender finger of wooded sand and boulder reaching half a mile out, at whose junction with the main land is a miserable village of most villainous-looking Indians. One man alone could speak a little English, and through him we negotiated for replenishing our provisions. Meantime, the storm freshened and embargoed an eight-mile journey across an open and boiling sea; so we paddled to the outermost joint upon the jutting finger for a bivouac under the trees, waiting the hoped-for lull of wind and wave at sunset. The smoke of our fire invited to our camp the hungry natives, who dogged us at every turn all the long afternoon, in squads of all numbers under twenty, and of all ages between two and seventy. One club-footed and club-handed fellow of forbidding visage protested with hand and head that he neither spoke nor understood our vernacular. Later, he sidled up to the Hattie's skipper and said in an earnest sotto voce, "Gib me dime." Denied the dime, he intimated to the Betsy that he doted on bacon, of which we were each broiling a slice. The Betsy's captain was bent upon securing an Indian fish-spear, and he pantomimed to the twinkling eyes of the copper-skin that he would invest a generous chunk of bacon in barbed iron. The Indian strode back to his village, and soon returned with the spear, which he transferred to the Betsy's stores.

The conventional Indian maiden besieged the bachelor two-thirds of our expedition with all the wiles that could be embodied in a comely and clean-calicoed charmer up in the twenties, who finally bore away from the Betsy's private stores a fan of stunning colors and other odds and ends of a St. Paul notion-store; while the guileless commander of the Hattie, whose cumulative years should have taught him better, and whose thinly-clad brain-shelter and disreputable attempt at sailor costume should have blunted all feminine javelins, surrendered to the ugliest old septuagenarian in the village, and sent her heart away rejoicing in the ownership of a policeman's whistle courted by her leering eyes and already smirched by her dirty lips, together with a stock of tea, crackers and bacon for which her expanded corporosity evinced no imminent need. At last rid of our importunate acquaintances, we turned in for a sleep, which we resolved should be broken at the first moment, dark or light, when we might cross the lake. Before daylight the Betsy's resonant call awoke us, and in the earliest gray we paddled out upon a heavy but not foaming sea, and after two and a half hours of monotonous splashing in the trough of the waves landed for breakfast on the eastern shore, whence we crossed a lovely bay and passed out once more upon the river.

A mile on our way we came to the prettiest of the many Indian burying-grounds which we saw now and then. Formerly, the Indians deposited their dead upon rude scaffolds well up in the air. Now they seek high ground and place the bodies of the departed in shallow graves, over which they build little wooden houses a foot or two high with gabled roofs, and mark each with a white flag raised upon a pole a few feet above the sleeper's head. In this neighborhood we inquired of a stalwart brave concerning our proximity to a portage by means of which a short walk over to a small lake near the head of Ball Club Lake and a pull of six miles down the latter would bring us out again into the river, and save a tedious voyage of twenty-five to thirty miles through a broad savanna. The Indian in his old birch canoe joined our fleet, and led us to the beginning of the portage near the foot of Little Winnipeg Lake. We had carried two canoes and all the baggage over to the water on the other side of a sandy ridge, leaving only the Kleiner Fritz to be brought, when our guide and packer, with a preliminary grunt, said "Money?" inquiring how much we intended to pay him. He had worked hard for four hours, for which we tried to tell him that we should pay him one dollar when he should bring over the remaining canoe; but we could not make him understand what a dollar was. We then laid down, one after another, four silver quarter-dollars and two bars of tobacco; whereupon he gave a satisfied grunt and an affirmative nod, disappeared in the forest, and in less than an hour returned with the Fritz upon his steaming shoulders, having covered more than three miles in the round trip.

As we pulled out upon Ball Club Lake a gentle stern wind bade us hoist our canvas for an easy and pleasant sail of six or seven miles down to the open river. We glided out gayly before a gentle breeze, and sailed restfully over the little rippling waves, our speed increasing, though we hardly noted the signs of a gale driving after us over the hills behind. The Hattie was leading well over to the port shore, the Fritz bearing straight down the middle, with the Betsy on the starboard quarter, when the storm struck us with a vigor that increased with each gust. The black clouds swished over our heads, seemingly almost within reach of our paddles. The sails tugged at the sheets with tiresome strength. The canoes now plunged into a wave at the bows and were now swept by others astern, as they rushed forward like mettlesome colts or hung poised upon or within a rolling swell, until, with the increasing gale, the roaring waves dashed entirely over decks and men. The Hattie bore away to leeward and rode the gale finely, but at last prudence bade the furling of her sail. Expecting no such blow the Fritz had not taken the precaution to arrange her rubber apron for keeping out the waves from her manhole, and now, between holding the sheet, steering and watching the gusty wind, neither hand nor eye could be spared for defensive preparations; so her skipper struck sail and paddled for the westward shore, with the Betsy lunging and plunging close behind. We on the windward side sought the smoother water within the reeds, and drove along rapidly under bare poles, out of sight of the Hattie, separated at nightfall by miles of raging sea. We rode before the wind to the foot of the lake, where we were confronted by the alternative of a toilsome and unsafe paddle around the coast against the storm's full force, or camping in mutual anxiety as to the fate of the unseen party—a by no means pleasant sedative for a night's rest upon wild and uninhabited shores. We decided upon the pull, and labored on, now upon the easy swells within the reeds, and then tossing upon the crests in open places, until at last a whirling column of smoke a mile ahead gave us assurance of the Hattie's safety. The reunited fleet paddled down into the Mississippi, enlivening the darkness until we could find camping-ground beyond the marshes by a comparison of storm-experiences and congratulations that we had escaped the bottom of the lake.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, after a monotonous pull through the interminable windings of Eagle Nest Savanna, we swept around a curve of high tillable land upon the uppermost farm cultivated by whites, eighteen miles above Pekagema Falls, and one hundred and seventy miles by river beyond the Northern Pacific Railroad. Thomas Smith and his partner, farming, herding and lumbering at the mouth of Vermilion River, were the first white men we had seen since July 6, seventeen days, and with them we enjoyed a chat in straight English. Nine miles below we camped at River Camp, the second farm downward, where we were kindly supplied with vegetables and with fresh milk, which seemed to us then like the nectar of the gods. Thursday, 24th, we reached Pekagema Falls, a wild pitch of some twenty feet, with rapids above and below, down which the strong volume of the river plunges with terrible force in picturesque beauty. A carry around the falls and three miles of paddling brought us to Grand Rapids, and we rushed like the wind into the whirl and boil of its upper ledge, down the steep and crooked incline for two hundred yards, out of which we shot up to the bank under a little group of houses where Warren Potter and Knox & Wakefield conduct the uppermost post-office and stores upon the river. We speedily closed our partly-completed letters and posted them for a pack-mail upon an Indian's back sixty-five miles to Aitkin, while we should follow the tortuous river thither for one hundred and fifty miles. We had hoped for a rest and lift hence to Aitkin upon the good steamboat City of Aitkin, which makes a few lonely trips each spring and fall, but the low water had prevented her return from her last voyage, made ten days before our arrival. Our stores replenished, after two hours of rest we started again in a driving rain, and under the hearty bon voyage of a dozen frontiersmen and Indians shot the two lively lower ledges of Grand Rapids, and came out on smooth water, whose sluggish flow, broken by a very few rifts, bore us thence one hundred and fifty miles to the next white settlement at Aitkin. The entire distance lies through low bottom-lands heavily timbered, and our course was drearily monotonous. We left Grand Rapids at mid-afternoon of Thursday, July 24, and camped on Friday night four miles below Swan River. Late on Saturday we passed Sandy Lake River—where formerly were a large Indian population and an important trading-post, founded and for many years conducted by Mr. Aitkin, who was prominently identified with the early history of that region, and is now commemorated in the town and county bearing his name, but where now remain only one or two deserted cabins and a few Indian graves, over which white flags were flapping in the sultry breeze—and camped two miles below. Monday's afternoon brought us to Aitkin, so that we had covered one hundred and fifty miles of sluggish channel, at low summer tide, in three working days. We had been four weeks beyond possibility of home-tidings, and we swooped down upon the disciple of Morse in that far-away village with work that kept him clicking for an hour. We were handsomely taken in by Warren Potter, a pioneer and an active and intelligent factor in the business of that region, in whose tasteful home we for the first time in a month sat down and ate in Christian fashion under a civilized roof. Having lost a week in the farther wilderness, we decided to take the rail to Minneapolis, that we might enjoy the beautiful river thence to Lake Pepin, yet reach our homes within the appointed time. Half a day was enjoyed at Brainerd, the junction of the Northern Pacific main line with the St. Paul branch, and the most important town between Lake Superior and the Missouri. It is beautifully built and picturesquely scattered among the pines upon the Mississippi's eastern bank, not far above Crow Wing River. Thence we were carried over the splendid railway, passing the now abandoned Fort Ripley, winding along or near to the river and across the wheat-fields, through the busy and beautiful city of mills, below St. Anthony's roar and down the dancing rapids to a pleasant island-camp between the green-and-gray bluffs that bind Minneapolis to Minnehaha—the first really fine scenery this side of Itasca's solitude. A delightful paddle under a bright morning sun and over swift, clear water carried us to the little brook whose laughter, three-quarters of a mile up a deep ravine, has been sent by Longfellow rippling outward to all the world. We rounded the great white-faced sand-rock that marks the outlet, paddled as far as we might up the quiet stream, beached the canoes under the shade of the willows, walked a little way up the brook, past a deserted mill, under cool shadows of rock and wood, and enjoyed for half an hour the simple, seductive charms of the "Laughing Water." Then we tramped back to our boats, floated down under the old walls of Fort Snelling and between the chalk-white cliffs which line the broadening river, until we came in sight of St. Paul's roofs and spires, and soon were enjoying the thoughtful care and generous hospitality of the Minnesota Boat Club. Another day's close brought us to Red Wing, backgrounded by the green bluffs and reddened cliffs of its bold hills. One more pull down the now broad and islanded stream carried us to Lake Pepin, one of the loveliest mirrors that reflects the sun, and to Frontenac's white beach. The keels of the Fritz, the Betsy and the Hattie crunched the sands at the end of their long journey, the boats were shunted back upon the railway, and their weary owners were soon dozing in restful forgetfulness upon the couches of the unsurpassed Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line.

Beyond reasonable doubt, our party is the only one that ever pushed its way by boat up the entire course of the farther-most Mississippi. Beyond any question, our canoes were the first wooden boats that ever traversed those waters. Schoolcraft, in 1832, came all the way down the upper river without portages, but he had very high water and many helpers, in spite of which one of his birch canoes was wrecked. The correspondent of a New York newspaper claimed the complete trip in his canoe some five years ago, but his own guide and others told us that his Dolly Varden never was above Brainerd, and that his portages above were frequent. So we may well feel an honest pride in our Rushton-built Rob Roys and our hard knocks, and may remember with pardonable gratification that upon our own feet and keels we have penetrated the solitudes lying around the source of the world's most remarkable river, where no men live and where, probably, not more than two-score white men have ever been.—A.H. SIEGFRIED.

ADAM AND EVE

CHAPTER XXVI

By the time Reuben May entered the little town of Looe he had come to a decision about his movements and how he should carry out his plan of getting back to London. Not by going with Captain Triggs, for the monotonous inaction of a sailing voyage would now be insupportable to him, but by walking as far as he could, and now and then, whenever it was possible, endeavoring to get a cheap lift on the road. His first step must therefore be to inform Triggs of his decision, and to do this he must get back to Plymouth, a distance from Looe of some fifteen or sixteen miles.

In going through Looe that morning he had stopped for a few minutes at a small inn which stood not far from the beach; and having now crossed the river which divides West from East Looe, he began looking about for this house, intending to get some refreshments, to rest for an hour or so, and then proceed on his journey.

Already the town-clock was striking six, and Reuben calculated that if he started between nine and ten he should have time to take another good rest on the road—which he had already once that day traversed—and reach Plymouth Barbican, where the Mary Jane lay, by daybreak.

The inn found, he ordered his meal and informed the landlady of his intention.

"Why, do 'ee stop here till mornin', then," exclaimed the large-hearted Cornish woman. "If 'tis the matter o' the money," she added, eying him critically, "that's hinderin' 'ee from it, it needn't to, for I'll see us don't have no quarrel 'bout the price o' the bed."

Reuben assured her that choice, not necessity, impelled his onward footsteps; and, thus satisfied, she bade him "Take and lie down on the settle there inside the bar-parlor; for," she added, "'less 'tis the sergeant over fra Liskeard 'tain't likely you'll be disturbed no ways; and I shall be in and out to see you'm all right."

Reuben stretched himself out, and, overcome by the excitement and fatigue of the day, was soon asleep and dreaming of those happier times when he and Eve had walked as friends together. Suddenly some one seemed to speak her name, and though the name at once wove itself into the movement of the dream, the external sound had aroused the sleeper, and he opened his eyes to see three men sitting near talking over their grog.

With just enough consciousness to allow of his noticing that one was a soldier and the other two were sailors, Reuben looked for a minute, then closed his eyes, and was again sinking back into sleep when the name of Eve was repeated, and this time with such effect that all Reuben's senses seemed to quicken into life, and, cautiously opening his eyes, so as to look without being observed, he saw that it was the soldier who was speaking.

"Young chap, thinks I," he was saying, "you little fancy there's one so near who's got your sweetheart's seal dangling to his fob;" and with an air of self-satisfied vanity he held out for inspection a curious little seal which Reuben at once recognized as the same which he himself had given to Eve.

The unexpected sight came upon him with such surprise that, had not the height of the little table served as a screen to shelter him from view, his sudden movement must have betrayed his wakefulness.

"He's a nice one for any woman to be tied to, he is!" replied the younger of the two sailors. "Why, the only time as I ever had what you may call a fair look at un was one night in to the King o' Proosia's, and there he was dealing out his soft sawder to little Nancy Lagassick as if he couldn't live a minute out o' her sight."

"That's about it," laughed the soldier. "He's one of your own sort there: you Jacks are all alike, with a wife in every port. However," he added—and as he spoke he gave a complacent stroke to his good-looking face—"he may thank his stars that a matter of seven miles or so lays between his pretty Eve and Captain Van Courtland's troop, or there'd have been a cutting-out expedition that, saving the presence of those I speak before"—and he gave a most exasperating wink—"might have proved a trifle more successful than such things have of late."

"Here, I say," said the sailor, flaming up at this ill-timed jocularity, "p'ra'ps you'll tell me what 'tis you're drivin' at; for I've got to hear of it if you, or any o' your cloth either, ever made a find yet. You're mighty 'cute 'bout other folks, though when the spirits was under yer very noses, and you searched the houses through 'twas knowed to be stowed in, you couldn't lay hold on a single cask. 'Tis true we mayn't have nabbed the men, but by jingo if 't has come to us bein' made fools of by the women!"

"There, now, stash it there!" said his older comrade, who had no wish to see a quarrel ensue. "So far as I can see, there's no cause for bounce 'twixt either o' us; though only you give us a chance of getting near to them, sergeant," he said, turning to the soldier, "and I'll promise you shall make it all square with this pretty lass you fancy while her lover's cutting capers under Tyburn tree."

"'A chance?'" repeated his companion, despondingly: "where's it to come from, and the only one we'd got cut away from under us by those Hart chaps?"

"How so? where's the Hart off to, then?" asked the sergeant.

"Off to Port Mellint," said the man addressed. "Nothing but a hoax, I fancy, but still she was bound to go;" and so saying he tossed off the remainder of his grog and began making a movement, saying, as he did so, to his somewhat quarrelsomely-disposed shipmate, "Here, I say, Bill, come 'long down to the rendezvoos with me, and if there's nothin' up for to-night what d'ye say to stepping round to Paddy Burke's? He's asked us to come ever so many times, you know."

"Paddy Burke?" said the sergeant. "What! do you know him? Why, if you're going there, I'll step so far with you."

"Well, we're bound for the rendezvoos first," said the sailor.

"All right! I can find plenty to do while you're in there."

"Then come along;" and, only stopping to exchange a few words in passing with the landlady, out they all went, and Reuben was left alone, a prey to the thoughts which now came crowding into his mind.

For a few minutes he sat with his arms resting on the table as if communing with himself: then, starting up as if filled with a sudden resolve, he went out and asked the landlady a few commonplace questions, and finally inquired whereabouts and in what direction did the rendezvous lie.

"Close down by the bridge, the first house after you pass the second turning. Why?" she said: "be 'ee wanting to see anybody there?"