m the Rev. W.S.
Boutwell, who has just planted himself among the Pillagers at Leech
Lake. This is the same gentleman who accompanied me to Itasca Lake in
1835. "Your favors," he says, "of April 28th and July 26th, are before
me; and would that I could command time to compensate you for at least
half! But look at a man whose head and hands are full of cares and
duties. The only time I get to write is stolen, if I may so say, from
the hours of repose. October the ninth I arrived here. There was not a
sack of corn nor rice to be bought or sold. I had but two men, and with
these a house must be built and a winter's stock of fish laid up. What
must be done? I will briefly tell you what I did. Four days after my
arrival I sent my fisherman to Pelican Island, and pulled off my coat
and shouldered my axe, and led the other into the bush to make a house.
In about ten days, with the help of one man, I had the timber cut and on
the spot for a log-cottage twenty-two by twenty-four. Some part of this
I not only cut, but assisted in carrying on my own back. But for every
inch of over-exertion I got my pay at night, when I was sure to be
'double and twisted' with the rheumatism. I have located about two miles
east of the old fort, where you counseled with the Indians at this
place. As you cross the point of land upon which the old fort is built,
you fall on a beautiful bay, a mile and a half broad, on the east side
of which I have located, in the midst of a delightful grove of maples.
South-west, three-fourths of a mile, is the present trading house.

"When I arrived I had not sufficient corn to feed my men three days.
There was also at that time a great scarcity of fish. But the God of
Elijah did not forsake us. We soon were in the midst of plenty. On the
11th of the present instant my fisherman returned, having been absent
not quite four weeks, and with but four nets, yet I had nearly 6000
tulibees (this is a small species of whitefish) on my scaffold. My
house, in the meantime, was going forward, though rather tardily, with
but one man. In two days more I hope to quit my bark lodge for my log
and mud-walled cottage, though it has neither chair nor three-legged
stool, table nor bedstead. But all this does not frighten me. No, it is
good for a man sometimes to stand in need, that he may the better know
how to feel for his fellow-man.

"You mention the receipt of a letter from Mr. Greene, relative to the
field at Fond du Lac. I am ha