ng 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.

[Illustration: BARN BLUFF (C., M. & ST. P. R.R.).]

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. T