hen 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 ja