om of the lake.

[Illustration: CHURCH AMONG THE PINES (BRAINERD).]

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