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.

[Illustration: PEKAGEMA FALLS.]

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.

[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