At La Pointe we took rooms at the house of Mr. Oakes, the Indian agent. There were two or three hundred Indians on the island, but only two white men; Mr. Oakes, who had married a half-breed Indian woman, and had two rather pretty quadroon daughters of seventeen or eighteen; and Dr. Borup, the American Fur Company's agent, a Norwegian, and a really intelligent and cultivated gentleman.

We stayed several days at La Pointe in order to make preparations for a long camping trip, and one of these was Sunday. In the forenoon we went to the Christian service; in the afternoon, to the pagan. I was interested in both, but especially in the latter. I observed, too, the same Indians attending with sober devoutness the one, and then with frenzied delight the other. Of this latter, which lasted some three hours, I give a brief description, though I never clearly understood what it was all about.

The Indians had built a birch-bark lodge, seventy to eighty feet long, and thirty or forty feet wide. In the middle of this they had set up a post, painted with red stripes. This seemed to be a temporary representative of the Great Spirit, Manitiongeh, for they always made obeisance to it in passing. It is impossible to describe the strange mixture of dancing, chanting, drum-beating, and rattle-shaking. It was apparently a ceremony of initiation of an old woman into a religious society. She sat on a number of blankets spread on the ground, about half-way between the painted post and the end of the lodge. The blankets were apparently the initiatory offerings. The audience sat about the walls all around. Five or six priests, or medicine-men, with medicine pouches in their hands, made of the skins of small animals, retaining the shape of the animal, and especially the head, marched continuously around the post, the woman chanting. All that I could distinguish were the words “Hay - Manitiongeh - Hay” repeated almost indefinitely. Every time the medicine-men passed around the woman, they presented the heads of the animal-bags toward her, with a “ho-ho-ho-ho,” rapidly pronounced. Whenever this was done, she bowed her head toward the ground and trembled violently. Her agitation increased with every repetition, until finally she fell prostrate on her face, and was taken out in an insensible condition, and carried into a small separate lodge. What occurred there was a religious secret. As soon as she returned revived, there commenced a general dance of the whole company, in which she joined with supernatural activity. Gradually religious excitement passed into frenzy, and frenzy into convulsions and insensibility, and in this condition she was again borne out.

We stayed at La Pointe several days making the necessary arrangements for our long trip to the head-waters of the Mississippi, and thence to Fort Snelling. From there we expected to go up the Minnesota River, then called the St. Peter's. We therefore hired from Dr. Borup a large-sized birch-bark canoe and two men as guides and paddlers for forty days, and paid him at once. We had moccasins made, as it is not safe to wear boots or shoes in a birch-bark canoe, and laid in provisions - pork, flour, cheese, maple-sugar, crackers, tea, coffee, etc.

When ready, we bade good-by to our friends, not forgetting the pretty quadroons, and walked down to the canoe. When my foot went over the side of the canoe, as I had forgotten about the moccasins, my ankle was seized - “No, no, not with shoes; must put on moccasins.” The change was soon made, and we embarked. We wore nothing but these moccasins on our feet for three weeks.

I stop a moment to describe our canoe and guides. Our canoe was an ordinary birch-bark, now so familiar, but then new to me. Their lightness and grace, their paper-like thinness and frailty are well known. Ours was larger than usual, being about twenty-four feet long and three feet wide. Our guides were Robideau, a French Canadian and a famous voyageur, and François Salle, a half-breed French Indian. They spoke only the barest smattering of English, and their French was but little better, being a mixed patois. We, on the other hand, spoke almost no French, so that our communication was largely by signs, although we did manage to understand a little of their patois, and made them understand some of our bad French.

We started about 8 A. M., July 8th. I can never forget the delight of that day's sail among the exquisitely beautiful Apostle Islands. Often we were completely surrounded by them and seemed to be in the midst of a little lake, with picturesque shores changing at every moment. The islands consisted of level red sandstone, with bold shores, crowned with heavy forests. We made a glorious camp our first night out, among these islands, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Next morning we came out from among the islands, and skirted the south shore of the lake. Here the guides took us to see a great curiosity; the south shore of the lake is bordered by an almost perpendicular cliff of red sandstone fifty feet high, the heavy level beds of which have been eaten into and undermined by the waves, forming caves and arches, which tumble in from time to time, causing recession of the shore. At one place the waves had cut far under the cliff, and the overhanging table was supported by many gnarled columns of harder sandstone. The guides took the canoe more than a hundred yards under the sandstone table-rock, and we looked out through hundreds of columns on to the great lake. Above our heads there were fifty feet of sandstone, crowned with primeval forest. Through these gloomy corridors, among these great columns, and beneath these hollow arches, the waves dashed with a sound like thunder. It was wonderfully impressive of the power of waves as an erosive agent. I was even then convinced that all the Apostle Islands are but remnants of the same level sandstone, left by a similar process of erosion. These phenomena have been described by others since that time, but I believe my own observations were the first, as also were the explanations given in my journal.

We nooned that day near the mouth of the Bois Brulé River. The guides pointed it out to us as the way by which they would return from Fort Snelling. I thought nothing of it then; but long afterward learned by the investigations of the geologists of this region that this was an old outlet of Lake Superior into the Mississippi, through the St. Croix.

In the afternoon we prevailed on our guides to take us across to the north shore, as we desired to see at least something of it also. After a little hesitation, they struck out with vigor, remarking that a sudden squall would be dangerous. The distance was about twenty-five miles; we went across in about four hours, and camped for the night on a beautiful pebble beach. Our guides began immediately to pitch our tent on a mass of pebbles, each one about the size of a walnut. We remonstrated, but they assured us that rounded pebbles make an excellent bed, and such indeed we found it. The smooth pebbles slide and roll over one another, and adjust themselves perfectly to the form. It was the best bed surface we had yet found. Sand, on the contrary, though apparently soft and yielding, as every camper knows makes the worst possible bed.

Next morning we paddled along the north shore of the lake, observing as we passed everything worthy of note, and drew up our canoe for nooning on a sand-spit stretching across the end of the lake and separating it from an estuary at the mouth of the St. Louis River, up which we were to go. This narrow sand-spit runs from the north shore for six or seven miles nearly to the south shore, where there is the only opening into the St. Louis. Just where we landed is the site now of the city of Duluth. At that time, and for many years afterward, there was not a white settlement within a hundred miles. While nooning here, I took a delicious swim in the warm waters of the estuary, right along the present water-front of Duluth.

The glory of the voyage up the St. Louis River that afternoon will live forever in my memory. The day was warm and still, the river was wide and devious, the water smooth as a mirror, and the banks clothed in richest verdure. The Indian villages were strung all along the river at intervals. At every turn we would come in view of a new cluster of lodges, and would be greeted with the peculiar shrill, vibratory halloo, characteristic of the Indian, made by vibrating the hand over the mouth. Every greeting would be answered by our men in a similar manner, and I too with some practise succeeded fairly well. We camped that night at Fond du Lac, an Indian village of two or three hundred, about ten miles up the river, where we found a single white man, a Mr. Boilleau.

Next day we went to the Falls, the Dalles of the St. Louis, where there is a portage of nine miles. As this was a serious undertaking, we had to commence it in the early morning, and therefore camped here for the rest of the day. What a glorious swim I took in the roaring cataract that afternoon! Some twenty or thirty Indians, men and boys, had come from Fond du Lac to visit our camp. As I went down the cataract with railroad speed, they watched me with the greatest interest, cheering as I passed, and screaming with delight when I came out victorious. I bantered them to join me, but neither entreaty nor jeering would induce them to try. I went down repeatedly (walking up by land each time), leaping and playing in the roaring torrent, laughing and screaming with delight.

Next day began the serious business of the portage. I was greatly interested in the wonderful capacity of those men as beasts of burden; each had a leathern strap, about eighteen feet long and an inch wide, except in the middle, where it was three inches wide; this strap was tied about each end of my trunk by Robideau, and the trunk thrown over on the back, with the broad strap on the forehead. This was probably at least seventy-five pounds; on this a hundred pounds of pork was put, and on this again some twenty-five pounds of crackers, making in all at least two hundred pounds. With this he went off on a trot. François Salle did the same with John's trunk, and one hundred pounds of flour and other things, to make up two hundred pounds, and followed at the same gait. We knew we could not make more than six or seven miles, so we remained in camp until the afternoon. In about three-quarters of an hour, the men came back, loaded themselves again in the same manner, and went off; and we saw them no more until late in the afternoon.

About four o'clock we started for our next camp. This was our first experience in walking any considerable distance in moccasins. The trail was very rough and stony, and we winced and shrank at every step. We soon got used to it, however, or the ground became smoother, and we went along very well. About half-way we met the men returning for their last load, the canoe.

On the way we observed how the portage was made. The whole distance was divided into stages about a mile apart. The first load was carried to the first stage and deposited, and the men returned to camp for the second load; this was carried two miles and deposited, then they returned to stage No. 1, and carried the load to No. 3, then back to No. 2, and carried that load to No. 4, etc., until all except the canoe had been deposited at the camp for the night.

Then the men returned to our former camp, took up the canoe, one at each end, and carried it the seven miles to the new camp. It is seen then that they went over the ground five times, equaling thirty-five miles, and one-half the time each was loaded with two hundred pounds. It certainly was an extraordinary feat of strength and endurance; one that I do not believe any other animal of similar size could possibly accomplish. The peculiarity of man in which he is superior to any other animal, is his capacity for training. Moreover, I believe that the white race is superior in this respect to any other race; and still more, that even in white men, good blood tells in this regard, as it does in horses. The great difference in men consists mainly in the capacity for improvement by training: some improve greatly and indefinitely; some hardly at all, and quickly reach their limit.

Early next morning while we were eating our breakfast, a party of Indians, men, women, and children, passed our camp, making the same portage; but as they had little baggage they traveled fast, and we saw them no more. The men were stark naked, except for a narrow breech-cloth, that passed between the legs and under a belt around the waist; and carried nothing except their bows and arrows. The women were better clothed, indeed, but each was bowed beneath a heavy load. One of them carried the canoe on her head, bottom upward, like an immense scoop-bonnet. Soon after the Indians passed we left our camp, which was in the midst of a dense forest, on the margin of a beautiful streamlet; and re-commenced our portage in the same style as yesterday. We easily finished the remaining three miles by noon, and embarked again.

We had been told at La Pointe that we should find the mosquitoes very bad in some parts of the country passed over, and had made preparations accordingly. It was here that we began to feel these torments. We had indeed felt a few at Eagle Harbor, and at nearly all our camps on Lake Superior; but here they became intolerable. On this day, for the first time since we left Sault Ste. Marie, the sky was cloudy. Not only had we now mosquitoes all day, but also brulos. These are almost invisible black gnats, somewhat like the sand-fleas of the South, but still smaller and black; and are called brulos on account of the burning sensation produced by their bites. Here, therefore, for the first time we had to “take the veil.” We had prepared these at La Pointe. A mosquito bar sewed up into a cylinder, was drawn around the hat crown, over the shoulders and arms, and stuffed into the bosom; while the hands were protected by gloves. But we must eat; we were compelled, therefore, to make a smudge fire, and to put our heads in the smoke while eating. But the veils did not protect us from the brulos: these little pests would crawl up the sleeves, under the collars, everywhere.

To protect ourselves from mosquitoes while sleeping we took a sheet just big enough to fill the tent when pinned about three feet from the ground. Around this we had sewed mosquito netting, so that when pinned in the tent it would hang down all around as a curtain to the ground. To hold this down securely an edging of double sheeting was attached all around, and this was filled with small bird-shot. As soon as the tent was pitched, we made down the bed, then pinned up the sheet so as to make a ceiling three feet above the bed, and put the net curtain with its shot-loaded border on the top of the sheet. By this time the mosquitoes would be thick in the tent. I then put a handful of gunpowder on a piece of paper or bark in the middle of the bed, and after setting the tent door wide open, touched off the powder. The sulphurous smoke killed or drove out all the mosquitoes; we quickly put down the net, and secured it well. When ready to go to bed, after undressing, we slipped under the netting with the greatest care. In this way we slept in peace, the humming of the mosquitoes only lulling us to deeper slumber. Fortunately, the brulos do not fly about after nightfall.

Here we took into our canoe two half-breed French Indians, on condition that they worked their passage; so we now had four paddlers. As the water was smooth, except for two or three bad rapids, which we passed over successfully, we progressed rapidly; the men singing their boat-songs together, and keeping time with their paddles. The music was rude, but really inspiriting.

This day for the first time we passed over rapids in our canoe. I was much interested in the skill and care of the men in managing it, and especially in the extreme care with which they repaired the least scratch of its tender surface. As soon as we made camp, they drew up the canoe and pitched our tent. They then turned the canoe bottom upward, and made the most careful inspection of every part. The least crack or bruise was plastered with tamarack gum, and a hot iron passed over it. This was done every night until we reached Fort Snelling. In a similar way canoes are patched with birch bark, the patch being sewn in with tamarack roots and covered with gum; but our canoe was never broken.