their stingers
with Sam and walking shoes were provided for them. Sam brought them
through without losing a bee.

The cure was worse than the original trouble. The Mosquitoes and the
Bees made a hit with each other. They soon intermarried and their
off-spring, as often happens, were worse than their parents. They had
stingers fore-and-aft and could get you coming or going.

[Illustration]

Their bee blood caused their downfall in the long run. Their craving for
sweets could only be satisfied by sugar and molasses in large
quantities, for what is a flower to an insect with a ten-gallon stomach?
One day the whole tribe flew across Lake Superior to attack a fleet of
ships bringing sugar to Paul's camps. They destroyed the ships but ate
so much sugar they could not fly and all were drowned.

[Illustration]

One pair of the original bees were kept at headquarters camp and
provided honey for the pancakes for many years.

* * * * *

IF Paul Bunyan did not invent Geography he created a lot of it. The
Great Lakes were first constructed to provide a water hole for Babe the
Big Blue Ox. Just what year this work was done is not known but they
were in use prior to the Year of the Two Winters.

The Winter Paul Bunyan logged off North Dakota he hauled water for his
ice roads from the Great Lakes. One day when Brimstone Bill had Babe
hitched to one of the old water tanks and was making his early morning
trip, the tank sprung a leak when they were half way across Minnesota.
Bill saved himself from drowning by climbing Babe's tail but all efforts
to patch up the tank were in vain so the old tank was abandoned and
replaced by one of the new ones. This was the beginning of the
Mississippi River and the truth of this is established by the fact that
the old Mississippi is still flowing.

The cook's in Paul's camps used a lot of water and to make things handy,
they used to dig wells near the cook shanty. At headquarters on the Big
Auger, on top of the hill near the mouth of the Little Gimlet, Paul dug
a well so deep that it took all day for the bucket to fall to the water,
and a week to haul it up. They had to run so many buckets that the well
was forty feet in diameter. It was shored up with tamarac poles and when
the camp was abandoned Paul pulled up this cribbing. Travellers who have
visited the spot say that the sand has blown away until 178 feet of the
well is sticking up into the air, forming a