apel and the rectory of the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan, who for
fourteen years has worthily occupied a parish coextensive with the
Chippewa Nation. The true solution of the Indian question is being
worked out at White Earth in results that augur well for the future.
Each child may secure education, and the minds and morals of all ages
are cared for. Their churches are well attended and their schools have
outgrown present accommodations. Their religious services and schools
are conducted in their own language. They have an educated Indian
clergyman who can scarcely speak English, while Mr. Gilfillan speaks the
Chippewa as fluently as his mother-tongue. They have few quarrels, no
thieving, no drunkenness, no abject poverty. They are not more perfect
than others of human kind, but according to their light and sphere they
are as good as a similar average of whites anywhere. The wise purpose is
to make them kind, moral, educated and industrious Indians, not
make-believe white men, and the work is doing and promising well in
sincere and capable hands.

The Indian Fourth-of-July celebration took place in an open, treeless
prairie. The festivities centred in a series of races run in pairs by
the small and wiry Indian ponies over a curved, mowed and rolled
half-mile course. Nearly all the young men were betters, in stakes of
from twenty-five cents to ten dollars. There were no pools, but hard
running, straight betting and square paying. The chief of police was the
president of the course. All were in good-humor. There was no liquor,
neither was there a harsh word or a blow among the five hundred. After
the races eatables, tea, coffee and ice-water were enjoyed with laughter
and chat. In the evening we cruisers gave a show of rockets and Roman
candles, to the great delight of the Indians, and the day closed with a
dance in the large dining-hall of the boarding-school.

[Illustration: ACROSS THE PRAIRIE.]

Our damaged boats repaired and preparations completed for three weeks'
absence from civilization, we set out near mid-day of Saturday for the
march to Wild Rice River, eighteen miles. Our way lay among the cabins,
lodges and farms of the Chippewas, over a billowy, green immensity
bordered on the east by the lines of the Hauteur des Terres, which shut
us from the Mississippi Valley, and horizoned on the west by the slopes
beyond the famed Red River of the North. Our day's journey terminated,
in a driving rainstorm, on the banks of Wild