sequence to ten days of toil
and struggle, and Monday found us in hearty readiness for a thorough
exploration of Itasca Lake and its feeders. We took a lunch, our guns
and scientific instruments, and paddled up the south-west arm of the
lake to find and explore the leading tributary. We found the outlets of
five small streams, two having well-defined mouths and three filtering
into the lake through bogs. Selecting the larger of the two open
streams, we paddled into its sluggish waters, ten feet wide and one foot
deep where they enter the lake. Slow and sinuous progress of two hundred
yards brought us to a blockade of logs and to shallow water. We landed,
fastened the canoes, took our bearings by compass and started for a
tramp through thicket and forest to Elk Lake, which we reached after a
rapid walk of thirty-five minutes. This lake is an oval of about one
mile in its longest diameter. It lies about half a mile in a straight
line south from Itasca. Its shores are marshy, bordered by hills densely
timbered. Its sources are boggy streams having little or no
clearly-defined course. To all appearance, these bogs and this small
lake are the uttermost tributaries to Itasca Lake, and the latter,
concentrating these minor streams and sending them out as one, is the
true head of the Father of Waters.

Elk Lake was a place of misadventure to us. Our struggle through the
thicket and dense forest was hot and exhausting. Our scientist left
there a fine aneroid barometer, which a second hot walk failed to
recover. Our photographer, arrived at the lake with a grievous burden of
camera, plates, tripod, etc., found that he had forgotten his lens
tubes, and was compelled to double his tracks back to the canoes, then
wade out into the swampy borders of the lake, waist-deep in slime, to
secure a view of this highest Mississippi water, only to have his plate
light-struck and ruined by an accident on the homeward journey.

While the artist was gone for his forgotten lenses our Nimrod missed a
fine eagle which swept over our heads at long range. So we returned to
our island camp in no very good mood, but a successful troll for
lake-trout, and a good supper off two fine fellows baked under the coals
in birch jackets, sent us to bed in good spirits and with no regrets
save for the lost barometer.

A.H. SIEGFRIED.

NATIONAL MUSIC AN INTERPRETER OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.

The popular music of any people is, in a great measure, the