nth, after cordial farewells with the
gentlemen then at the Agency, especially Mr. Nichols and Rev. Edwin
Benedict, to whose kindness we were greatly indebted. Launching our
little fleet of canoes, three in number, on the billowy surface of
the lake, we started for our first objective, Lake Itasca. After
leaving Leech Lake our way lay up a river called by the Indians
Gabakauazeba. The river broadens out a short distance from the
lake, but narrows again and becomes tortuous and full of snags.
Passing safely through all these, we reached, late in the
afternoon, a fine lake nearly ten miles long, upon the shore of
which we encamped. Next morning we paddled to the upper end of the
lake, and were there introduced to our first real portage. Two
miles and a half over a very rough country--the hardest work we
ever undertook--brought us to another but smaller lake, and then,
for five days, lakes and portages followed each other in rapid
succession, until at length the waters of Itasca burst upon our
view. The talk of our guides, coupled with what we had heard at
Leech Lake, had led Captain Glazier to the conclusion that,
whatever the source of the Mississippi might be, there was
reasonable ground for the belief that Lake Itasca was not. Chief
among the theories advanced by the Indian guides, one of whom,
Chenowagesic, had hunted and trapped for years at the headwaters of
this river, was that there existed a lake of good dimensions and
wooded shores _above_ Itasca, which poured its waters into the
so-called source, and which was itself really the source of the
Great River. They also stated (correctly, as we afterwards learned)
that the stream which flowed from the lake spoken of by Paul
Beaulieu as perhaps the source, contributed much less water to the
main stream at its confluence with it than did the stream from
Itasca. Resolved to explore the lake _above_ Itasca, the captain
started with two canoes, next morning, from Schoolcraft Island, and
pushed up to the head of the lake. Chenowagesic piloted us through
the rushes with which this end of Itasca is filled, and presently
we found ourselves in a small but rapid stream, up which we went,
and after following its windings, paddled again through some
rushes, and then shot out upon the smooth surface of a beauti