nce he returned to Philadelphia, and died
in six weeks of consumption. Strangely enough, consumption is the chief
cause of death among the Indians, but this is due to their careless
habits, wearing wet moccasins and the like.

Now a great question arose. It was necessary for the magnates of our
party to go to Duluth, and to do this they must make a seven days'
journey through the wilderness, either on a very rough military road cut
through the woods during the war, or sometimes on no road at all. Houses
or post-stations, often of only one or two rooms, were sometimes a day's
journey apart. The question was whether delicate ladies, utterly
unaccustomed to anything like hard travel could take this trip, during
which they must endure clouds of mosquitos, put up with camp-cooking, or
often none, and otherwise go through privations such as only an Indian or
a frontiersman would care to experience? The entire town of St. Paul,
and all the men of our party, vigorously opposed taking the ladies, while
I, joining the latter, insisted on it that they could go; for, as I said
to all assembled, where the devil is afraid to go he sends a woman; and I
had always observed that in travelling, long after men are tired out
women are generally all right. They are never more played out _than they
want to be_.

"Femme plaint, femme deult,
Femme est malade quand elle veult,
Et par Sainte Marie!
Quand elle veult elle est guerye."

And of course _we_ carried the day. Twelve men, even though backed up by
a city council, have no chance against any ten women. To be sure women,
like all other savages, require a male leader--I mean to say, just as
Goorkha troops, though brave as lions, must have an English captain--so
they conquered under my guidance!

Having had experience in fitting out for the wilderness, I was requested
to see to the stores--so many hams to so many people for so many days, so
much coffee, and so forth. I astonished all by insisting that there
should be one _tin cup_ to every traveller. "Every glass you have will
soon be broken," I said. And so it was, sooner than I expected. As tin
cups could not be found in St. Paul, we bought three or four dozen small
tin basins of about six inches diameter at the rim, and when champagne
was served out it was, _faute de mieux_, drunk from these eccentric
goblets.

In the first waggon were Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Leland. Their
driver was a very eccentric