I, too, am a
_Minnesot_.

We railroad people formed one party and sat at our evening meal by
ourselves, the surveyors made another, and the Indians a third _table-
d'hote_. An open tin of oysters was before us, and somebody said they
were not good. One only needs say so to ruin the character of an
oyster--and too often of "a human bivalve," as the Indiana orator said.
We were about to pitch it away, when I asked the attendant to give it to
the Indians. It was gravely passed by them from man to man till it came
to the last, who lifted it to his mouth and _drank off the entire quart_,
_oysters and all_, as if it had been so much cider. Amazed at this, I
asked what it meant, but the only explanation I could get was, "He like
um oyster."

This was a charming excursion, all through the grene wode wilde, and I
enjoyed it. I had Indian society, and learned Indian talk, and bathed in
charming rushing waters, and saw enormous pine trees 300 feet high, and
slept _al fresco_, and ate _ad libitum_. To this day its remembrance
inspires in me a feeling of deep, true poetry.

I think it was at Duluth that one morning there was brought in an old
silver cross which had just been found in an Indian grave on the margin
of the lake, not very far away. I went there with some others. It was
evidently the grave of some distinguished man who had been buried about a
hundred years ago. There were the decayed remains of an old-fashioned
gun, and thousands of small beads adhering, still in pattern, to the
_tibiae_. I dug up myself--in fact they almost lay on the surface, the
sand being blown away--several silver bangles, which at first looked
exactly like birch-bark peelings, and, what I very much prized, two or
three stone cylinders or tubes, about half an inch in diameter, with a
hole through them. Antiquaries have been much puzzled over these, some
thinking that they were musical instruments, others implements for
gambling. My own theory always was that they were used for smoking
tobacco, and as those which I found were actually stuffed full of dried
semi-decayed "fine cut," I still hold to it. I also purchased from a boy
a red stone pipe-head, which was found in the same grave. I should here
say that the pipe which had been bought away from me by the man above
mentioned had on it the carving of a _reindeer_, which rendered it to me
alone of living men peculiarly valuable, since I have laboured hard, and
subsequently set forth