“Then let the world wag along as it will: 
       We’ll be gay and happy still,”

until he came upon his comrades—­one stumbling about over the blackened roots of grass and underbrush from a recent fire in search of wood for our needed noon-day blaze; the other with wet matches and birch bark, and imprecations for which there was ample justification, vainly seeking that without which hot coffee and broiled bacon cannot be.  The Kleiner Fritz’s haversack supplied dry matches, fire began to snap, coffee boiled, bacon sputtered on the ends of willow rods, hard tack was set out for each man, and we sat upon our heels for lunch under the weeping skies and willows, comparing notes and experiences.

[Illustration:  PEKAGEMA FALLS.]

Thence, three hours through monotonous savanna and steady rain brought us to the uppermost bay of Cass Lake, and unexpectedly upon a straggling Indian village.  We bore down upon it with yells, and there came tumbling out from birch lodges and bark cabins the first human beings we had seen for more than ten days, in all the ages, sizes, tints, costumes and shades of filth known to the Chippewas of the interior wilderness.  At first they were a little shy of us, but we got into a stumbling conversation with the only man of the whole lot who wore breeches or could compass a little English, and soon the dirty, laughing, wondering, chattering gang came down to inspect us and our, to them, marvellous craft, and to fully enjoy what was perhaps the most interesting event in many a long month of their uneventful lives.  Then we paddled across the bay, or upper lake, out into the broader swells of Cass Lake itself, pulled four miles across to the northernmost point of Colcaspi, or Grand Island, and made our second Saturday night’s camp upon its white sands at or very near the spot where Schoolcraft and his party had encamped in July, forty-seven years before.  The landward side of the beautiful beach is skirted by an almost impenetrable jungle.  We had frequently seen traces, old and new, of deer, moose, bears and smaller animals, but had seen none of the animals themselves save one fine deer, and our sleep had been wholly undisturbed by prowlers; so we sank to rest on Grand Island with no fears of invasion.  At midnight the occupant of the Kleiner Fritz was aroused by a scratching upon the side of the canoe and low, whining howls.  He partially arose, confused and half asleep, in doubt as to the character of his disturber, which went forward, climbed upon the deck and confronted him through the narrow gable of his rubber roof with a pair of fiery eyes, which to his startled imagination seemed like the blazing of a comet in duplicate.  The owner of the eyes was at arm’s length, with nothing but a mosquito-bar intervening.  Then the eyes suddenly disappeared, and the scratching and howling were renewed in a determined and partially successful effort to get between the overlapping rubber blankets to the captain of the Fritz.  This movement