groves seemed the elegant lawns and parks. Our fleet unanimously voted
the river between Cass and Winnibegoshish Lakes the most beautiful of
all its upper course.

[Illustration: BARN BLUFF (C., M. & ST. P. R.R.).]

We began our second week upon the Mississippi with a breakfast of baked
lake-trout, slapjacks, maple syrup and coffee, which embodied the
culinary skill of the entire fleet: then started for Winnibegoshish in
the height of good spirits and physical vigor. In one of our easy,
five-miles-an-hour swings around the graceful curves we were met by a
duck flying close over our heads with noisy quacks. A little farther we
came upon the cause of the bird's lively flight in an Indian boy, not
above nine years old, paddling a large birch canoe, over the gunwale of
which peeped the muzzle of a sanguinary-looking old shot-gun. The
diminutive sportsman was for a moment dashed by our sudden and novel
appearance, but, from the way he urged his canoe and from the
determined set of his dirty face, we had small room to doubt the
ultimate fate of the flying mallard. Another curve brought us in sight
of the home of the little savage, where a dozen Indians, in all stages
of nudity, were encamped upon a high bluff. A concerted whoop from our
fleet brought all of them from their smoky lodges, and we swept by
under their wondering eyes and exclamations. Then the high land was
left behind, and half an hour between low meadows brought us out upon
the yellow sands and heaving swells of Lake Winnibegoshish, the largest
in the Mississippi chain, the dimensions of which, including its lovely
north-eastern bay, are about eleven by thirteen miles. The name
signifies "miserable dirty water lake," but save a faint tinge of brown
its waters are as pure and sparkling as those of any of the upper
lakes. Our entrance upon Winnibegoshish was under a driving storm of