the floor of a waggon in the construction train, in the midst of navvies
of all countries and ages, I reached the end of the track while the
morning sun was yet low in the east. I had struck up a kind of
partnership for the journey with a pedlar Jew and an Ohio man, both going
to Duluth, and as we had a march of eighteen miles to get through
between the end of the track and the town of Fond-du-Lac, it became
necessary to push on before the sun had reached his midday level; so,
shouldering our baggage, we left the busy scene of track-laying and
struck out along the graded line for the Dalles of the St. Louis. Up to
this point the line had been fully levelled, and the walking was easy
enough, but when the much-talked of Dalles were reached a complete
change took place, and the toil became excessive. The St. Louis River,
which in reality forms the headwater of the great St. Lawrence, has its
source in the dividing ridge between Minnesota and the British territory.
From these rugged Laurentian ridges it foams down in an impetuous torrent
through wild pine-clad steeps of rock and towering precipice, apparently
to force an outlet into the valley of the Mississippi, but at the Dalles
it seems to have suddenly preferred to seek the cold waters of the
Atlantic, and, bending its course abruptly to the east, it pours its
foaming torrent into the great Lake Superior below the old French
trading-post of Fond-du-Lac. The load which I carried was not of itself a
heavy one, but its weight became intolerable under the rapidly increasing
heat of the sun and from the toilsome nature of the road. The deep narrow
gorges over which the railway was to be carried were yet unbridged, and
we had to let ourselves down the steep yielding embankment to a depth of
over 100 feet, and then clamber up the other side almost upon hands and
knees-this under a sun that beat down between the hills with terrible
intensity on the yellow sand of the railway cuttings! The Ohio man
carried no baggage, but the Jew was heavily laden, and soon fell behind.
For a time I kept pace with my light companion; but soon I too was