Around Red Lake by Launch
By L. E. Healey

Northern Minnesota has been called the "Rendevous of the American Sportsman." Whether such a name is now considered apropos by the hunter it is hard to say. There was a time not very far removed from the present day when her areas abounded in the most magnificent forests of the continent. These forests were inhabitated by elk, caribou, moose, deer, bear, and her less wooded areas by grouse, her lakes by ducks and geese, her streams by beaver; her waters abounded in fish and her blue skies in the flight of birds. The ruling hand of this happy hunting ground was the American Indian who lived here unmolested and was master of all he surveyed. These days of wild life are fast and disappearing-are gone. The advent of civilization with the lumberman, the hunter and trapper followed closely by the sportsman and settler has wrought great changes in this, nature's playground. Her forests are depleted and well nigh gone; her elk and caribou have disappeared; laws have been enacted protecting the lives of the remaining moose, deer, fur-bearing animals and edible fowl; and the Indian has been crowded onto Reservation and much to the chagrin of the chief of the feather with belt of wampum, his children have been placed in schools and taught the mode of life and the ways of the white man-all in this glorious country of the Creator's handiwork. But her lakes, surely man in his greed for wealth can not molest the beauty of her meriad sheets of water for which the state is famous. Ah no, it is still a garden of lakes, thousands of them, beautiful expanses of water that invite the hunter and the pleasure seeker and many of them still in the wilds. And yet the writer

knows of one lake, Thief Lake, in Eastern Marshall County which in 1916 and for years prior thereto, was the best duck breeding pond and consequently duck hunting area in this, the northwestern portion of the state. This lake was something over ten miles long and four miles wide, was the home of thousands of ducks and wild geese, and the balm of comfort to the moose and deer during fly season when they would go into the water and dip themselves to the very nostrils. What has become of this lake? Where was it last fall, the fall of 1917? We drove from our home town by car to investigate before hunting season which in this state opens September fifteenth and behold, a veritable sand storm was sweeping it from end to end, now a desert which was once a lake. Through its center was a high pile of dirt marking the course of a State Ditch. The lake had succumbed to the drainage system laid out by the state engineers and her surface is now thrown open to homestead entry. Mud Lake has suffered a similar fate as no doubt have many others not named or shown on the maps. To the writer there is a certain sadness connected with this utter destruction of the nesting sights of thousands of our water fowl. If it has the sense of realization, the water fowl which has for generations back and for their own life period nested here, must feel like the youth of the wild timber lands who returns from the village miles distant to find his home utterly destroyed and nothing but ashes remaining to mark the spot which all his life he has known as home. But the larger lakes and the deeper ones will always remain; and so stands Red Lake in the heart of an Indian Reservation, still forested, still wild, still as nature has made her, majestic, awe-inspiring, a broad

expanse of waterstretching out to meet the sky, forty-five miles in its longest reach and twenty-five miles wide, regular in outline, an inland sea without a single island to dot its surface, the largest fresh water area totally within the confines of the United States. It was to this, a still remaining vistage of primeval Minnesota, that two lovers of the wild, hearing the call, set out on July eighth in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen to drink of the glorious air, bathe in the sparkling waters, to be free in God's great out of doors.

We were disappointed in not being able to make the trip during bird nesting season, the glorious month of June when all nature puts on her lovliest gown and her feathered creatues vie with each other in their mad revel of song. It had been our object in this long planned trip to study these fairy friends and thus be able to report more fully upon bird life about Red Lake and the marshes immediately tributary thereto, but at so late a date most of the songsters had ceased to sing and were too busy rearing a hungry family to give us the opportunity

-Photo by L. E. Healey

of even knowing of their immediate presence, either that, or the wilder the country, the fewer the song birds; and I am inclined to believe the latter to be true. In this respect our entire trip of nearly three hundred seventy five miles by water was conspicuous in the absence of bird life. True we saw a bird life we were not so familiar with of which I shall speak as my story progresses, but we were impressed with the thought that God placed these feathered creatures in the world for man, and they knowing full well their mission, take up their abode heroicly near those who seek to destroy much less know their habits, and hear so little of heir efforts to cheer the weary mind and sing the glory of their maker.

The Red Lake River is the outlet of Red Lake. It leaves the Lake at the southwest corner and flows in a general direction westward to the border line between Minnesota and North Dakota where it joins the Red River of the North in a grand fork at Grand Forks, thence making its way northward through the far famed Red River Valley, the bread basket of the world, emptying its muddy course in

the Arctic waters of the Hudson Bay. From Thief River Falls, the last large town up the River to Red Lake Falls, the parental home of "Bud" and myself, the river leaps from one rapids to another in its mad rush seaward, except where man has dammed its course in three places to force it to give of its power. It was impossible on this account to begin our journey by boat from home. We shipped by freight to Thief River Falls, and Saturday saw us nicely on our way in the back water of the last dam. Our boat was a sixteen foot launch with a two horse power stationery engine. It was equipped with all-weather top with side curtains inclosing the entire boat after the manner of the auto, and extra curtains of mosquito to proof net. The writer built the whole outfit and installed the engine, and he knew every nail and rib, every stitch and tack and he loved her, too, as a home in the wilds. Before we tied that night to an over-hanging tree, we had climbed the last rapids and still had one propeller to our credit. With this we were more carful but the trip from now on for the next fifty miles was clear sailing until we reached High

--Photo by L. E. Healey

Landing, the only Post Office that might be designated a town on the River after leaving Thief River Falls.

As we progressed up the river the next day, the higher banks were gradually replaced by lower banks, the rocky shores by fewer rock the heavy hardwood timber by scattered groves and the swift current by more sluggish waters. So gradual was this change that without at first realizing it, we were that afternoon fully aware of the fact that we were among unaccustomed surroundings; that the river had become choked with water weeds, weeds such as one finds growing in muddy lakes; the shores had become boggy; the groves of poplar timer had receded to far distances from the course of the river and the occasional farm house and homestead shanty were few and far between. The balance of fifty miles to the Lake was destined to be frought with much difficulty in keeping our propeller free from weeds and our hides from mosquito bites, although be it said in favor of the pests, we were not troubled to the extent we had anticipated. Bird life had as gradually changed from the birds of the woods

and fields, the birds of a more domestic nature, to the birds of the slough and reed and the birds of solitary places. Instead of the noisy kingfisher darting from his accustomed perch on some overhanging limb, watching with one eye for a fish beneath and with the other on his nearby home in the bank, we saw the great blue heron wading knee deep in some frog pond, terrorizing the inhabitants in true Hun style, and startled by the approach of our submarine chaser took its clumsy flight up the river like some great aeroplane, only to be again disturbed as before. At nearly every quiet pool a family of black ducks or scaups looked out bewildered perhaps for the first time at the sight of man, and ever and anon a sora rail sent out his noisy challenge at our approach. An occasional American Bittern was startled from the waters edge and large hawks were seen at distances back among the scattering groves.

In the swampy area which widens as one approaches the lake, an OCcasional rise of land might be seen, an island as it were among the bogs. Where such a place is near the river it gives the semblance of a shore where landing is possible. Strange to say although few, yet each seemed to have buildings, although as we discovered, they were inhabitated for the most part by Indians, the more so as we neared the lake. After leaving Highlanding where we replenished our gasoline supply to the limit, for we were to travel some 100 miles before we would again be able to get more, we pushed on until it was almost dark before we could find a place to even tie our boat. It was where one of these rises of ground came close to the river that gave us mooring. There proved to be a family of Scandinavians living on their

homestead close by. They had prospered for they had a large hip-roofed barn, a good house and much stock. The boys were enthusiastic about our outfit and we were invited to spend the balance of the evening at their home and destined to accept their hospitable invitation to partake of the comforts of a spring bed, to us our last chance for a while. But, oh, for the comforts of our bed in the boat. The writer gave it up, finally dressed after turning his underwear inside out, and sat wondering how best to spend the balance of the night which he envied Bud who was sawing wood with ease and comfort. Not that he was more used to bed bugs than I was, but I guess his hide was tougher and they couldn't make an impression. I did succeed in getting a couple of hours of sleep on the floor. That was our last night for a while in-shall we say civilization? The next morning in our leave taking, we noticed the accustomed English Sparrows about the barn. It impressed us forcibly away out on this frontier. With what rapidity and in what great numbers is this pest of the bird family inflicting its presence on civilized man to the remotest corners of the continent. The day is coming when the problem will have to be met.

We took dinner that day at Neptune, a store and post office, the last in our course for many miles. Having replenished our larder we began our last stretch of forty miles through the swamps. At times it was difficult to determine the true course of the river; at times we run aground and were forced to turn back to try a different opening among the reeds and wild rice; and ever present were the water weeds which danced the tango with our propeller and got all wrapped up in their delight, so wrapped that our little engine labored hard to keep