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Page 38
The guides, of whom there are large numbers to be found at Duluth, as
indeed at all of the northern border towns, are a class of men too
interesting and peculiar to be passed over without more than a cursory
notice. These men are mostly French-Canadians and Indians, with now and
then a native, and for hardihood, skill, and reliability, cannot be
surpassed by any other similar class of men the world over. They are
usually men of many parts, can act equally well as guide, boatman,
baggage-carrier, purveyor, and cook. They are respectful and chivalrous:
no woman, be she old or young, fair or faded, fails to receive the most
polite and courteous treatment at their hands, and with these qualities
they possess a manly independence that is as far removed from servility
as forwardness. Some of these men are strikingly handsome, with shapely
statuesque figures that recall the Antinous and the Apollo Belvidere.
Their life is necessarily a hard one, exposed as they are to all sorts
of weather and the dangers incidental to their profession. At a
comparatively early age they break down, and extended excursions are
left to the younger and more active members of the fraternity.
Camping-out, provided the weather is reasonably agreeable, is one of the
most delightful and healthful ways to spend vacation. It is a sort of
woodman's or frontier life. It means living in a tent, sleeping on
boughs or leaves, cooking your own meals, washing your own dishes and
clothes perhaps, getting up your own fuel, making your own fire, and
foraging for your own provender. It means activity, variety, novelty,
and fun alive; and the more you have of it the more you like it; and the
longer you stay the less willing you are to give it up. There is a
freedom in it that you do not get elsewhere. All the stiff formalties of
conventional life are put aside: you are left free to enjoy yourself as
you choose. All in all, it is the very best way we know to enjoy a
"glorious vacation."
At Duluth, at Sault de Ste. Marie, at Mackinaw, at Saginaw, we wandered
away days at a time, with nothing but our birch canoe, rifles, and
fishing-rods, and for provisions, hard bread, pork, potatoes, coffee,
tea, rice, butter, and sugar, closely packed. Any camper-out can make
himself comfortable with an outfit as simple as the one named. How
memory clings around some of those bright spots we visited! I pass over
them again, in thought, as I write these lines, longing to nestle amid
them forever.
Following along the coast, now in small yachts hired for the occasion,
now in a birch canoe of our own, we passed from one village to another.
Wherever we happened to be at night, we encamped. Many a time it was on
a lonely shore. Standing at sunset on a pleasant strand, more than once
we saw the glow of the vanished sun behind the western mountains or the
western waves, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky; near at
hand, the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms athwart
the burning heavens, the crow perched on its top like an image carved in
jet; and aloft, the night-hawk, circling in his flight, and, with a
strange whining sound, diving through the air each moment for the
insects he makes his prey.
But all good things, as well as others, have an end. The season drew to
a close at last. August nights are chilly for sleeping in tents. Our
flitting must cease, and our thoughts and steps turn homeward. But a few
days are still left us. At Buffalo once more we go to see the Falls.
Then by boat to Hamilton, thence to Kingston at the foot of the lake,
and so on through the Thousand Isles to Montreal, and finally to
Quebec,--a tour as fascinating in its innumerable and singularly wild
and beautiful "sights" as heart could desire.
* * * * *
OUR NATIONAL CEMETERIES.
By Charles Cowley, LL.D.
There are circumstances generally attending the death of the soldier or
the sailor, whether on battle-field or gun-deck, whether in the
captives' prison, the cockpit, or the field-hospital, which touch our
sensibilities far more deeply than any circumstances which usually
attend the death of men of any other class; moving within us mingled
emotions of pathos and pity, of mystery and awe.
"There is a tear for all that die,
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And freedom weeps above the brave;
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