Does It Pay to Rest on Sunday?
"With what a feeling deep
Does Nature speak to us! Oh, how divine
The flame that glows on her eternal shrine!
What knowledge can we reap
From her great pages if we read aright!
Through her God shows His wisdom and His might."
It was in the summer of 1872, while I was at the United States land
office at Bayfield, Wisconsin, and was having some township plats
corrected previous to going into the woods in that district to hunt for
pine timber, that John Buffalo, chief of the Red Cliff band of Chippewa
Indians, a friend of the United States land officers, made his quiet
appearance at the land office. I had asked where I could find a
reliable, trustworthy, and capable man to accompany me on this cruise,
planned to cover a period of not less than two weeks. Captain Wing,
receiver of the land office, asked the Indian chief, "John, wouldn't you
like to earn a little money by going into the woods to help this man for
a couple of weeks or more?" To this the chief gave his consent with the
usual Indian "Ugh."
During that day provisions were bought and placed in individual cloth
sacks. A strong rowboat was secured and the journey begun. Camp was made
the first night on one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The day
following, our destination was reached at the mouth of the Cranberry
River, where our boat was carefully cached.
It rained for several days, in consequence of which the underbrush was
wet most of the time, and in passing through it we became wet to the
skin. Before leaving home I had bought for use on the trip what I
believed to be a fine pair of corduroy trousers. They looked well, and
the brush did not cling to them, a desirable condition when traveling
through thickets often encountered in the woods. It rained the first day
that we were out. At night we pitched our tent, prepared the evening
meal, and at an early hour retired. On retiring, it is usually the
custom for men camping, to remove their outer garments and put them out
of the way at one side of the tent. Both were very tired and soon fell
asleep. I was awakened by a very disagreeable odor within the tent and
walked out into the fresh air. Returning, I lay down and remained thus
until early daylight, experiencing only a disturbed sleep during the
night. My feeling was that I had chosen an undesirable bedfellow, and,
as later developments proved, it would have been reasonable if the
Indian chief had arrived at the same conclusion.
[Illustration: "We started out with two birch canoes". (Page 148.)]
During the next day it again rained. After the rain the sun came out
bright and warm, causing a rapid evaporation to take place on our wet
garments. It was under these circumstances that the discovery was made
that the very disagreeable odor experienced during the preceding night
was again present, and was emanating from the wet coloring matter that
had been used in the manufacture of the corduroy trousers. The best
possible defense--which I felt it was necessary to make--was to call
attention to the fact that the strong odor was coming forth from the
corduroy cloth. On reaching camp that evening, the new corduroys were
hung out on the limb of a tree where they were last seen by our small
camping party.
It is not customary for land hunters to work less on Sunday than on
other days, for the principal reason that all of their provisions must
be carried with them on their backs, and, that by resting on Sunday, the
provisions would disappear as rapidly, or more so, than they would if
work continued on that day. However, toward the end of our trip which
had been a very successful one in point of finding desirable government
timber lands to enter, we decided that we would rest on the next day,
which was Sunday, just previous to our taking our boat to make our
return trip on Lake Superior waters to the land office at Bayfield. As a
precaution, lest other land lookers should discover our presence, our
camping ground was selected in the interior of the section. We had eaten
our dinner, and were enjoying a siesta when we heard voices. Listening,
we heard men discussing the most direct line to take to reach their
boat, hidden somewhere on the shore of the lake. Time sufficient was
given to allow them to get so far in our advance, that any movement on
our part would not be heard by them. Soon, thereafter, we packed our
tent and all of our belongings and started for our boat. We did not
reach it until nine o'clock the following morning. We were then
forty-five miles from Bayfield by water.
Soon after we had rowed out into the lake, a northeasterly wind began to
blow and did not cease blowing during the entire day. The sandstone
bluffs around that portion of the south shore of Lake Superior in many
places are nearly vertical and rise to very considerable heights,
preventing any possible way of escape from the water's edge for miles in
extent. It was with the greatest effort that we, pulling with all our
might, could keep the boat out into the lake, so powerful was the wind,
and so increasingly great were the waves. Besides, it was not possible
to take a rest from our labors for, the moment we ceased rowing, our
boat began rapidly drifting toward the rocks on the south shore. Thus we
labored until near the middle of the afternoon, when we got under cover
of the first of the friendly Apostle Islands. After resting awhile,
before dark we were able to reach the Red Cliff Indian Agency, where we
spent the night at the chief's wigwam.
The next morning early, we resumed our boat and rowed into Bayfield,
arriving in time to be present at the opening of the land office. With
much anxiety, I made application to enter the vacant lands that had been
selected on this trip, fearing that the men whom we had overheard
talking in the woods two days before, might have arrived in advance of
me and have secured at least a part of the same descriptions. With great
satisfaction, however, I found the lands to be still vacant, and all of
the minutes chosen while on this strenuous cruise, I bought.
A little before noon of this same day, two well-known land hunters from
Chippewa Falls came in, in their boat, off the lake, and, on going to
the land office, applied to enter nearly all of the lands which I had
secured a few hours before.
The moralist might point with justification to the fact that had we not
rested on Sunday, more than likely we should not have known of the
presence of any competitors in the field, and should not, therefore,
have worked so many long hours in our boat on that windy day, nor should
we likely have reached the land office in advance of the two men who
arrived there only a few hours later than ourselves.
"By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water."