WILD FRUIT
After a swim in the clear water of Oba Lake the travellers turned their
canoe to the south.
“I am glad we are going home,” remarked Ray. “The black spruce forest
looked so big and so much the same everywhere I just could not help
feeling that we should get lost if we ever went into it.”
Bruce smiled at Ray’s mention of home. “We are very far from home, my
boy,” he answered with a sad smile. “I sometimes think that we shall
never see our Vermont hills again. It seems to me that we have been
gone for years and that we have just turned around at the end of the
world.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean home in Vermont,” replied Ray. “I meant the country
along the Michipicoten River. I just felt homesick for that country
when I saw the endless spruce forest north of this lake.”
Both lads were surprised when in about four hours of easy paddling they
had skirted the west shore of the lake and had also crossed the lake
back to their carrying-place or portage on the east shore, where their
lean-to was still standing just as they had left it.
“Bruce, I wonder if Ganawa would stay here over night,” asked Ray. “I
like this camp very much and we could have another camp-fire of
driftwood. It is lots of fun to make a fire when you don’t have to cut
a lot of wood.”
Ganawa was quite willing that they should spend another night at this
fine camp. “I have now travelled on the blue lake that I have wished to
see for a long time. We can travel back slowly, but we shall still make
good time, because we know where we are going and we do not need to
stop to look for signs of your brother. My little son may play or fish
at this camp till evening.”
Ray first took a swim in the warm water in a cove with a sandy bottom.
Then he picked a kettleful of berries; raspberries, pin-cherries, and
blueberries all mixed. It was now past the middle of July and all the
North Woods berries seemed to be ripe at the same time. There was
another berry which hung in beautiful red bunches on the bushes, but
they were tasteless and Ganawa said that the Great Spirit had made them
for the wild birds, and the lads observed that about every kind of bird
in the woods was feeding on them. They were the red berries of the
elder, which in the latitude of Central Minnesota are ripe early in
June, but in the region north and northeast of Lake Superior summer
comes about six weeks later, thus crowding all wild fruit into a much
shorter season.
Ray did not care to play all by himself and he did not feel like
sleeping so he asked Ganawa to show him some Indian woodcraft, and
Ganawa showed him the willow, whose bark the Indians use for strings.
“It is a tall bushy willow,” he said, “and it grows almost everywhere.
The Indians also use the inner bark of basswoods and white elms for
strings, but these trees do not grow here. However, I know that we can
find a few elms on the Michipicoten.”
All native willows have a tough stringy bark, but the common pussy
willow, Salix discolor, furnishes very good strings. All these bark
strings are tough and flexible only while green or wet. Even
present-day Indians always keep a supply of these bark strings on hand.
All of them are brittle and useless when dry, but they regain their
toughness and flexibility when they are soaked in water for a short
time.
Then Ganawa showed Ray how the leaves of the low, white-flowered bush
called Labrador tea might be used to take the place of the tea sold by
the traders. “This plant,” he explained, “and a plant which the white
people call sweet fern, make a good tea in camp if you have some sugar.
The sweet fern does not grow here, but it covers much sandy land south
of Lake Superior.”
The Labrador tea grows in every northern swamp, but the sweet fern the
Indians often tie in bundles and take with them as they travel about to
their favorite summer camping-places for picking blueberries or
gathering wild rice.
The lads were surprised at the progress they could make now that they
no longer paddled into every cove and wasted no time examining old
camp-sites. Three days of easy travel brought them to a high and level
camping ground, where a railroad now crosses the Michipicoten River.
“My sons,” spoke Ganawa, when they reached this spot, “at this place we
should camp and make a store of food. For it may be that we shall have
to spend a winter in this country, and you, my sons, will often wish
that you had some of the berries that are now ripe in the woods, so you
could eat them with your meat and fish.
“To-morrow you must each take a basket of birch-bark and pick
blueberries, which you will find in the hills and under the pines,
where the sun shines through the branches.”
Blueberries were so abundant that each lad could pick about a bushel in
a day, because they found many patches where the ground was literally
blue.
While the boys were away gathering this wild fruit, the best in the
whole of North America, Ganawa sewed together several large pieces of
birch-bark and spread the whole in a sunny open place. On this
birch-bark the lads emptied their filled baskets. Ganawa stayed in camp
and with an improvised wooden rake he stirred and turned the berries
from time to time so they would dry faster.
“It may start to rain,” he remarked, “and then our berries might spoil
before we can dry them.”
When the lads went out picking berries on the third day, Ray had grown
a little bit tired of harvesting berries, and near the top of a ridge
he lay down and fell asleep and Tawny lay down near him. The lad was
awakened from a sound sleep by a loud barking and a strange growling
noise, and when he sat up and opened his eyes, a big black bear was
coming straight for him, while Tawny was madly barking at the animal
but was afraid to close with so large a beast. For a moment the bear
seemed in doubt whether he should cuff the dog or punish the being whom
he had smelled up the wind and who had suddenly risen up before him.
And when he walked toward the dazed lad, and arose on his hind legs and
uttered a vicious growl, Ray’s nerves gave away. He ran for the camp as
fast as he could go, and when he reached it he was ready to drop and so
out of breath that he could utter only a few words: “A—bear! He chased
me! Run with the gun, Father. He—he’s killed my dog.”