110 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



Yet it was clear we were not the first visitants, for the fire-weed 

 had sprung up here, and close at hand we found lodge-poles, and 

 the remains of fires. Here also was an Indian sweating-house; a 

 skeleton dome of sticks, about four feet high and two in diameter. 

 The patient squats inside, and by his side are placed some hot stones, 

 on which are thrown various herbs, bj way of " medicine." Then 

 the whole is covered in with blankets and pieces of bark, and he is 

 left to simmer for the requisite period. 



Back of this a path led a short distance through the woods to the 

 mouth of a sluggish stream some five or six yards wide that joined 

 the bay north of our camp, which was thus cut off on three sides by 

 it and the lake, and on the fourth by the mountain. 



Our beach, as I said, was heaped with drift-wood, most of it arbor- 

 vitte, recognizable by its twisted stem. This tree loves the water, 

 and grows in situations where it is most exposed to be washed off 

 by the winter storms. Some of the logs were of large size, a foot 

 or more in diameter, completely stripped of branches and bark, and 

 in general of their roots, and exhibited marks of very rough hand- 

 ling, being deeply grooved and rubbed, perhaps by chafing together, 

 partly perhaps from ice. Many of them were very regularly and 

 smoothly tapered at the end. Driven into the bay by the westerly 

 gales in the winter, they had doubtless drifted along its steep sides, 

 and been successively piled up at the bottom. 



Our men having such a store at hand did not spare fuel, and 

 were mightily amused when we told them they had on five dollars' 

 worth at once. But although cold morning and evening, it was 

 very warm in the middle of the day, the temperature rising from 

 about 40 to near 80 Fah. 



The water was deepest close to the rocks at the end of the 

 point, though even there it was hardly anywhere more than five 

 feet deep. Beyond, it was so shoal that we very easily waded 

 across to the other shore, about a quarter of a mile. The bottom 

 was an even surface of mud, on which we met one or two large 

 rounded pebbles half imbedded, but no sand or small stones. Vari- 

 ous water-plants, namely, two species of Potamogeton, and an Echi- 

 nodorus, with pretty white flowers, were growing abundantly here. 



