84 THE SPORTSMAN'S PARADISE; 



forest-trees, changing the wilderness into a farm, on which 

 he reared a family, and where he still continued to reside. 

 He spoke of the sufferings and deprivations endured by 

 himself and other pioneers who first ventured to settle in 

 this cold, rocky wilderness, where they were generally 

 widely separated from each other, and likewise at a great 

 distance from those depots which furnished them with the 

 necessaries of life. 



It often became necessary for these pioneers to walk 

 through unbroken forests a distance of forty or sixty miles 

 in order to buy provisions, or even mail a letter, while their 

 only means of transportation, during the season in which 

 the lakes and rivers were not frozen, was the birch-bark 

 canoe ; but when these avenues of travel were closed with 

 ice, they were then compelled to perform the labor which, 

 in California and other portions of the United States, is 

 done by pack-mules. 



Furthermore, the difficulty which attended this trans- 

 portation of provisions was not by any means the most 

 serious one with which they had to contend, inasmuch as 

 the amount of cash carried by them into the wilderness 

 was generally very limited, and consequently soon ex- 

 hausted ; a condition which, in some instances, was fol- 

 lowed by death from starvation, while in other cases these 

 poor sufferers were compelled to subsist for many weeks 

 on no other food than turnips, eaten without salt or pepper, 

 while at other times a meal was made of birch-buds or 

 seed-potatoes that had been planted some weeks. In 

 order that the reader may understand this dreadful con- 

 dition of things, he should be informed that the pioneers 



