ment of a once vigorous mining scheme. The railroad 

 had not always stopped there at the little mill. By 

 trestle and by rock hewn shelf, over corduroy and rock 

 built fill it scrambled on six miles around the north 

 shore of Gunflint and south three miles to the mines. 



That road was not "laid", it was built, every rod of 

 it. That engineer fought every foot of the way. Even 

 in those days of cheap building it must have cost a 

 pretty penny. What built that road? What aban- 

 doned the mines ? It would make an interesting story, 

 a story that would probably lead far away from the 

 rocky shores of Gunflint to heavy leather upholstered 

 chairs in distant offices, and would deal less with iron 

 ores than with other hard things. Just two carloads 

 of ore went out over that hard built road ; then all was 

 abandoned, mines, railroad, everything. The trestles 

 mostly burned and washed away, the ties rotted out 

 and when the war rush came the very rails were hauled 

 out on the ice and shipped to far away France. There's 

 a story there and some day we'll dig it out. 



All the next morning we labored along beside the old 

 abandoned track and had plenty of opportunity to 

 dream about it. For in the morning we abandoned 

 our little log palace, packed our eight selves and all of 

 our belongings into two eighteen footers and started 

 west on the boundary waters. It was a calm morning 

 and the glassy waters of the long, narrow bay which 

 led away to Little North reflected the heavily wooded 

 shores like a perfect mirror. A narrow passage be- 

 tween the rocks led into Little North and a "put over" 

 landed us on Little Gunflint. From there on a narrow 



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