APPENDIX. 543 



water, I found neither of the foregoing routes practicable, without 

 extending my time so far as to exhaust my supplies. I was finally 

 determined to relinquish the Lac du Flambeau route, by learning 

 that the Indians of that place had dispersed, and by knowing that 

 a considerable delay would be caused by reassembling them. 



The homeward route by the Mississippi was now the most eli- 

 gible, particularly as it would carry me through a portion of 

 country occupied by the Chippewas, in a state of hostility with 

 the Sioux, and across the disputed line at the mill. Two routes, 

 to arrive at the Mississippi, were before me — either to follow 

 down the outlet of Ottowa Lake to its junction with the Chip- 

 pewa, and descend the latter to its mouth, or to quit the Ottowa 

 Lake branch at an intermediate point, and, after ascending a small 

 and very serpentine tributary, to cross a portage of 6,000 yards 

 into Lake Chetac, I pursued the latter route. 



Lake Chetac is a sheet of water about six miles in length, and 

 it has several islands, on one of which is a small Chippewa village 

 and a trading-post. This lake is the main source of Eed Cedar 

 Eiver (called sometimes the Folle Avoine), a branch of the Chip- 

 pewa Eiver. It receives a brook at its head from the direction 

 of the portage, which admits empty canoes to be conveyed down 

 it two pauses^ but is then obstructed with logs. It is connected 

 by a shallow outlet with Weegv/os Lake, a small expanse which 

 we crossed with paddles in twenty-five minutes. The passage 

 from the latter is so shallow that a portage of 1,295 yards is made 

 into Balsam of Fir or Sapin Lake. The baggage is carried this 

 distance, but the canoes are brought through the stream. Sapin 

 Lake is also small; we were thirty minutes in crossing it. Below 

 this point, the river again expands into a beautiful sheet of water, 

 called Red Cedar Lake, which we were an hour in passing ; and 

 afterward into Bois Frangois^ or Rice Lake. At the latter place, 

 at the distance of perhaps sixty miles from its head, I found the 

 last fixed village of Chippewas on this stream, although the hunt- 

 ing camps, and other signs of temporary occupation, were more 

 numerous below than on any other part of the stream. This may 

 be attributed to the abundance of the Virginia deer in that vici- 

 nity, many of which we saw, and of the elk and moose, whose 

 tracks were fresh and numerous in the sands of the shore. Wild 

 rice is found in all the lakes. Game, of every species common 



