A Journey Through the North Country 
Editor Forest and Stream : 
Last August Mrs. and I thought we would go 
to the North Country and see what it was like. 
We went to Lacrosse and there took the river 
road to St. Paul, which runs along the west bank 
of the great water-way to the Gulf, its shores 
guarded by a continuous and lofty range of bluffs. 
On the western banks it is wooded to the summit, 
and on the eastern side with grass and small 
shrubs, except about the foot of the bluffs. The 
barrenness of the eastern side is caused by the 
cold west winds and storms. 
I went up the river fifty years ago, and the 
towns along the river were crowded with ox 
teams from the west as far as a one hundred 
miles and more, waiting their turn to get to the 
elevators to unload. Sometimes it would be two 
or three days before they could do so. Such 
busy places—now many of them are nearly de¬ 
serted. The iron horse did away with their 
business. In those days it was common to see 
the side-wheel steamers going back and forth in 
as much haste as they could make, and waking 
the wilderness with the echo of their whistles. 
We traveled along the western bank of the river 
for a hundred miles, and saw blit one steam¬ 
er, except the government boats putting in jetties 
to deepen the channel. The river had a blank 
and empty look. From St. Paul we went to 
Duluth. On the way, here and there, we saw the 
homesteaders’ shacks, and now and then a small 
farm, with fair improvements. But generally it 
was a wild and unsettled country, with mile after 
mile of brush and small trees and trunks of dead 
trees, blackened in spots by the fires, standing 
about like telephone poles set up by a cross-eyed 
man. The tangle of logs left by the lumberman 
was everywhere. Fires had made great devasta¬ 
tion too. The homesteader burns over great 
tracts to kill out the second growth, that the grass 
may grow to make pasturage for his cattle, leav¬ 
ing an almost endless waste. 
From Duluth, where everything was hurry and 
bustle, with the harbor filled with shipping, we 
soon reached the wilderness again. We came to 
the great walls of nearly black rocks which line 
the shores of the “Big-Sea-Water,” barren and 
bleak, where the waves dash against the rock- 
bound shore, ever undermining its iron sides, and 
great masses of -rock pitch down to the water’s 
edge. 
At Two Harbors we took a team and drove 
about the country. The second growth of ever¬ 
greens, moose-maple, birch and other trees was 
in evidence, and would, in time, reforest the 
country, if it had a chance. Red raspberries were 
By Heman Blackmer. 
growing wherever there was an open place, and 
people from the towns were gathering them. I 
saw a bear engaged in the same occupation. I 
understand bear are quite numerous in this vicin¬ 
ity. One day I saw a moose standing in the edge 
of a lake, and it seemed as though I had arrived 
in the land we read about. 
We took the cars to Eveleth, “The Height of 
Land,” to the great iron ore region. Trains 
passed us every twenty minutes on the double 
track as fast as they could be weighed. This goes 
on night and day all the summer. It seemed 
strange, in this vast wilderness, to see such great 
industry. They have laboratories where all the 
ore is tested, and that which does not run up to 
forty-five or fifty per cent, iron, is dumped in 
piles, some of them covering acres from forty to 
fifty feet high. Some day they think it will pay 
to smelt these ores. 
Here one sees villages with the finest school 
houses, and all modern improvements, while 
away, as far as the eye can reach, there is nothing 
but unoccupied expanse. 
The foreman took us over to Sparta, and where 
the main street was a couple of years ago, was a 
pit 2,000 feet across and 250 feet deep, where they 
were taking out ore. A thousand feet below us 
there was a mine, and we could feel the jar when 
they shot off a blast. The ore cars carried from 
fifty to sixty tons of ore, and the dippers that 
loaded them lifted five tons of ore at a time. At 
Two Harbors they have immense ore docks, some 
1,600 feet long. The ships come alongside, they 
let down the shoots, the boats are soon loaded, 
and away down the lake they go to some far mart. 
At Two Harbors we took the boat for Isle 
Royale. We kept along the western shore, and 
at every point our boat would sound its whistle. 
Then the Norwegian fishermen would come out 
and unload their catch of fish and get their mail 
and supplies; a lonely place to live, in their huts, 
with no habitation within miles. I talked with 
some of them, and they told me that the fish were 
getting scarce, and that it hardly paid to catch 
them. Isle Royale is one hundred and eighty 
miles from Duluth, and about forty miles from 
Port Arthur, Can., near the middle of Lake 
Superior, and is a part of Michigan. Isle Royale 
is a mountain range rising out of the lake, about 
forty miles long, and about eight miles wide, in¬ 
dented with channels, fjords and bays. Its shores 
are high and rugged, with trees extending to their 
tops, and they present a grand view as you ap¬ 
proach them. It has many lakes, and in its lakes 
and bays the water is as clear as crystal. The 
bottom seemed to rise almost to the surface, and 
it looked as though we would surely strike the 
bottom as we came to landings. 
On the boat I heard an old gentleman say that 
he had spent much of his time for the past fifty 
years along the Rainy-River, and that he had 
never seen as many moose as this year, which was 
owing to their protection. 
Isle Royale was once the land of the Ojibways, 
the land Longfellow dreamed of. And well he 
might, for it is a paradise in summer, with its 
cool breezes and balsam laden air: 
“All the earth was full of freshness, 
All the earth was bright and joyous.” 
Really a happy place, quiet and restful, sur¬ 
rounded on every side with the grandest nature 
can produce, I would need the imagination of a 
poet to picture its beauties, and the descriptive 
power of a Stoddard to convey an idea of this 
gem of the faraway “Big-Sea-Water.” 
“OPEN SEASON” FOR IDLE RICH. 
Germantown, Pa., April 2, 1914- 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The attached newspaper clipping is an editorial 
from The Philadelphia Record, issue of April 2: 
“Americans often express much sympathy for 
Scotch crofters turned out of their homes that 
some great lord or multi-millionaire may incor¬ 
porate their petty holdings in a vast game pre¬ 
serve. But why look so far from home? Here 
is William Rockefeller, who has bought up for 
the same purpose, over 55,000 acres in the Adiron- 
dacks, from which he has evicted all the old set¬ 
tlers and hunters. Doubtless it is poor land for 
agricultural uses, but so is that in Scotland. We 
tread pretty closely in the Old World’s foot¬ 
steps.” 
This strikes the very heart of the democracy 
of our land. Why is it that the great masses of 
open air and wildwood lovers of our country re¬ 
main inactive, while covetous, money-hoarding, 
ill-bred, sordid individuals deprive natives of the 
homes of their youth, and lord it over the do¬ 
mains, posting our forests, mountains, lakes and 
streams ? 
It is about time we authorized an open season 
for the idle rich. 
A. P. McARTHUR. 
To Suppress Female Cats. 
A bill was introduced in the New Jersey legislature 
recently making owners of female cats liable to a tax 
of $1 a year, and the same amount additional should any 
other female cat make its appearance and be kept or 
harbored. Some statistical genius has declared that 
there are 10,000 female cats in Jersey City alone, and is 
now trying to figure the prospective tax collection 
throughout the state. 
