412 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 9, 1911. 
Out in the Pines 
By THE PARSON 
less in early manhood, but had reformed in mid¬ 
dle life, learned to read and write, and after¬ 
ward composed tolerable re'igious verses and 
preached the gospel intelligent.y, but not intelli¬ 
gibly, except to those familiar with his speech, 
for he had a malformation of the vocal organs. 
It is not many years since he passed away. I 
remember him as he appeared the last spring he 
was here when he was more than eighty years 
of age, fishing on the sunny side of Van Patten’s 
Pond—his white hair, his rugged, wrinkled, 
kindly face, his conversation so full of quaint. 
Mosaic wisdom and scriptural instances half 
articulated, his tender heart—a complete angler 
he seemed, reminding one of the fishermen of 
old who cast their nets in Galilee. His wife 
died before I can remember. Their degenerate 
and only son, the last occupant of the house, a 
tall wild, one-eyed, Cyclopean man, lived alone 
and died during the past winter at more than 
three score years and ten. 
For all his wild ways and rough exterior the 
preacher’s son had a filial heart. I had the story 
of his last hours from one who sat by his bed¬ 
side on the night he died. He fell ill and his 
neighbors cared for him. Early in the evening 
of his last night on earth he asked for the scribe 
of the district. “I must have some writing 
done,” he said, for he knew that the end was 
near. They told h m that the neighbor he wished 
to see would come at midnight to watch the re¬ 
mainder of the night. “That will be too late,” 
he said, sadly, “I will not be here then.” Then 
he fell to praying and the evening wore away. 
It was not yet twelve when he started up cry¬ 
ing suddenly: “Open the door! Open the 
door!” as though some caller had demanded in¬ 
stant admittance. One of those who sat by the 
bedside rose to do his bidding, but before he 
could take a step the door swung open. All 
that the watchers heard was the winter wind, 
all that they saw was the fine white snow that 
sifted over the threshold. “See,” cried the sick 
man, “there comes my mother with a bunch of 
roses!” and so died. 
We stopped at the house not many weeks 
after his burial. The windows were boarded, 
the door chained. The yard was bare except 
for the little woodpile where we had sometimes 
paused to chat with him. Just over the fence 
lay most of his movables and chattels, a con¬ 
fused heap of broken chairs, bed, bedding, stand, 
table, coat, boots and shoes, which his adminis¬ 
trators had duly appraised and prepared for the 
burning. It was on a cold gray day in early 
April, a keen wind searched the sheltered nooks 
and drove the last year's leaves before it, snow 
fell at intervals, we almost doubted the efficacy 
of the returning sun, but methought the sky 
brightened a little and the wind lost its sting 
when we remembered the story of his last 
hours. 
Southwick’s rose is budding once again in a 
corner of the neglected garden—his mother 
planted it, perhaps—and the century-living lilac, 
emblematic of the domestic and filial virtues, 
leans over the roadside wall heavy with blos¬ 
soms. These also cheer me when I pass that 
way as they cheered the last of his race for 
seventy odd Mays. 
Dutcher, Harrington, Southwick, late of my 
wilderness pastures, now Elysian fields! How 
soon the memorials of their poor, thin lives en¬ 
hance the beauty of nature! 
A S the first of September draws on apace, 
more and more I note the signs of ap¬ 
proaching autumn. In the slightly cool¬ 
ing nights, in the empty martin houses minus 
some hundred of the tenants of a few weeks 
back; in an occasional rusted fringe along the 
border of the woods, where the hazel leaves 
are slightly browning, and in the fact that a 
tent is standing in the yard under inspection 
for possible repairs. The camp stove, too, has 
been inspected, discarded and a new one 
ordered, a canoe is being overhauled and pro¬ 
vided with a waterproof hood. Other numer¬ 
ous signs and sounds which I note indicate the 
near approach of the time to start on a wilder¬ 
ness pilgrimage. 
This year we are going to follow a route we 
took several years ago, and the preparations 
naturally lead to reminiscences. We took the 
steamer of the Mississippi Transportation Com¬ 
pany, which plies the river from the Northern 
Pacific and Soo Line Railway stations at Aitkin, 
Minn., to the remote upper wilderness. We 
took the steamer Lee, as it parsed the ranch 
at nine in the morning, and disembarked at 
Sandy Lake in the twilight’s gloaming. 
The trip up the river was a very interesting- 
part of the expedition. Occasional deer or 
bear skins stretched on the side of log build¬ 
ings reminded one of pictures seen in some of 
the early biographies of Daniel Boone. The 
lone watcher at the foot of some blind trail 
leading down to the river’s brink, waiting for 
mail or freight, was suggestive of pioneer days. 
The ever-winding avenues of river leading be¬ 
tween walls of frost-painted forests furnished di¬ 
version that did not pall in one day. 
When, following up the outlet by canoe, we 
came to Sandy Lake, one of the most spectacu¬ 
lar scenes in autumn foliage I ever saw came 
twinkling across the water. The shores of the 
lake is made up mostly of abrupt wooded hills 
and sand dunes. Certain kinds of timber grow 
on certain kinds of soil and different belts or 
strata of soil encircle the hills at different 
heights. The leaves of the white oak turn to 
old gold under the brush of J. Frost, the red 
oak turns to a dull red, a certain species of soft 
maple turns to a brilliant red and the hard, or 
sugar maple, turns to an equally brilliant yel¬ 
low. The pine and spruce maintain their dif¬ 
ferent shades of green. Thus the different strata 
of soil were painted in the leaves and each 
species was clad in its most brilliant tint. I 
do not remember to have ever had the headache 
before from too much brilliance in natural colors. 
Sandy Lake is very striking in its arrange¬ 
ment of shore line and island. There are many 
miles of sandy beach surrounding island and 
mainland. There is about four times as much 
shore line as is necessary to surround such a 
body of water. There are peninsulas, islands, 
bays and so forth in great profusion. Most of 
the islands and peninsulas, as well as a great 
deal of the shore line, are made up of high 
bluffs or circular dunes, which lend a very 
marked scenic effect. One might travel far to 
find its like again. 
The lake also has a skeleton in its closet. It 
is the site of one of the numerous government 
reservoirs made to help the lumbermen get 
away with the “loot of the forest,” and which 
have had such disastrous effect on the settlers 
along the river below. Around each island, 
along each shore line, and extending many 
miles up each inlet, is a line of dead trees ex¬ 
tending ten or twelve feet up the bank. These 
were killed by holding the water far above its 
natural level for long periods, waiting for the 
looters to get their spoil of logs into the back 
waters ready to be drawn out by the rush of 
water when the gates were opened. Of course, 
the lumbermen do not profit in proportion to 
the expenditure of the government, but what 
does it matter if the government spends two 
millions and the lumbermen only profit one? 
The expenditure is public loss, while the profit 
is private gain. This serves to illustrate how 
far we have been drawn from safe and sane 
paths by the “graft system” of government. 
Most of the prominent politicians of Min¬ 
nesota’s past history have taken more or less 
part in the great fraud. 
On most of the striking promontories around 
Sandy Lake summer cottages have been built. 
These, I take it, have been built by army en¬ 
gineers who have been stationed here from 
time to time on government work. Isolated in 
the wilderness with little to do except draw fat 
salaries, their minds turned to summer cottages, 
which they hoped to enjoy for a season or two 
and then sell at advanced rates when the rush 
came. But, alas! for their expectations, North¬ 
ern Minnesota has a plethora of summer cottage 
sites and a very great dearth of summer cot¬ 
tagers. The demand for sites is very slow and 
will be a hundred years hence. The cottages 
were mostly deserted and the grounds over¬ 
grown. This makes it much better for us 
nomadic vagabonds who tire of a place as soon 
as it begins to look like a permanent camp. 
After ten days of cruising and exploring the 
various inlets of Sandy Lake, we found our¬ 
selves on the great Rice Lake adjacent, having 
gone up Sandy River to the outlet of the great 
Rice Lake and up the outlet to the lake itself. 
As we pushed through the rice after we arrived 
at this lake, we came to quite a long stretch of 
open sea. Massed on the opposite side of this 
open space, against its rice walls, was the 
largest flock of wildfowl we had seen for some 
years and we sat and watched them for a few 
minutes. I noticed a patch that I thought 
might be canvasbacks, and another that sug¬ 
gested redheads, while the main swarm were 
evidently bluebilIs, with a smattering of mallards 
in the further distance. 
We realized at once that we were up against 
the problem of disposing of a vast amount of 
ducks we should kill without laying ourselves 
open to the charge of wanton destruction. We 
talked of giving them to the neighboring In¬ 
dians, and again of sending them by steamboat 
to the poor of Aitkin. As we skirted the open 
space in the thin rice a few scattered mudhens 
began to swim out toward the open. Then 
