820 
FOREST AND STREAM 
June 29, 1912 
The lakes and streams grew larger, until one 
morning, after a camp on a portage around 
some rapids, they swept out of the stream onto 
the surface of a long, broad lake that lay glitter¬ 
ing in the sunshine, its surface broken by 
countless islands, its shores rocky, steep, forest 
clad. Across this lake the party paddled, and 
Pierre named it Lac La Croix. Nowhere had 
he ever seen so beautiful a body of water. 
They left the lake for a stream, and went on 
through other lakes for two days. And then, 
after portaging around a big falls, their birch 
canoes suddenly turned a bend, and they were 
on a lake the opposite shores of which were 
below the horizon. 
“Te-ka-ma-miou-en,” said the Ojibway in the 
stern of Pierre’s canoe, and Pierre was the first 
white man to see Rainy Lake, as the Indians 
called it. 
We won’t go on with Pierre, far west past 
Winnipeg to the Saskatchewan, where a post 
was established on the bank of that great river 
of Western Canada, nor even tell how he 
reached the west end of Rainy Lake and es¬ 
tablished Fort Pierre, two miles east of where 
the Hudson’s Bay Company later built Fort 
Francis. Nor will we tell of Pierre’s other 
journeys. nor of how he died one winter on 
the bleak shores of Lake Winnipeg, nor of how 
his son continued the work of the father. We 
will go back over his route and see if something 
cannot be found that would interest a city man 
who wishes to do a little make-believe explor¬ 
ing, in a shorter time, of course, and without 
the risks and hardships of Pierre’s journey. , 
Take Lac La Croix, for instance, the beauti¬ 
ful lake with the islands, with the wonderfully 
clear water, the rugged shore line, the sur¬ 
rounding forest inhabited only by a small band 
of Indians on the bank of the lake’s outlet. 
Nameukan River, and traversed only by the 
forest rangers of the Canadian and United 
States governments. 
For Lac La Croix is a boundary lake and is 
the center of a country of wonderful possibil¬ 
ities for the present-day Pierres who, with their 
modern canoes, outfits and guides, with the 
Pullman stopping in or on the edge of the 
wilderness, can have many of the experiences of 
Pierre without the necessity of a years-long 
journey, the food of the savage and the hard¬ 
ships and risks. 
Supposing you wish to reach Lac La Croix. 
There are several ways to do so, and, in the 
routes to be described, one can find most any 
degree of wilderness travel, of “roughing it” 
or of frontier comfort. 
You can travel the route of Pierre, which was 
later the route of Simon Dawson, a far-sighted 
man who did not see the railroads coming, but 
who did see the necessity of a route to the 
prairies of Western Canada; you can travel in 
the wake of the forest rangers as they paddle 
through that beautiful country, guarding the 
forest from fires that, many times, you are 
responsible for starting; you may leave these 
routes and. if you have the inclination, start an 
exploring trip of your own through a country 
in which only the Indian lives and which has in¬ 
finite possibilities in the way of adventure and 
of “conquering the wild.” 
Until the last few years no one ever took a 
pleasure trip through this country that Pierre 
discovered so long ago. In the last three or 
four years there have been as many as a dozen 
or fifteen canoeing parties each year, but most 
of them have traveled only one route, or a 
variation of it, and there is an immense country 
to the north in which you can travel for a month 
and never see a white man nor a sign of one. 
The best known route is from Ely, Minn., to 
International Falls, or to Tower. Each is about 
150 miles, but each lies in a district into the 
borders of which motor boats, settlers and 
lumber camps are penetrating. You can depart 
from them, however, at almost any point and 
lose yourself for as long as you desire. If you 
live in the Middle West, perhaps any one of 
these three towns would be the best starting 
place. 
If you live in the East and have exhausted 
the possibilities of the well known routes in 
Eastern Canada and the LTnited States, perhaps 
it would be better to enter the country by way 
of Canada. Go to Port Arthur, and then on 
west on the Canadian Northern one hundred 
miles, and you can leave the train at any one 
of the small towns or places where the train 
will stop, and be in the middle of the most 
wonderful canoeing country you ever knew— 
wonderful not only because there are rapids 
that require skill, lakes large enough to test 
your ability, routes and combinations of routes 
without number, but because it is absolutely 
virgin, is known only to a few timber cruisers 
and to the Indians who spend the winter trap¬ 
ping in the forest and the summer gathering in 
the villages to smoke and visit and to enjoy 
themselves as white men seldom do. 
Leave the train at Windigo, for instance, a 
town named for Lake Windigoostigwa, and you 
are on the route of Pierre and Simon Dawson, 
and you can travel on southwestward through 
Drench Lake and Drench River, Pickerel Lake 
and Deux Riviere into Sturgeon Narrows and 
Sturgeon Lake, down the Maligne River, and 
sweep out into Lac La Croix, just as Pierre did 
two hundred year ago. Prom there you can go 
north and west down the Nameukan River until 
you reach the mouth of Quetico River, turn up 
this stream to Beaver House Lake, into Quetico 
Lake and on to Atikoken, a town on the Canad¬ 
ian Northern west of Windigo. 
Or you can continue on west from Lac La 
Croix along the route that Pierre and Simon 
took and paddle the length of Rainy Lake to 
Fort Francis, where you can take the train 
back east through Canada or south through 
Minnesota. 
Again, you may take the train to Fort 
Francis and reverse the trip, or you may paddle 
straight north from Fort Francis for thirty 
miles to the Devil’s Cascade at the north end of 
the north arm of Rainy Lake and there begin 
to ascent the Manitou River and keep on for 
nearly 150 miles, through many lakes and with 
only seven or eight portages, until you come to 
Wabigoon, on the Canadian Pacific. And in 
all that country there is not a white man. 
Still again, from Fort Francis there are 
three routes to the Lake of the Woods, one 
down the Rainy River and the other two 
through an amazing network of lakes to the 
northwest. 
If you wish to explore you may start north 
from almost any of the little stopping places 
along the Canadian Northern and travel for 
weeks through streams and lakes, or turn south 
across Hunter’s Island and reach El}'. 
If you wish only a short trip, two weeks, for 
instance, and do not wish to take the chance 
of running astray in the country just described, 
start from Ely, Minn., a town at the end of 
the Duluth & Iron Range and take the regular 
NAMEUKAN JUVER. 
