Thomas
Smith and his partner, farming, herding and lumbering at the mouth of
Vermilion River, were the first white men we had seen since July 6,
seventeen days, and with them we enjoyed a chat in straight English.
Nine miles below we camped at River Camp, the second farm downward,
where we were kindly supplied with vegetables and with fresh milk,
which seemed to us then like the nectar of the gods. Thursday, 24th, we
reached Pekagema Falls, a wild pitch of some twenty feet, with rapids
above and below, down which the strong volume of the river plunges with
terrible force in picturesque beauty. A carry around the falls and
three miles of paddling brought us to Grand Rapids, and we rushed like
the wind into the whirl and boil of its upper ledge, down the steep and
crooked incline for two hundred yards, out of which we shot up to the
bank under a little group of houses where Warren Potter and Knox &
Wakefield conduct the uppermost post-office and stores upon the river.
We speedily closed our partly-completed letters and posted them for a
pack-mail upon an Indian's back sixty-five miles to Aitkin, while we
should follow the tortuous river thither for one hundred and fifty
miles.
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