We had hoped for a rest and lift hence to Aitkin upon the good
steamboat City of Aitkin, which makes a few lonely trips each spring
and fall, but the low water had prevented her return from her last
voyage, made ten days before our arrival. Our stores replenished, after
two hours of rest we started again in a driving rain, and under the
hearty _bon voyage_ of a dozen frontiersmen and Indians shot the two
lively lower ledges of Grand Rapids, and came out on smooth water,
whose sluggish flow, broken by a very few rifts, bore us thence one
hundred and fifty miles to the next white settlement at Aitkin. The
entire distance lies through low bottom-lands heavily timbered, and our
course was drearily monotonous. We left Grand Rapids at mid-afternoon
of Thursday, July 24, and camped on Friday night four miles below Swan
River. Late on Saturday we passed Sandy Lake River--where formerly were
a large Indian population and an important trading-post, founded and
for many years conducted by Mr. Aitkin, who was prominently identified
with the early history of that region, and is now commemorated in the
town and county bearing his name, but where now remain only one or two
deserted cabins and a few Indian graves, over which white flags were
flapping in the sultry breeze--and camped two miles below.
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