Let me see. It was six (6) years since I had an outing. It seemed a long time and it was long enough to obscure the conviction I had once arrived at that the average outing is on the whole more of a bore than a pleasure and that its principal value consists in making a fellow satisfied with his ordinary work and glad to get back to it again. I am tolerably sure that I should have reached the same opinion even if I had not been the victim of a certain wretched adventure that happened away back in my “courting days”. On the occasion referred to I had taken my best girl for a little rowing and fishing on Brush Lake. We had not proceeded far when she “got a bite”, and it nearly drove her wild with excitement, she stood up in the boat and from her frantic exertions I judged she had hooked nothing less than a six pound bass. At last she pulled it out with a horizontal sweep, and whirling around with it, the middle of the line struck my head with such force as to send the fish revolving around my neck five times, and wound up by inserting the hook in the end of my nose and leaving the fish dangling and flapping against my face—a ridiculous little Sunfish not over three inches long. The excited lady dropped her pole and made such a violent lunge to secure her prize that she upset the boat and left us both floundering in the water. Amongst the fifteen[2] or twenty spectators on the shore was Aquarius Jinks, whose father was a fisherman and had brought him up to think no more of jumping into the water than a water spaniel. So in he jumped and in a jiffy he rescued my lady and took her to the nearest house to get some dry clothes. As for myself, I was getting out all right in spite of the embarrassment of the choking line, my lacerated nose and that wretched fish that did not for a moment let up its frantic struggling and flapping. In addition to this I had the misfortune to be encumbered by the clumsy assistance of a fat German saloon-keeper, who by the help of the pole, which had now floated near the shore, drew me up, amid the jeers of the crowd, that now by the barbarous custom of the times, I was obliged to “treat.” This exposure laid me up for six weeks with the chills, and about the end of that time there was a wedding—my girl married that Jinks, who took this perfidious advantage of me. I felt very sore for a long time in the region of the diaphragm. The poets usually designate the heart as the particular organ affected in such cases, but I am persuaded it is the semi lunar ganglion or solar plexus, probably the former, from the fact that the victim is apt to be affected by semi lunacy. But that is a question of physiology.
Although I never had another such disastrous experience, yet as I said at first, the average outing with its accidents, fatigues and discomforts, had on the whole, left no very favorable impression on me. Yet I had made up my mind after an interval of six years to try one more. My literary work had tired[3] me out, and a trip, if it gave no pleasure, would hurt at least in another place.
August the third, 1892, found me installed in a cottage, at Cottagewood, at the eastern end of Lake Minnetonka. My plans were simple. I had a gun, a boat and fishing tackle, but of these I intended to make small use. I would rest most of the time, and lie under the trees and read or loaf as I saw fit. I would buy my food of such kind and in such condition as to take but little time for its preparation, for I intended to “keep bach” for which I was qualified by more or less previous experience. If at any time I wanted a square meal, I could take a row around to the St. Louis hotel, or if the wind were favorable could sail over to the Lafayette, or to Excelsior. In short, I meant to rest and take it easy; do nothing at all to-day, that I could put off till to-morrow. I thought this all over the first day and in accordance with the programme proceeded to make myself as lazy as possible. I succeeded well. It requires but little effort to become lazy when one is in the afternoon of life. During a week my activity was reduced to a minimum; I saw but few people, although I had neighbors only a few rods away concealed by the thick brush, that grew between us. Once a dog came and after looking around, trotted away. As I sat or lolled on a rustic bench near the lake, the drowsy monotonous lapping of the water against the shore kept me for hours on the border land of sleep, just in that condition in which one does not know whether the motions of his brain are dreams or waking thoughts, and in which he often dreams that he is dreaming. The[4] sound of the distant puffing of a steam yacht or the merry laughter of a sailing party, that occasionally ricocheted to the shore rather directed than disturbed the train of these passive activities.
The exhausted body or brain is like a machine that has run too long without being oiled. It goes with reluctance and with damaging wear and tear. But when we are thoroughly rested, the motives that before were unable to move us, now set us going with the greatest facility.
After the rest and quiet of a week, I began to feel an impulse to do something or to go somewhere; and a short debate settled that I would take a trip by sail and oar to the upper lake. As I did not intend to hurry and might be gone two or three days, I laid in a stock of provisions accordingly; with such cooking apparatus as a coffee pot and frying pan. Nowhere is a cup of coffee, a slice of ham, crackers and cheese so relishable as when they satisfy real thirst and hunger alongside a camp-fire of dry sticks. Then perhaps I might shoot a duck or hook a croppy. At night the sail stretched over a fishing pole could be formed into a shelter tent, something like the “dog tents” Uncle Sam gave us for shelter in the southern campaigns in the early sixties. In short I intended to make a regular cruise, and as my boat was named Sally Ann, this trip should be known in history as the cruise of the Sally Ann.
It was a fine morning when, all things ready, I hoisted sail. The wind was from the southeast and I started off before it at an exhilarating speed, steering northwest. In a short time I came abreast of Big Island, when turning west skirting its north[5] shore, I soon got becalmed, the island cutting off the wind. I was obliged to take the oars, but as I dallied and loitered along, it was a full hour before I passed the island and caught my breeze again. I was here steering southwest across the wind and heading for the narrows, and the canal leading into the upper lake. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this lake, no matter at what point the view is taken. At this place looking northeast over the stern of the boat, the village of Wayzata partly obscured by Spirit Island, appeared as if seated in the water half a mile away, though in reality it is five miles. On the southeast within a mile, was the Lake Park hotel and beyond it, half a mile further and across the entrance to Gideon’s Bay, a part of Excelsior could be seen climbing its picturesque hills, while along the piers at the bottom of their slopes, were numerous steam and sailing crafts of various kinds, besides a fleet of row boats.
As I approached the entrance to the canal, I observed standing on the south bank, a man with a gun in his hand and dressed in outing costume, whose figure and attitude reminded me of someone I had seen before. “Can it be possible,” I said to myself, “that that is Allan Ocheltree?” By the time the boat touched the land, I had made sure that it was and I sprang ashore to greet him. The recognition and gratification at meeting were mutual. Our friendship for each other, was always the closest friendship either of us had. We had been room-mates and class-mates for four years at college, and our temperaments and tastes were like complementary colors, of such harmonious contrast as to[6] fit each other to a T. In our class we were to each other like the two end men of a minstrel troup; he at one end—the head end—and I at the other. It is singular how people, like drift wood on the stream of time, are at times drifted toward each other and float along together till some eddy or obstruction in the current separates them, and hurries them off in diverging directions, perhaps to meet again farther down the stream, it may be more than once. Sometimes a leave-taking under circumstances, that seem to forebode it to be the last and clothe it in gloom, and sorrow, is nevertheless not the last by many; while a cheerful good-by with a light hearted “ta-ta-old-fellow-see-you-to-morrow,” may prove the beginning of a separation destined to endure for years—perhaps forever.
The Ocheltree family and my ancestors, were from the same Scotch-Irish stock, were friends and neighbors near Belfast and emigrated to Maryland about two hundred and thirty years ago, settling at first in Somerset County. A few years later they moved north into Cecil County, and from there in 1760 a large emigration took place to Mechlenburg County, North Carolina. Among these emigrants, were Duncan Ocheltree and my grandfather’s Uncle John. These two were friends and neighbors in the new settlement and when the revolutionary war broke out, they both adopted the patriotic cause. The Mechlenburg declaration of independence was adopted and signed May 20th or 31st, 1775, by a convention of which John was secretary, and it was supported by Duncan. But in 1780, Lord Cornwallis overran the state and captured Charlotte, the[7] county seat of Mechlenburg, and Duncan, believing all was lost, hastened to turn Tory and make his submission to his lordship in order to save his wealth of which he had acquired a goodly share. This was a bad break and he made it worse by the supererogatory zeal of a new convert, in harassing his former friends and piloting the red-coated foragers to their hay stacks, hen roosts and pig pens, not sparing his old friend John. But the triumph of Cornwallis was short; in a few days, he was obliged to evacuate Charlotte and then Duncan realized that he had placed himself in a very bad position. As the British troops were packing their knapsacks preparatory to decamping from Charlotte between two days, Duncan determined to throw himself upon the generosity of his former friend John, and so under cover of the darkness he rode out to his farm-house nine miles in the country. John, who was two miles off in the patriot camp, was sent for. Duncan surrendered his sword and begged his old friend to forgive bygones and advise him what to do. John’s sympathy for him at that stage of affairs was not particularly tender as may be supposed, but nevertheless his advice was no doubt the best possible. He said: “Ocheltree, neither your life nor your property is safe in Mechlenburg. The Whigs will take both. Your only safety is in instant flight. I advise you to reach the Yadkin before daylight.” He took the advice. And so they parted. Four generations later like two stray straws on a flood, Allan Ocheltree and I were floated into the same class room at school. Did it make any difference to me or to him that his great grandfather, made a bad guess seventy years[8] before? Not a bit. Every man’s ancestral tree is just the same height as all the rest, his lineage is just as long and his pedigree must contain practically the same number of terms whether we reckon back to Adam or to the Ascidian or to original protoplasm. Not a member of the long line made himself or the circumstances surrounding him, and in no two cases were these precisely the same. The circumstances that made Confucius or Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, or Columbus, or Washington never happened to anybody else. It was no fault of the obscure ancestors or descendants or cousins near and remote of those worthies that these circumstances never surrounded them. On the other hand it cannot be ascribed to the merit of the long line of those belonging to the dead level of the average, in size and in quality, that they have been missed by the untoward circumstances that selected certain individuals to be in one respect or another conspicuously below that dead level.
After quitting college, Allan and I occasionally ran across each other, but the last meeting before this, occurred in 1876 on Arch Street, Philadelphia. He was interested in an exhibit in the great exposition, and being then in a great hurry made an appointment to meet me next morning. I kept the engagement, but he was not there. I knew urgent business had turned up to prevent him, and after I returned to my home I received his letter saying so, and appointing another hour. This letter had missed me at my hotel and followed me to Illinois. Here then, we were having our reunion sixteen years after it was due. But now we could make up for[9] lost time for neither had engagements that required attention for a week at least. It was speedily arranged that Allan should accompany me and that we should carry out together the plan I had proposed for myself. He wrote a note for his boarding house keeper in Excelsior, saying he would be gone some days, and gave it to a rowing party going to Excelsior, that we shortly after fell in with, and who cheerfully consented to deliver it. The wind was still from the southeast, but light and we slowly sailed westerly and south-westerly passing successively the state fruit farm and Sampson’s place lying on our left, and Spring Park on our right, had in a short time reached Howard’s Point that juts a third of a mile into the lake from the south shore. We sailed through the strait between this and picturesque Rockwell’s Island with its attractive summer hotel, and restful looking surroundings, and turned southwest toward Smithtown Bay.
We entered Smithtown Bay, but did not go to the end of it, for the wind was not favorable, and as we turned west toward the highlands of the upper lake I fell into a reminiscent mood. Up to this time we had occupied ourselves in admiration of the delightful scenery and in such careless chat as occurred to us, sometimes taking a pull at the oars, when we entered a locality becalmed by being screened from the wind, and sometimes pulling in the fish line that dragged over the stern of the boat to see why we never got a bite. But here the memories that crowded upon me completely absorbed my attention and I became silent. I had tramped all over this country in 1877 in the selection of a route[10] for the Minneapolis and Northwestern Narrow Gauge Railroad, and so was familiar with the topography, not only of the upper lake, but of the whole route from Minneapolis to Hutchinson. The first preliminary line surveyed from Hutchinson to Minneapolis in the latter part of November, 1877, passed along the foot of the high bluff just in front of us, but the line was not finally located till October, 1879.
When I explained to my friend how the line passed south-easterly along the foot of the bluff, at the edge of the water, except where it dodged behind Hoflin’s headland, and then swept around the head of Smithtown Bay turning north-easterly toward Excelsior, “I declare,” he exclaimed, “there never was so romantic a place to locate an excursion railroad. So attractive a line ought surely to have been built. Why wasn’t it?”
“Well,” I replied, “it was a case of infanticide.”
“How was that?” he asked.
“You’ve heard of treacherous midwives and nurses and murderous baby-farmers being subsidized to strangle an unwelcome cherub as soon as it is ushered into the world?”
“Yes, was it a case of that sort?”
“This infant was born healthy and vigorous after what might be called a rather protracted period of gestation—some thirty months. It had no less than twenty-one nurses in the shape of directors, which number was four times as great as it should have been and one over.
“When there is such a mob of officials, the management usually devolves on a few of the more active and interested. That active minority in this[11] case somehow either had from the first, or acquired, a greater interest in killing this enterprise to please its rivals than in carrying it out in good faith.”
“How did the line run west of here?” he asked.
“It passed northwesterly along the foot of the bluff yonder, on the top of which you see Smith’s stone house, then along the shore just in front of the “hermitage”, and a quarter of a mile beyond that it turned toward the west and cutting through the ridge of the peninsula that separates the upper lake from Halsteds Bay, it skirted the south shore of that bay, and thence bore in a generally westerly and northwesterly direction, through Minnetrista township to St. Boniface and thence to Watertown.
“Halsteds bay itself is so secluded as to form practically a separate lake and a beautiful one too.”
“Suppose we sail up along this shore,” said Ocheltree, “I am quite interested in the place.”
We turned the nose of Sally Ann toward the northwest and sailed slowly before the very light wind. We passed Crane Island lying upon the right—a sort of lying-in hospital and nursery strictly sacred to the use of Cranes only, whose occupancy dates back of the earliest settlement of the country, and whose title has been secured to them by an act of the legislature, against the claims of all featherless bipeds. Further on, upon the mainland, is the hermitage and just in front of it the grave of Halsted, who many years ago, lost his life in the lake so sadly and mysteriously. A short distance beyond the hermitage, I pointed out the place where the survey left the shore of the main lake and cut across to Halsteds bay. We concluded to go on to the[12] strait leading into that bay and sail around to its south shore. To reach the strait involved sailing north a mile and then over half a mile west. As the wind was still favorable this was soon accomplished. But when we reached the strait, we could no longer use the sail, and were obliged to have recourse to the oars. Inside the bay there was but little wind, and that was against us, as our route now lay due south. A little over a mile of rowing brought us to the south shore of the bay. Here the bluff covered with timber and underbrush slopes down to the water’s edge. Along the foot of this slope, I pointed out to Ocheltree the position of the narrow gauge survey. “It is a wonderfully romantic place for a pleasure road,” said he.
It was now considerably past noon, and our exercise had begun to tell on us both somewhat and to suggest a rest and something to eat. Accordingly we pulled the boat up on the beach, and got out some cooking utensils and provisions. I started off to collect some dry sticks to make a fire and Allan took a pail and proceeded along the shore to find a deep place or a boulder from which he could dip up clear water for our coffee. We happened to go together for a few rods, when glancing up the slope a short distance, I discovered a stake sticking in the ground. I gave an exclamation of surprise and quickly ran to secure it. It proved to be what I suspected, one of the stakes of the narrow gauge survey. “What have you found, old fellow?” Allan asked. I told him, and it seemed surprising to both of us that that frail bit of a pine stick should have survived the storms and accidents of thirteen years.[13] We had used for stakes on those surveys common plastering lath; one lath four feet long being cut in the middle made two stakes. This was such a stake, an inch and a half wide and three-eighths of an inch thick. It owed its exceptional preservation to the fact that it was full of pitch and to its protected position. It had been driven in a slanting position, partly under the body of a large fallen tree, that lay over the point where the stake should have been set. The number of the stake had been written with red chalk, on the side that had happened to come underneath and so was largely protected from the rains. But it was now illegible, four red blotches being all that remained.
A person walking through our Minnesota woods will often meet with a little mound of earth, alongside of which he will see a cupshaped depression in the ground. The depression marks the spot where at some time in the past there stood a noble tree, and it indicates that the tree yielding to the force of an ancient tornado was toppled over, and, pulling its roots out of the ground drew up with them a cubic yard, more or less, of earth. Afterwards when the roots began to decay the earth was dropped in a heap beside the hole. There was such a mound and hollow at the west end of the rotten log in question, showing that it had been overthrown by the fierce assault of a western hurricane. The mound was old, well rounded by the action of the weather and covered with a mat of grass. I sat down on this mound in a half reclining position, with the stake in my hand, and tried again without success to make[14] out the number[1]. A solitary mosquito was singing about my right ear, and persisted in returning and constantly evaded my efforts to capture it. Directly however, its wings became still, and unaccountable stupor appeared to steal over me, my head drooped over toward the left till it touched the grass and for a moment I was unconscious. But it was only for a moment for a new consciousness almost immediately supervened. It was a consciousness composed chiefly of subjective sensations, although I hold that even subjective sensations, very often in an unperceived manner, receive their direction and stimulation to activity from objects around us. But that is a question of psychology. At all events the sensations, I am about to relate were the most remarkable I ever experienced, and at the time were not accompanied by the least intimation, that they were not purely objective.