Читать книгу Forest, Lake and Prairie. Twenty Years of Frontier Life in Western Canada—1842-62 онлайн

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He had come and gone by the old canoe route, up the Kaministiqua and so on, across the height of land down to Lake Winnipeg.

We were to go out by another way altogether. I began to study the maps. This was a route I had not been told anything about at school.

In the meantime father came home. And though I did hope to work my way through college, when my father said, "My son, I want you to go with me," that settled it, and we began to make ready for our big translation.

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From Rama to St. Paul—Mississippi steamers—Slaves—Pilot—Race.

Early in July, 1860, we started on our journey. I was then in my seventeenth year. We sailed from Collingwood on an American propeller, which brought us to Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. Here we took a train through a part of Wisconsin to Lacrosse, on the Mississippi River, which place we reached about midnight, and immediately were transferred to a big Mississippi steamer.

Here everything was new—the style and build of the boat, long and broad and flat, made to run in very shallow water.