Some time after it was all frozen up solid, some men with two yoke of
oxen came up to cut and put logs in the river to raft down when the ice
went out. With them came a shingle weaver, with a pony and a small sled,
and some Indians also. We now had to take up all of our steel traps, and
rob all our dead-falls and quit business generally--even then they got
some of our traps before we could get them gathered in. We were now
comparatively idle.
Until these loggers came we did not know exactly where we were situated,
but they told us we were on the Lemonai river, a branch of the
Wisconsin, and that we could get out by going west till we found the
Mississippi river and then home. We hired the shengle man with his pony
to take us to Black River, farther north which we reached in three days,
and found a saw mill there in charge of a keeper. Up the river farther
we found another mill looked after by Sam Ferguson. Both mills were
frozen up. The Indians had been here all winter. They come from Lake
Superior when the swamps froze up there, to hunt deer, till the weather
gets warm, then they returned to the Lake to fish.
Of course the presence of the Indians made game scarce, but the mill men
told us if we would go up farther into the marten country they thought
we would do well. We therefore made us a hand sled, put some provisions
and traps on board, and started up the river on the ice. As we went the
snow grew deeper and we had to cut hemlock boughs for a bed on top of
the snow.
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