Ringling Brothers show was in St. Paul and we wanted to go but there were so many things we wanted to do that we couldn't do them all. Wild rice is good, if it is cooked right, it is about like eating wheat with the chaff on. It is planted in the swampy land and in the lakes to get the ducks and geese to light so you can shoot them. But hunters say it is to feed them. Split pike is the same as pike split and they are fish called pike and some call them pickerel; these we had to eat were called wall-eyed pike. They sure were cooked fine and they were better than trout that we got in the east. I don't know why they call them wall-eyed unless it is because they are not. Who ever saw a fish with eyes like a wall? Maybe it is because walls have windows but then they ought to call these fish window-fish if that is the reason. The fish-book says the proper name for them is Stizostedion vitreum so when you want one just catch a pike or a blue pike or a pickerel or a green pike or a yellow pike or a sand pike and you will have it.

Bill is nearly as big as his dad and Ed. is bigger than him. We got mother a pair of rubber heeled shoes so she could walk easy but she didn't like them because they were too low in the heels and not in style. Matthews went with us to the store to get them and then showed us the exhibition of the Great Northern Railroad which was very interesting.

At 4 o'clock we left for Lake Minnetonka where I took a swim in the lake but did not have time to go fishing; but there was a fellow came in with 46 fish on his string all of them about a foot and a half long and it was all he could carry from the boat. We got supper at the hotel and they soaked us six dollars for some fresh fish when the lake is full of them. We went back as far as Minneapolis and wandered around until mother decided to wait on us at the station. About every business place was either a shooting gallery or a restaurant, finally we went into a Moxie I mean a vaudeville show. Dad was tired and he went to sleep. Our train left at 11 P. M. and I luckily looked at the clock and it was 10:30. The blocks are very long there and we had to walk. On our way we risked and stopped to get a sandwich and a glass of buttermilk. We got there just as he was about closing the gate and just made it and that was all.

Devil's Lake was the next stop which I am going to tell about. We rode all night through Minnesota and the next morning I was late for breakfast but the porter said I could get something to eat at Grand Forks so I had some flapjacks and orange and dad took a picture of me on a pile of milk cans. You couldn't say much for North Dakota because of the plains where you could look out and see if you were there and see nothing but a clump of trees here and there as far as you could see.

We arrived at Devil's Lake about noon and got a room at the Great Northern hotel. This hotel was put up by the Great Northern Railroad. As soon as possible, dad went out to see if he could locate Captain Heerman an old friend of dad's who used to transport freight and hides up and down the Mississippi river and the Missouri in days of Mark Twain. I don't know whether he was acquainted with Huck Finn or not. He was over at his farm at Fort Totten but was coming home about 3 o'clock. Pretty soon there was a call put in our room. It was Captain Heerman and he said to come down right away and he started to bring back old remembrances of the buffalo days.

Captain Heerman is 86 now and he walks every birthday twelve miles from St. Paul to Minneapolis. They just had a big picnic for him and the other old river captains at Minneapolis and had his picture in the city papers about it. He took us over to his house and made us stay for supper. He told me many stirring stories of the olden days about the buffaloes.

One of them was of a man in horse and buggy who was stopped by a herd of them and waited two hours and a half for them to pass and he measured the width of the tracks where they passed it was two miles and a half wide. Not making an excuse but hearing it with my own ears it was true. It happened 41 years ago. He told us about another buffalo story that happened when he was going up the Missouri river about the same year. A herd of buffalo came to the river to cross and were so many of them that he had to stop his steamboat for one hour while the buffalo swam over and got out of his way. He said while they were swimming close in front of the steamboat the passengers were all out watching the great sight and someone wanted them to catch one with a lasso, so the men who worked on the boat got a rope and made a loop and threw it over the horns of a big one then they all got hold of the rope but they could not hold him. So the captain told them to take a hitch onto the steam windlass and he rung the engineer to wind him up on the deck and up he came all wet and struggling and when they swung him over on the deck they had to cut his throat and skin him on the boat deck. There was a great scattering of the passengers when the old fellow was butchered there for fresh meat for their suppers.

After a good hearty supper the captain had his grandson bring his car and take us down to the old boat landing at the lake five miles below the place where it used to be. His steamboat is there rotting high above the shore; he told us that the water was 23 feet below where it was when dad used to ride with him across the lake 35 years ago and it is now 150 feet from the old pier to the edge of the water. He showed us the trees that he planted when dad was with him in 1885 that now are too big to reach around by two boys like me and they are about 60 feet high.

Captain and dad talked about when they used to catch pickerel from their pier over 32 inches long and now there is not a live thing in the lake. They had to run the boat 14 miles to get across from the town to the fort but now you drive over in an automobile and there is no use for a boat. The old boat landing is now the Chautauqua Grounds and a great many people have their summer homes here among the trees as it is the only woods in the country. Captain Heerman gave it for a Chautauqua.

After we got back to the hotel I fell to sleep of being tired that day and it was Sunday and Sunday is a drowsy day for me. They had to waken me to go to the train which was leaving at midnight. We had all night ride through North Dakota and it was daylight when we got to the Missouri River.

I left one thing out—It was we went to see the place where dad had his office 35 years ago when buying buffalo bones from Indians. It is now a drug store and I bought him a drink of orangeade in it at the place where Wanetah presented him his pipe and pouch. When in another store we saw an Indian squaw and asked her if she knew anything about old Chief Wanetah and she said he was her grandfather and her father, William Wanetah, was outside. We followed her outside where he was standing. Dad told him he had his father's pipe and pouch and the old chief showed him the old treaty once. He wanted to know if William ever saw it and he said he had it at his home over at the reservation. Dad asked him if he would let him have it to get it photographed and he said he would if he would send it back to him.

We visited one John Maher, an old friend of dad who was a lawyer in the old days, and while there they elected dad a member of the Pioneer Society of North Dakota.

When we got to the Missouri River it was Monday morning and raining. Dad told me to watch the river and remember that it was along this river that Lewis and Clark pushed their boats up stream when they made their expedition to the west in 1804-1805. We followed the river for nearly half a day and then along the Little Missouri part of the afternoon; we crossed some Indian reservations and a great stretch that there is nothing but dry farming and cattle ranching. it is pretty dreary country and the buildings on the ranches are shacks made of poles and everything was brown and dusty but wherever there were any streams of water it was green. It was about dinner time or after when we got to Havre where Fort Assinniboine used to be and Chinook country not far from the British line. It was getting dark when we got to the Blackfoot Reservation. We looked out to see the Indian town but all we could see was the lights in the teepees and some of them live in houses. It was 8:30 when we reached the Glacier Hotel and we got a room, bath and telegram from home which mother went first to see if any arrived. It said that everything was fine and dandy; so this made mother sleep a bit.