I laid out for myself just one task and no more: I started in May, 1872, for the sources of the Mississippi, thence to descend the entire river. After days of inquiry and two trips over the Northern Pacific Railroad, I decided upon a route to Itasca Lake which no white man had ever traversed. I made an entirely successful journey, marking out the White Earth route so clearly that any child could follow it thereafter. What feat is there to go over ground which I described so explicitly as follows?--First stage, to White Earth; second stage, to the Twin Lakes; third stage, across the prairie to the Wild Rice River; fourth stage, up that stream to the Lake of the Spirit Isle; and fifth stage, of half a day, by the Ah-she-wa-wa-see-ta-gen portage, to the Mississippi, at a point twenty-six miles north of Itasca. The same afternoon and the following day, energetically employed, will suffice to put anybody at the sources of "the Father of Rivers." Anybody could take a tissue-paper boat to Itasca after 1872. Had I had a predecessor over this route to Itasca, as Mr. Siegfried had, and could I have travelled as he did with a roll of newspaper letters telling me where to stop and when, how to go and where, I should have been the first to acknowledge my indebtedness to the man who showed me the way. Why did not Mr. S. take Nicollet's or Schoolcraft's route, or seek a new one? Simply for the reason that my itinerary was so clearly laid down that the journey became merely a Cook's excursion. I had built and took with me to Minnesota a paper boat for the descent of the river, but I have never made any secret of the fact that I bought another one (a twin in name and fitted with the appliances of the New York craft) for the tramp of seventy miles through the wilderness from the railroad to the sources. In this I merely followed the example frequently set by Mr. MacGregor, who is the father of canoeing, and the advice of George A. Morrison, government storekeeper at White Earth, the Hon. Dr. Day, United States Indian commissioner, and other gentlemen of equal prominence. Neither of these gentlemen had been over the ground, but they represented the country as awful in the extreme. I acquainted everybody who asked with my decision, and, were it desirable to involve others in this matter, could name fifty persons to whom every detail of this initial stage of my trip has been explained. Not a particle of accurate information regarding the road, the number of days required or the distance could be obtained. It was not possible _then_ to contract for forty-one dollars to be landed on the Mississippi! Mr. Siegfried might have seen at every camping-ground and meal-station along the route the blazed trees bearing the deeply-cut Greek "delta," which seven years' precedence cannot have effaced. His descriptions and mine are identical throughout: therefore, he has either not been over the course at all (which I do not insinuate)