Mrs. G. H. Warren and her son Frank returned to the city Monday from a two weeks' tour of the Vermilion Iron Range, north of Lake Superior. Their trip was both interesting and novel. From Ely, the eastern terminus of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, they embarked in birch canoes, traversing ten lakes, thirteen portages and three small rivers as far as they were navigable for birch canoes. The whole distance thus traveled included over one hundred miles. Pike, pickerel, bass, white fish, or landlocked salmon abound in all these lakes of rugged shores. Master Frank reports the capture of a twenty-seven inch pike and a thirty-seven inch pickerel. In one of the bays of Basswood Lake--a beautiful body of clear water thirty miles in length and extending several miles into Canada--the Indians were seen gathering wild rice. This is accomplished by the male Indian standing upright in the bow of his canoe, and paddling it forward through the field of rice, the stalks of which grow from three to four feet above the water; while his squaw sits in the stern of the canoe, and with two round sticks about the size, and half the length of a broom handle, dexterously bends the long heads of the rice over the gunwale of the canoe with one stick, while at the same instant, she strikes the well filled heads a sharp, quick blow with the other, threshing out the kernels of rice, which fall into the middle portion of the canoe. This middle portion is provided, for the occasion, with a cloth apron, into which the rice kernels fall. The apron will hold about two bushels, and is filled in the manner above described in less than three hours' time. The rice is next picked over to free it from chaff and straw, after which it is placed in brass kettles and parched over a slow fire; then it is winnowed, and is ready for future use. Mrs. Warren is the first white woman to penetrate so far on the frontier of wild Northeastern Minnesota, and though never before subjected to uncivilized life, or the primitive mode of travel, she endured the walks over the portages, slept soundly on beds of balsam fir boughs, ate with a relish the excellent fish and wild game cooked at the camp fire, and returns to her home in the city with health much improved, and enthusiastic over the many beauties of nature in this yet wild, but attractive portion of Minnesota." CHAPTER XXI. Forest Fires. The terrible forest fires that swept over much of Wisconsin and Minnesota during the summer of 1894, resulting in such an appalling loss of life at Hinckley and vicinity, will always be remembered by the people living in the northern half of Minnesota.