Volume 1

22 TO THE LAKE OF THE WOODS.
another old H. B. Co, establishment, and soon after came
to the entrance of Lake of the Woods;" when, having a
fine calm, we made the traverse and camped at the [Big]
island.
A terrible storm during the night.
Aug: ^th. This morning early embarked ; wind aft; came
to the Rocher Rouge, where we found a number of
Indians
beyond the entrance of Rainy r. into that lake. The best Canadian map before
me (Dept. Interior, 1894) marks Rapid r., Reaudet r. , and Winter Road r.
with a place called Rapid River opp. the mouth of the first named, in Ontario.
Thompson, 1797, carefully notes four streams on his left (Minnesota
side) between the Long Sault and Lake of the Woods. He further makes
it N. 13° W. i^ m. below the last one of these streams to certain establishments
which appear to have been in the vicinity of present Fort Louise (Paskonkin
and Bishop Indian reserves, near the entrance of the lake). He speaks of
these posts as being together, and as the houses of Mr. Mcintosh and Mr.
McKay, the latter " from Albany," i. e., of the H. B. Co. This may give a clew
to the second one of the establishments of which Henry speaks. Keating's
Long, 1824, notes a certain Pine r. , on the N. ,
30 yards wide, between Rapid
r. and Black r.
^^ Henry enters Lake of the Woods on its extreme S., at the inlet of Rainy
r., and will pass N. to the outlet or main discharge of the lake into Winnipeg
r., near Rat portage. The air-line distance between these two points is about
70 m.; but the actual route is considerably more, as it winds among islands
which stud the whole collection of waters once and long known as Lake of
the Woods, now belonging in part to ISIinnesota, but in greater part to Ontario.
Henry starts on a course coincident with the present international line through
the lake, but quits it before he has gone halfway to Rat portage.
These simple
statements might furnish a text for a disquisition on the Lake of the Woods
as the most celebrated thing of the kind in our political history, having occasioned
more diplomatic and geodetic literature than any other waters of no
greater extent. The reader who wishes to inform himself fully on the history
and final settlement of the boundary question, which was in dispute for so many
years, will of course refer to the official publications of one or both governments.
The conclusion of the matter, on our part, will be found in the Department of
State Report on the Survey of the Boundary, etc.,
from the Lake of the Woods,
etc., authorized by A. of C, 19 Mar., 1872, pub. by A. of C, 3 Mar., 1877, forming
a stout 4to, Washington, Gov't Pr. Off., 1878 : see esp. pp. 23, 53, 79, 303,
etc., with map opp. p. 83. Here, of course, I can but point to some of the more
salient features of the case. Lake of the Woods is the term which translates the
F. phrase, Lac des Bois (or de Bois or du Bois), a name current since the first
half of the l8th century, if not even earlier, and also rendered Wood 1. or
Woody 1. Lac des Sioux is another French name, appearing at least as early as
1 719, but lapsing after a precarious struggle for existence. Lac des Isles is a
third term, for example in La France, 1740, long alternative to Lac des Bois ;