Chapter I: Foreword

Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his essays on the art of writing, says in substance that one of the methods of telling a story is to choose a background and then build in harmony with the landscape selected.

In The Gold Rock of the Chippewa the writer has followed this method. The story opens in 1775, a dozen years after the Great Lakes region had been ceded by France to England. But it does not attempt to tell of the great war in which Wolfe and Montcalm gave their lives for their countries. It might be called “The Robinson Crusoe of Lake Superior,” as the events of the whole story take place among the rocky wooded hills, on the cold streams, the clear lakes, the wild islands, and on the deep blue waters of “Gitche Gumee,” the largest and most beautiful of the great inland seas of North America.

D. Lange.

St. Paul, Minnesota,
August, 1925.

CONTENTS

PAGE
I. The Council 11
II. Ganawa Speaks 17
III. Gitche Gumee 23
IV. Vague News 34
V. The White Boy Learns 45
VI. A Spooky Camp 54
VII. A Wolf 61
VIII. Tawny 68
IX. The Proving of Tawny 74
X. The Riddle 81
XI. Mystery and Danger 89
XII. Beginning the Search 97
XIII. At the Big Pool 105
XIV. A Puzzle 113
XV. The Smoke-House 121
XVI. A Double Surprise 129
XVII. Into the Unknown 137
XVIII. Real Trouble 144
XIX. On Wild Lakes 151
XX. Farthest North 159
XXI. Wild Fruit 166
XXII. On a New Tack 173
XXIII. The Beaver Hunt 179
XXIV. Much Work and a Clue 186
XXV. A Mystery 193
XXVI. Stalking a Moose 202
XXVII. The Storm Camp 211
XXVIII. Fighting a Wolf 218
XXIX. A Discovery 228
XXX. Ganawa Is Frightened 238
XXXI. Sailing The Pirate 247
XXXII. Caribou Island 254
XXXIII. The Last Search 260
XXXIV. A Bold Venture 268

ILLUSTRATIONS

One of the women handed to each a birch-bark
dish (Page 35) Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
On a big bare rock stood a wolf looking at him 66
He barely clung to the rock with hands and feet 132
A big black bear was coming straight for him 172
There he stood, a fine young bull moose, feeding
on some willows 210
He was some fearsome wild giant 262

THE GOLD ROCK OF THE CHIPPEWA