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THE
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
CAPT. STEPHEN B. HANKS,
INCIDENTS IN BRINGING OUT RAFTS FROM THE PINERIES.
July 16, 1921
We
now got under way for what we hoped would be another trip to
St. Louis. The river had raised little, which was a help as
to sand bars and islands, but the weather was against us; the
days were short and getting shorter; fogs were heavy and
frequent and we made slow progress. We tied up at Sand
Prairie the night of the 12th of November. The
next morning and the outlook was not encouraging but we
started out and that night one raft reached Albany but the
other, of which I was now in charge, was put in the mouth of
Cat Tail slough as I knew it would be perfectly sage there.
The other was tied in the eddy at Albany that night and the
next morning it was very cold and the ice was running. We
took half of this raft and tried to put it into the “Dosia”
slough, but the current was too strong and carried us to the
other side into Comanche slough and there it remained for the
winter. We hoped the weather would moderate, but the hope was
vain for the river froze over on the 16th of November.
There were now some thirty raftmen
added to the population of Albany. They had no money, but
they had it coming. Alfred Slocomb, with whom I had lived so
long, still ran a hotel and they all boarded with him. At
this time my sister Mrs. Colvert, was living in Albany and I
made my home with her. As soon as we could get worked of our
where abouts to the Company, a man of the name of Waters was
sent from St. Louis to see about settling with the men, and on
his arrival we commenced getting lumber out of the raft to get
money to pay them. A crib would be chopped loose, drawn, out
on shore with a crab, the lumber stripped off, sorted and sold
and in time the men we all settled with.
I remained in Albany until the holidays
and there were only a couple of incidents during that time
that are worth relating.
One day I went out east of town on a
little hunt and bagged a couple of coons; took them to the
hotel and asked the cooks to prepare them as baked pig, which
they did with perfect success and we had a fine dinner for the
raftsmen. After dinner I asked the boys how they liked baked
pig and they all praised it and some remarked they would like
such a dish everyday. I finally told them what they had eaten
and they all appreciated the joke except one man who declared
that he had lived too long to be fooled that way and guessed
he knew coon when he ate it.
P. B. Van Nest, one of our towns
people, was married to a daughter of Cheney Olds. The
raftsmen organized a serenading committee and gave the young
people a lively tie for several nights, how long I do not know
as I left before it was over.
Mr. Hungerford and Capt Holcomb
arrived in Albany about his time, having driven from St. Croix
Falls to Galena in a sleigh, with a pair of mile I had taken
up two years before, and taken stage from Galena. They went
on to St. Louis after arranging with me to go to Galena and
take the team and sleigh back to the mill. I left Albany
between Christmas and New year’s and went to Galena by stage.
Here I remained a couple of weeks assisting a mill wright, who
was to go north with me, in making some patterns for a spiral
water wheel that was to be used at the mill. We also made a
sleigh that we took with us. While here we made a trip to
White Oak Springs where I had a chance to add to my practical
knowledge by exploring a large led mine and seeing the mining
and smelting operations.
It was now January 1844 and very cold,
so when we started we make every possible preparation for a
long and cold ride. The first night out we spent at White Oak
Springs and the second one at Cassville. Here we took to the
river and drove on the ice and reached Prairie du Chien where
we spent the third night. We traveled all the nest day
without seeing the track of any living thing, not even a
rabbit, and that night we spent at a trading post at Capoli.
The fifth night we were at Prairie La Crosse. The sixth night
we spent at a trading post at what is now Fountain City. Some
sixteen miles below Read’s Landing we had to take to the land
as the river does not freeze much for that distance below Lake
Pepin. Here we did not get much sleep for they had a dance.
It was a rare sight and I would like to be able to describe
it. The guests were largely half breeds and the dancing was a
mixture of French and Indian. We went on the ice again here
and found it covered with snow in great billows, like the
waves of the sea, and our progress was like the pitching of a
vessel in the waves, the snow being hard enough to enable us
to travel on top of it.
Part way up the lake we came to open
water, caused by a crevice in the ice, some three or four feet
across. We unhitched and induced the mules to jump over and
slid the sled across by hand. We put in that night, the
eighth, at the mission station and Indian Agency at red Wing.
The ninth night we were at Point Douglass, at the foot of Lake
St. Croix; the tenth at Mrs. Carley’s Stillwater, and we
reached the mill on the eleventh day, nearly all the way on
the ice.
In a day or two I was sent with the
miles and a load of suppl8es to Page’s camp, located where we
had been two years before, the camp, however, having been
rebuilt and much enlarged. Soon after I arrived the boss sent
a couple of half breeds with the miles I had brought, to Lake
Superior for fresh fish as the men were tiring of the salt
meat which was the principal article of diet. The mules were
hitched tandem with rope tugs and other frontier outfit. The
sled was some sixteen feet long and only a little over a foot
wide for the whole way was through the woods. They came back
with about a tone of lake trout. Frozen solid of course,
which was distributed among the camps and made an acceptable
change. The mules, by the way, were nearly hairless from
going through the heavy brush.
It was now getting near spring and part
of the men were sent away. Those remaining were getting tools
and boom sticks ready for the drive. There was prospect for
the lots of work, as the winter had been cold and there was at
least three feet of solid snow on the ground. There were at
least three million or more feet of logs to be driven down as
the previous year’s cut was still there in addition to the
logs left in Cross Lake from two years before, there having
been no rise to take them out. The ice was very thick and it
was fifteenth of May before there was any movement of the ice
in Lake Pokegema and, meantime, we were getting short of grub
having gotten from the mission and Indian farm all they could
spare. Finally we got to work; boomed the logs through
Pokegema; turned them loose and rushed the booms down to Cross
Lake to catch them again for the trip across that lake into
lower Snake river. Then word came from the Falls to hold the
logs in Cross Lake if possible as the St. Croix was on a
rampage with oceans of water everywhere, it being evident that
the delayed freshet had arrived. There had been build the
season before across the head of lower Snake
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