The Princeton union., 1897-10-21
RICE, HONEY, ETC.

RICE, HONEY, ETC.
Knappen Got a Taste of Natures Bill of
Fare at Mile Lacs.
Interesting articles continue to be
published in the Minneapolis Journal,
the subject matter for which was
CLEANED by T. M. Knappen during his
recent visit to Mile Laos. The fol-
lowing extracts are from his Satur-
days sketch:
I'm Minnesota's forests, autumn is
the Incompatible season. The frosts
have driven away the flies and mos
quitoes that mar the enjoyment of the
summer days and evenings in the
woods, and have changed the all-per-
vading green of the summer foliage to
the yellows, oranges, scarlets, Grim
sons and deep browns of the fall. The
leaves have begun to fall, and the shell
terof the hiding partridge is not so
perfect as it was. :
The autumn is also the time for fat
and varied living for the dwellers in
the woods, both white and red.
Around the lakes and in the marshes
the wild rice is ripe for the harvest:
the honey bee has laid up riches in
the trunks of hollow trees and the
toothsome cranberry is ready to be
picked. =. - -@
The wild beehive that escapes the
professional honey hunter is very
luck This is time Of yearwhen
the honey hunter goes out to harvest
what the bees have been so long gath
ering. He is a methodical Individual,
and his long experience in hunting
honey trees and his knowledge of the
woods, make it tolerably certain that
not many bee homes in his neighbour
hood will escape him. His neighbor-
hood is sometimes a very extensive
one, too; more's the pity for the bee.
There's Bill Vinson of Princeton, for
instance. .Bill's friends say that he
has a route laid out along forest road
for some thirty miles. At intervals of
a mile or two along his route, Bill puts
up bait cans, which hold little quanti-
ties of honey. Then day after day in
the fall he drives along his. route with
team, stopping to examine each bait
to see whether the bees are feeding on
it. When he finds bees in one of the
cans he catches few of them and i'm
prisons them in another honey can,
where they drink their fill of sweet
ness. When he judges that they have
had it, he gives one its liberty. The
! little fellow makes a few circles in the
air to get his bearings, and then shoots
away on the proverbial bee line for his
home in some hollow tree. The
hunter closely marks his course and
fixes the general direction by some
land mark. Then, like the tortoise
after the hare, the hunter follows the
bee. -..-
While the woods have their native
sweets, they also have their nature
given breakfast food wild rice.
Those who eat it from day to day say
that they would not exchange, it for all
the tempting dishes the ingenuity Of
the food preparers has brought for
ward. They will have to do without it
this year, however, for the high water
in the northern lakes has prevented
the maturing of the crop. This year
the birch bark canoes will not GO
crawling through the rice stalks gath
ering the harvest prepared by nature.
It is strange that white men have
not under taken the methodical culture
Of wild rice as they have the cranberry.
There is ready market for all that
is sent to the cities now, and last year
it brought eleven cents pound. Some
traders near Mile Lacs sent about two
tons to the Twin Cities. There are
some families that are so fond of this
natural food that they have some es-
pecial Indian subsidized to collect a
winters supply for them each fall.
In the fall, the Indians have an op.
portunity to make money from still
another of natures bountiess The
Gran berry marshes are red with their
acrid fruit and the housewife and the
pie factories want it.
AS most marshes need little or nc