Historic Diaries: James Doty, 1820
July 24, 1820: Reunited Once Again
Editor's Note:
Doty made a short entry for the first time in a week: "This day the Gov. & gent, returned quite exhausted while those who remained were greatly recruited. They did not go to the extreme source of the river, only to red cedar Lake, the highest navigable water at this season, and 350 miles from Sandy lake. The whole of the country is low & marshy, and much of it covered with wild rice. The river above Sandy Lake becomes very crooked — so much so that the river in one instance in the short distance of 1 mile would cross a straight line 15 times. Frequently by making a portage of the length of the canoe, 3 or 4 miles was saved."
Why the expedition's official secretary did not accompany the others to the source of the Mississippi, and why he wrote almost nothing while at Sandy Lake and while coming downriver, is a mystery. His notes on July 16 suggest a state of depression or at least discouragement, and it is possible that he was ill after making the trek through the great swamps; neither he nor his biographer shed any light on his silence. At the first gap, he makes a cryptic reference for his reader to "see ad. Journal." This suggests that he may have made entries in a fourth notebook, but no such volume has survived.
Location: modern Big Sandy Lake Reservoir, Aitkin Co. Minn.
View Schoolcraft's complete description in his 1821 Narrative
View Doty's handwritten manuscript of this page
View page in the 1895 printed edition
[Schoolcraft:] A change of wind took place during the night, and we were favoured with the most delightful weather. Proceeding under the double influence of a strong current and the force of our paddles, we progressed with surprising rapidity, and at two o'clock in the afternoon landed at the Southwest Company's Fort on Sandy lake, a distance of seventy-two miles, having performed on our return, the same distance in three days, which we were occupied four and a half in ascending. We were rejoiced to find our friends in perfect health, and that no attempts had been made by the savages, during our absence, to molest them.
A pleasure, scarcely less satisfactory in its nature, arose from the termination of a part of our voyage, which had appeared to us to present greater difficulties in its accomplishment, and less in its character and productions to reward exploration, than any other section of the tour; and in fact, we have neither found the labour less, nor the reward greater, than was anticipated. Barren in its geological character and physical productions, the incidents of the tour have offered little to compensate the want of zoological interest, picturesque views, and populous Indian settlements: -- and a number of circumstances have concurred to render our situation on this visit, one of peculiar privation, fatigue, and physical suffering. Not the least among these, have been the calls of an unsatisfied appetite, the stings of the musquito, and the almost incessant motion of travelling, depriving us of due rest at night.
By this vigilance, however -- by this constant hurry onward -- by dismissing the greatest part of our baggage, and the few conveniences we had thus far carried -- by stinting ourselves as to provisions, and by leaving the weight of the expedition at Sandy lake, we have performed the voyage in less than half the time it would otherwise have required, and in less time than it has ever, as we are told by the voyageurs, been before performed."
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