he stern. We swept along before the
wind, unsteadily, over Lake Chesuncook, at sea in a bowl,--"rolled to
starboard, rolled to larboard," in our keelless craft. Zephyr only
followed us, mild as he was strong, and strong as he was mild. Had he
been puffy, it would have been all over with us. But the breeze only
sang about our way, and shook the water out of sunny calm. Katahdin to
the North, a fair blue pyramid, lifted higher and stooped forward
more imminent, yet still so many leagues away that his features were
undefined, and the gray of his scalp undistinguishable from the green of
his beard of forest. Every mile, however, as we slid drowsily over the
hot lake, proved more and more that we were not befooled,--Iglesias by
memory, and I by anticipation. Katahdin lost nothing by approach, as
some of the grandees do: as it grew bigger, it grew better.

Twenty miles, or so, of Chesuncook, of sun-cooked Chesuncook, we
traversed by the aid of our blanket-sail, pleasantly wafted by the
unboisterous breeze. Undrowned, unducked, as safe from the perils of the
broad lake as we had come out of the defiles of the rapids, we landed at
the carry below the dam at the lake's outlet.

The skin of many a slaughtered varmint was nailed on its shingle, and
the landing-place was carpeted with the fur. Doughnuts, ex-barkeepers,
and civilization at one end of the lake, and here were muskrat-skins,
trappers, and the primeval. Two hunters of moose, in default of their
fern-horned, blubber-lipped game, had condescended to muskrat, and were
making the lower end of Chesuncook fragrant with muskiness.

It is surprising how hospitable and comrade a creature is man. The
trappers of muskrats were charmingly brotherly. They guided us across
the carry; they would not hear of our being porters. "Pluck the
superabundant huckleberry," said they, "while we, suspending your firkin
and your traps upon the setting-pole, tote them, as the spies of Joshua
toted the grape-clusters of the Promised Land."

Cancut, for his share, carried the canoe. He wore it upon his head and
shoulders. Tough work he found it, toiling through the underwood, and
poking his way like an elongated and mobile mushroom through the thick
shrubbery. Ever and anon, as Iglesias and I paused, we would be aware of
the canoe thrusting itself above our heads in the covert, and a voice
would come from an unseen head under its shell,--"It's soul-breaking,
carrying is!"

The portage was short