and be permitted the
luxury of my own thoughts.

How beautifully desolate it all was; with what fresh delight each
new vista revealed itself. The wild life, the love of wilderness and
solitude, was in my blood, and my nature responded to the charm
of our surroundings. I was the daughter of one ever attracted by
the frontier, and all my life had been passed amid primitive
conditions--the wide out-of-doors was my home, and the lonely
places called me. The broad, rapid sweep of the river up which we
won our slow passage, the great beetling cliffs dark in shadows,
and crowned by trees, the jutting rocks whitened by spray, the
headlands cutting off all view ahead, then suddenly receding to
permit of our circling on into the unknown--here extended a panorama
of which I could never tire.

My imagination swept ahead into the mystery which awaited us in that
vast wilderness toward which we journeyed--the dangerous rivers, the
portages, the swift rush of gleaming water, the black forests, the
plains of waving grass, the Indian villages, and those immense lakes
along whose shores we were destined to find way. All this possibility
had come to me so unexpectedly, with such suddenness, that even yet I
scarcely realized that my surroundings were real. They seemed more a
dream than an actual fact, and I was compelled to concentrate my mind
on those people about me before I could clearly comprehend the
conditions under which I lived.

Yet here was reality enough: the Indian paddlers, stripped to the
waist, their bodies glistening, as with steady, tireless strokes, they
forced our canoe forward, following relentlessly the wake of the
speeding boat ahead; the little group of soldiers huddled in the bows,
several sleeping already, the others amusing themselves with game of
cards; while just in front of me sat the priest, his fingers clasping
an open book, but his eyes on the river. The silhouette of his face,
outlined beyond his black hood, seemed carved from stone, it was so
expressionless and hard. There was something so sinister about it that
I felt a chill run through me, and averted my eyes, only to encounter
the glance of Cassion beside me, who smiled, and pointed out a huge
terrace of rock which seemed a castle against the blue of the sky. I
think he told me the fanciful name the earlier explorers had given the
point, and related some legend with which it was connected, but my
mind was not on his tale, and soon he ceased effort