retch of the river was only a hundred
yards long; after that, they were able to pole for a mile or so, and
once indeed, the stream broadened so much that they could use the
paddles. Then came a precipitous cascade, then a difficult carry, and
then another stretch of poling.

They had gone about five miles up the river when Horace, who had been
watching the shores carefully, pointed to a tree and gave a shout. It
was a large spruce, on the trunk of which was a blazed mark that looked
less than a year old.

"It's my mark," said Horace. "I made it last August. Right here I
found one of the diamonds."

"We must stop and do some prospecting!" cried Fred.

"No use," replied his brother. "I prospected all round here myself,
and for a mile or so up the river. I didn't go any farther, but I've a
notion that we'll have to go nearly to the head of the river to find
the country we want."

On they went, shoving the canoe against the current with the iron-shod
canoe poles. They had all been looking up the kind of soil in which
diamonds are usually found, and now they closely observed the eroded
banks on both sides of the river. According to Horace's theory, the
river, or one of its tributary streams, must cut through the
diamond-beds of blue clay. But as yet the shores showed nothing except
ordinary sand and gravel.

Two miles farther the river broadened into a long, narrow lake,
surrounded by low spruce-clad hills and edged with sprouting lily-pads.
It was a great relief to the boys to be able to paddle, and they dashed
rapidly to the head of the lake. There, rapids and a long carry
confronted them! They had made little more than fifteen miles that day
when finally they went into camp; they were almost too tired to cook
supper. And they knew that that day's work was only a foretaste of
what was coming, for from now on they would be continually "bucking the
rapids."

The next day they found rapids in plenty, indeed. They seemed to come
on an average of a quarter of a mile apart, and sometimes two or three
in such close succession that it was scarcely worth while to launch the
canoe again after the first portage. It was slow, toilsome work; they
grew very tired as the afternoon wore on, and shortly before sunset
they came to one of the worst spots they had yet encountered.

It was a pair of rapids, less than a hundred yards apart. Over the
first one the water rushed among a medley of irregular boulders, and
t